Phil’s blog

Notable items from the past two weeks:

• I’m going to graduate. About a week and a half ago I got feedback on my revised thesis, made some final changes last weekend, and am finally done! It’s waiting to be bound at Alderman Library. Definitely a weight off my shoulders, but now I have to publish a paper which may be more involved. There was a lot more I wanted to do with my thesis but was in a rush to finish, so this will be my chance to follow through since there’s no longer a deadline.
• I found a place to live. It’s on Bay St. southeast of downtown Mountain View. I’m quite pleased; two bedrooms / 1 bath, $1100/mo including utilities, off-street parking for two cars plus motorcycle, plenty of street parking for guests, great landlord, and it’s only a 4-plex so less potential for neighbors with noisy children and dogs, both of which I have to deal with at my current residence. The master bedroom is pretty large but the other one is only 10×11.5′ - a bit cramped but it’ll do. I’m not sure about the roommate yet; a friend from work wants to check it out, there’s a chance that Justine will move out here, and failing those two, I can always resort to craigslist. I’ll move in during the second week of September and see what happens.
• I went to SES (Search Engine Strategies conference) in San Jose last Tuesday and Wednesday. It’s a conference held several times a year in various locations for anyone whose business involves search engines. Most of the attendees were from companies that specialize in making your sites rank well in search results or optimizing your internet advertising campaigns. As you can imagine, these industries are largely dependent on Google, so I felt like something of a VIP since name tag had my employer printed on it. People were very interested in what I had to say, and it was a good exercise to talk to them and answer questions without giving away secrets.
• Tuesday night was the Google Dance. It’s an annual event during SES where attendees (and of course Googlers) are invited to a big party at the Googleplex. It allows us to hang out with people whose livelihood depends on Google and in some cases have an adversarial relationship with us (webspammers). Delicious food was a given, but there was also live music, video karaoke, photo booths, a dunk tank, radio controlled robots, and product demos. Good times.

Just sent out my revised thesis a full day ahead of the mental deadline I set for myself. Soon we’ll see what my committee says.