So, what do you do when you’re home alone on a Saturday night, you don’t feel like going out, and you also aren’t in the mood to be very productive?

No, not THAT .

Why, you optimize your t-shirt drawers, of course.  Exactly!  And so far, I’ve determined that I have:

• 13 Google t-shirts (fewer than half gotten since I became a Googler, interestingly enough)
• 13 dance-related shirts
• 13 other somewhat-decent shirts that I may actually wear (okay, this is weird… I had no idea my t-shirt collection was so bad-luckedly symmetrical!)
• 5 [whew!] remaining t-shirts that I don’t want to be caught wearing, so I’ll donate these to Goodwill (:cough: unoriginal and oft-oversized swag)

A sampling of some of the stranger ones:

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, and—as always—I have so much to say.  I’ll use my recent and upcoming schedule as a crutch for providing some musings and commentary

Last week:

- Monday:  Special Google Event and Hakone Gardens private party.
Early in the day I got to test my Event Planning mettle.  It all came out okay!  No one was electrocuted.  No one went hungry.  No one fell or was thrown off of large balconies.  Reviews were good, and I wasn’t fired.  In the evening, I joined a friendly group of geeks at a private party at the beautiful Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, California.  Free sushi!  Company presentations in the blissfully short form of one haiku each!  Plus prizes, a Futurist presentation, and much more.

- Tuesday:  The Fifth Annual Google Dance and included “Meet the Engineers” event
I was responsible for planning this year’s Meet the Engineers event upstairs during the Google Dance, enabling lots of Webmaster’y-type folks and Googlers to chat informally about largely search-focused ideas, questions, and more.  Overall, it seemed to go pretty well, though I certainly got some good feedback to improve the event for next year (feel free to add more feedback in the comments below if you’d like!) And in the general party there were battling robots, lots of cheese, wacky green-screen dancing karaoke, demo’ing and dunking Googlers, and lots and lots (thousands!) of geeks in various stages of buzzed revelry

- Wednesday:  Search Engine Strategies Conference (continued from Tuesday) and yet more geek parties
The Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, California is one of the largest events of its kind… four solid days of learning ‘n’ camraderie in the Web Marketing / Search Engine Optimization space, with four evenings of networking, drinking, and playful debauchery.  My colleagues sumo wrestling!  Geeks Gone Wild on the dance floor!  And, on a serious but equally important note, it was a great chance for me to meet some fascinating heavyweights in the industry and for me to do my best representing Google… answering questions, gathering thoughtful bits of feedback, and happily putting names with faces ("Ah, you’re THAT blogger...").

- Thursday:  My first speaking engagement on behalf of Google!
My boss, Matt Cutts, is one of the most articulate and likeable fellows in the search engine realm.  When he speaks, people listen!  When I speak… well, I really hadn’t ever publicly spoken on behalf of Google before, so as you can imagine, I was a bit apprehensive and also quite excited.  Making matters even more interesting was the fact that all of my fellow panelists (from Yahoo, MSN, and Ask) came prepared with Powerpoint presentations and I came prepared with… nothing.  Well, that’s not exactly true.  I had spent quite a bit of time thinking about the subject at hand (how Google looks at links on the Web) and was pretty confident about my ability to answer questions… but I certainly hadn’t thought of making an opening statement.  It was a “Q&A” session, after all!

Well, luckily, during the few minutes of the others’ presentations, I managed to quickly shuffle a reasonably organized selection of thoughts into my head and then out of my mouth in a basically impromptu four minute speech.  I even squeezed in a bit of geek humor, specifically a reference to Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” book… which was, to my pleasure and relief, pretty well-received (yay, fellow geeks with good taste in literature!).  I was asked some great questions and had answers for all but one of them, for which I admitted “I don’t know.”

Overall, it was an enjoyable and worthwhile experience, and I look forward to speaking at another industry event.

I have an envelope on my desk from the American Cancer Society.  A very, very worthy organization, and one that I do indeed plan to support financially.  But—being the strange bird that I am—I’d like to do so creatively, selfishly, and, well, with your help

No, I’m not going to ask you to send me money… at least not until I’m masochistically running some 42K fundraiser race or whatever where I have to raise [$x] and [x] is some relatively high number.  Instead, I’m going to ask you to do work for me.  Let me explain…

I’ve recently written some things a bit critical about America and American culture (particularly pop culture), and—seeing as how it’s nearing our Independence Day—I figure I ought to share a more positive vibe.  Therefore, I’m offering a few things below (in no particular order) that make me happy to be an American and living in America .  I know that not all of these things are unique to my country or nationality, but I think—in combination—they highlight a positive uniqueness.

1. The freedom to fail and make a comeback (or comebacks!)
   I know of no other countries where folks can fail—go bankrupt, make their companies go bankrupt, do something really stupid or dastardly in public—and still have such high chances of redeeming themselves with later, more favorable actions.  Sure, there’s still often some stigma to failing, but it’s not fatal or absolute.

2. The encouragement to be creative and innovative
   I’ve lived in Europe, I’ve traveled to at least two dozen countries around the world, and I’ve never seen a culture with such an openness to wacky, outlandish, and yes, impossible dreams.  This, among admittedly many other factors, is why America has been and remains the center of dot.com bold insanity and brilliance.
   
    
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   - Blathered by Adam on Monday, July 3, 2006 at 16:52 Permalink
   - Filed under Personal • Society
   - Commented on by 21 folks so far. Visit the full entry page and join in!

WARNING:  Mishmash ahead.
Haven’t yet packed, which means this is the perfect time to procrastinate with a blog entry.  Or something like that.

I’m leaving tomorrow morning for a two-week work-related trip.  See details of that trip, plus enjoy some of my phone, camera, T-Mobile, and other musings below.

This last week or so has been—as usual—filled with craziness, happiness, stress, and adventure.

Let’s start with one of the stranger moments.

The scene:  I’m walking from my car to one of my favorite weekly swing dance events (The 9:20 Special in San Francisco).  Suddenly, an attractive woman I don’t recognize is driving down the street yelling something at me.

A couple of months ago, I became a Googler.  Since my boss—Matt Cutts—has already so kindly introduced me on his blog, I feel this is probably a good time to say a few words about my new job

The short version:  I’m honored, humbled, a bit nervous, and yes, very happy.  As a lifelong geek who’s been excited about search and Google in particular for many years, it’s hugely fascinating to be experiencing new adventures from the “inside.”

Okay, now for the longer version!

I just returned from a three-week-long vacation in Australia and Asia.  It was—like most of my vacations—filled with notable disasters and joys.  Here are a few of the highlights (or, in a few cases, lowlights):

• Cuddling with an indifferent koala, petting appreciative kangaroos.
• Snorkeling with colorful big and little fish (and gorgeous plants) in the Great Barrier Reef.
• Watching aboriginal dancers and learning about didgeridoo, natural medicine, and more.
• (Badly) throwing a spear and a boomerang (some poor tourist now has one less finger!  Okay, so I’m just kidding about that.  Maybe.)
• Hiking in a gorgeous albeit truly rainy rainforest.
• Getting sucked on by leeches and bitten by a zillion mosquitoes in that same rainforest.
   
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  - Blathered by Adam on Sunday, March 5, 2006 at 13:51 Permalink
  - Filed under Personal
  - Commented on by 5 folks so far. Visit the full entry page and join in!

I recently got an e-mail from a former workmate, asking if I'd be willing to join him for a coffee or a meal to give "some career advice [...] and honest opinion[s]."

I'm very flattered and I like doing this sort of thing for many reasons.

Every month or so during the school year, the Stanford University Dance Department puts on an event called Jammix. It includes a huge variety of music and dance styles... from schmaltzy tangos to goofy covers of American pop tunes to "Play that Funky Music, White Boy!" to Metallica waltzes (!) and beyond. And all for $2, too!

The talent is equally varied. Given that this was the first Jammix of the season, there were even more newbies than usual, but also quite a few impressively experienced folks (including dance teachers!) in attendance.