The Obscured World

This was on one of my early visits to Dublin.

This was after a 6 hour cliff repelling trip. There is nothing quite like sitting on a rock the size of a small bed with 4 people on the side of a cliff, not hooked into ropes.

I’ve had Grizzlies run by me that didn’t scare me as much as that trip. But it was an experience I’ll remember.

And it was better than the previous one where I repelled down a waterfall and almost had my scalp ripped out!

Well, not the old, old apartments. A previous engineer got us kicked out of those after flooding the apartment one night.

But I really liked this one. It looked over the harbor, close access to clubs and restaurants, and was larger than my house.

Sydney is really just an awesome place to be.

I was enjoying the company of Ross and his wife one evening when this storm came into Sydney. It was just spectacular so I clicked off a shot.

Wish I had been there for the big sandstorm!

Again, not the old old offices. The old offices were better, but not nearly as fancy.

This is a lot of old timers, many who aren’t around today.

I really liked the look of it when I was touring through one night.

Just a cool setup. Real plants back there, I’d watch people come in to water these every day.

Google does some things in real style.

So many cool conference rooms, though some of them had to be changed later because they were unusable for their purpose.

One of my Sydney trips I and Monika were visiting at the same time. Snapped a picture of here at featherdale, which was one of the cooler zoos in Sydney (hidden in a residential area).

Also did a canyoning trip with her that Phillip recommended. That was a good time. She didn’t even look tired when we climbed out, I think I crawled out I was so exhausted. Blue Mountain Adventure Company for any people who want to have some adventures.

Roy here helping me get my lighting right for the green screen.

Johnny had me take some pictures of his family while he was in town.

I was quite honored and loved every minute of it.

This was part of a Irish boating excursion. Dave set this up back when he was running the Dublin office.

Don’t get me wrong, I like sailing, but this was rough. From now on, Ireland is for drinking and not boating.

Right before the entire Irish smurf village gets in some questionable sailing boats.

And here is the proof.

Got the bright idea to go up to Northern Ireland.

Just for those of you who don’t know, Northern Ireland is completely distinct from the Republic. There is a sense of violence that undercuts everything up there and is so different from the friendly and openness you feel in the rest of Ireland.

Me and Ryan ended up walking into a bar in Belfast where all the patrons stopped and went silent until we spoke. I think if my accent had come out wrong, we might have gotten buried somewhere. Later we were told this was an old IRA bar and they couldn’t believe we walked in. Its one of the few times I had a feeling of true danger in my travels.

Josh can throw a party. This is a shot of fruit exploding after he charged it with like 100k volts and then grounded it.

I don’t remember exactly why, but it was pretty awesome.

Josh in all his glory at the workshop.

Somewhere off to the side someone is holding a poll the Tesla is sending a charge to while someone is using the air crackle as a guitar amplifier.

Raleigh and his wife were taking some time and enjoying Italy. Got the chance to hang out with them for the day.

Raleigh is a lot like Beckmeyer, boundless energy. Hardly could keep up.

Old co-worker. Stopped in to eat a godzilla burrito. They were 6 lbs!

Was doing a weekend trip to Amsterdam and got a tour guide in Tiziana. She was working for Ripe, having finished an internship with Google.

I think it might have been a tour for both of us, because I think she had seen only the inside of Ripe and her flat. Probably the reason why no one ever questions her dedication to her work.

Beck checking the maps to wherever we’d be going the next day.

From here we went running all around Barcelona. Got a good chance to do a lot of night photography.

Funny enough, Beck attracted every lady of the night we passed on the street. They got quite aggressive with him to the point we almost needed to run. None of them even looked at me. Apparently I’m chopped liver next to Beck.

Long gone now, but it was part of Luyer’s burgeoning real-estate empire.

Tell us how you really feel.

Don’t remember how we ended up doing this, but none of us had carved a pumpkin for years. We carved some pumpkins and sat around watching horror movies.

Good times.

But seriously, I don’t ever remember doing this to my face. No idea what that is all about.

Did this over in Crittenden.

The view outside my window. Being nice payed off, I got an entire super suite bigger than my home for $50 over 3 days.

Google rented out Disneyland during my 3rd year I think. Whole park to ourselves at night.

This was a once in a lifetime experience.

My starting journey in night photography.

Phillip organized a really kick ass trip around the harbor. And in his efforts to unify teams some, invited the SREs to join.

So it doesn’t look like it was going to rain from the boat, but as we got off a storm came out and just soaked us.

Here are the results.

During the early days all of us spent a lot more off time together.

This was Luisimo’s wedding from way back.

If you haven’t seen it, it will certainly remind you of a few projects you’ve been a part of at Google.

I was lucky enough to get to teach a lot of you Go. Here was one of the classes.

Thank so much for everyone who participated!

He’s protecting you from the embarrassment of knowing how flabby we all are in comparison.

His abs have abs.

Me and mark doing some indoor climbing. We used to hit this every two weeks.

Certainly looks like something I’d do, but I have no recollection of this.