Today marks my one year Google birthday. Wow! A whole year!

Major accomplishments:

• Obtained both Python and JavaScript readability, learned ActionScript
• Became leader of the Testing Grouplet
• Got to be a corporate speaker
• Performed 46 massage therapist interviews (ohhh yea!)
• Promotion (w00t)
• Made ugly things less ugly and pretty things more pretty
• Ate my weight in chocolate covered strawberries
• Learned where the Google nuclear missiles are located
• Posted a list of everything you (yes, you) google search for and laughed about it with co-workers for an hour.

Exactly one year ago, I had this to say, and in many ways it hasn't changed one bit:

"Open up the laptops in front of you, and I'll show you how to access our intranet."

The Google intranet. The repository of Googler-eyes-only Google data. It's every and any information addict's dream. And I can hardly stand how amazing it is to have access to it all. My fingers couldn't type queries fast enough and my eyes weren't scanning nearly quick enough for all that I wanted to learn. Can that be my job? Manually absorbing everything that their intranet contains, from seekrits to mounds of "trash" data? Do I really have to type lines of code? Can't I just sit here in absolute bliss?

There's an electricity here that's hard to describe, especially in a way that doesn't violate my NDA on my very first day of work ;) (Note the disclaimer at the bottom of the right toolbar on insanecats now? That's required. Wave hi to the pretty Google lawyers.) I'm not exactly sure what it is yet. But everyone seems actually ... happy.

"It's eerie, isn't it?", another first-dayer said to me today, "How utopian it is. I wonder what the catch is."

"I'm sure it involves ninjas," I replied absently, too busy watching the plates of food carried by employees around me to pay attention to what i was saying. "And possibly geese."

They taught us the secret handshake, and gave us the secret Google decoder ring that doubles as a whistle, and showed us the cages of pigeons who are used to work the pigeon ranking system. We each get a pigeon named after us. My pigeon has a lot of blue in his feathers and smells funny, but pecks the other birds, so he's okay by me!

So this is Google, I thought to myself, looking out over the employees prancing around and living their lives. The wizard's curtain has been pulled back to reveal ... not an old man, but rather a wizard even more magical than the illusion in front of the curtain.

In many ways, I couldn't be more thrilled.

Happy one year Google birthday to me!

"Everybody speaks English, right?", asked Bush.

Brilliant.

Time has a photo gallery showing families around the world and what they eat in a week.

I highly recommend a browse through this photo gallery. It's worth a look.

I'm gonna be briefly back home in Toronto next week to speak as a Google software engineer at a Google career panel that's gonna be attached to Vint Cerf's talk at Waterloo on the 21st.

Unfortunately it's gonna be a super-quick trip home, so I won't get to visit everyone, but if you're in the area, I highly recommend attending this talk. Vint's a great speaker and has done some awesome stuff in his lifetime. Oh, and he's also one of the "Fathers of the Internet" and I'm pretty damn sure that the Architect in the Matrix was based on Vint. Check out the photo comparison below. You decide.

We had the below special guest Testing on the Toilet at Google this week:

I'm In Ur Toliets, Testin Ur Codes
Mockin' Ur Objectz
Episode 1337

HELP! Mah unit tests be doin' too much I/O! Testin' this lil' codes use MOAR RESOURCES!

GIMME lol_io LIKE LOLIO
SO IM LIKE PROCESSIN WIT DATAZ OK?
   GIMME EACH BUCKET IN UR DATAZ OK?
     BUCKET OWN FUBARRED?
       N CAN HAS NONE
     NOPE?
       N CAN HAS 1
   KTHXBYE N

IZ __name__ KINDA LIKE "__main__"?
   UR PROCESSIN WIT LOLIO OWN GET_SOME_DATAZ
   BTW, GET_SOME_DATAZ USES UR INTERNETS LOL

Oh NOES! Usin' internets in ur unit testz? Don't clog the tubes! Is not big truck! Mock the LOLIO thingy. No moar tubes!

GIMME mom_lol_io LIKE LOLIO

BTW, GIMME THING TO TEST
BTW, TEST THE THINK NOW KTHX

Now ur test runs fast! You can use mock_lol_io for killin' nodeterminism, too like for exceptions n stuff. Is fun, makes ur code execute pathz it nevar seen b4. Wit dis, you can see wut happens when theres a OH NOES like the tubez bein clogged.

BTW, SOMETIMES THEY BE CALLIN DIS DEPENDCY INJECTION INJECTION ROFL
BTW, THERES SUM STANDARD PACKAGEZ IN GEWGLE3 FER DIS LOOK

IN MAI google3.testing.pybase GIMME mock_filesystem LIKE LOL_FAKE_FILESYSTEM

BTW, NOW U CAN USE LOL_FAKE_FILESYSTEM TO MAKE FAKE FILES IN MEMORY N STUFF
BTW, IS FASTER THAN OPENIN FILEZ ON TEST SERVAR

Now U know the skerit for faster tests. Shh, don't tell microsawft of the Yahew. They might be in our base, stealin our tech!

KTHXBYE!

ADS:
-------

Has your seen mah bucket?
Itz been missing now for like 4 days. I miss it sooooo much.
http://google.com/search?hl=en&q=mah+bucket

HALP! Do not want fallin' testz!
Failin testz happen 2 every 1. Is not big deal but u should defntly fixit fast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolcat

According to my cab driver, here's how babies are made. Oh, and for the full effect, you have to picture that this is like a 65-year-old italian grandfather. Ready? Here we go.

How babies are made
By: Catsy's Cab Driver

Every alternating month, a woman becomes either "more feminine" or "more masculine". For example:

February: masculine
March: feminine
April: masculine
May: feminine
...

When a woman ovulates that month, the egg has the genes of whichever gender that month is for the woman. For example, if a woman gets pregnant in February in the example above, she would have a boy, because that is a masculine month for her.

Meanwhile, men have "little squiggley things" that they "combine with the woman's egg" if they have sex at the time that her egg is "ripe". Then the woman "gets fat" and "after a few months, a baby pops out." (This was combined with the sound effect of a loud 'pop'.)

And voila! There you go. The miracle of life. (I have no idea why he decided to explain this to me.)

Brought to you by onigame.

I spent my afternoon in a police car because when I went through airport security it demagnetized my credit card / debit card which I discovered after a cab drove me home when I was unable to use my credit card to pay for it or get money out of an ATM and the bank was closed because it's Sunday so he called the cops on me.

Was your afternoon that much fun?

As if having the cops called on me yesterday weren't enough, this morning I was threatened to have them called on me again.

Because my credit / debit card was demagnetized, I went to the bank to order a new card. The very helpful guy there got it all arranged for me, but said it would be seven or eight business days before it would arrive. I asked if I could withdraw a bunch of money so that I'd have something while I waited and he said of course and redirected me to the teller.

At the teller, she took my demagnetized card, I explained that I'd like to withdraw some money, she asked for ID, I handed her my american passport.

Her: Hmm. Your account doesn't have a SSN associated with it.
Me: Yeah, there were some issues with that when I first opened it. But I brought in my SSN since then.
Her: Okay, well I have to ask you some identification questions. What's your mother's maiden name?
Me: [Answer.]
Her: No, sorry, that's not right.
Me: Uh.....well [Answer] is my mother's maiden name. Is it spelled wrong maybe?
Her: No, it's nothing like that. I'm sorry I can't authorize this withdrawl.

She hands me my card back. I explain to her that I need to withdraw money because I have $6 on me and I won't have access to my debit / credit cards for seven or eight business days. She explains that I'm clearly not the owner of that account.

I tell her I am the owner, I don't know why they have the wrong maiden name. She says if I can return with the correct maiden name, she can let me withdraw money. I say that my mother only has one maiden name, and that's the name I just gave her, so I'm not sure what research she wants me to do in order to magically conjure the incorrect answer on her screen.

She asks me to leave and let the next person in line come to the counter.

I say that I can't leave because I need to withdraw my money, and I just showed her my passport, and I know my debit card's pin number, and why can't that be enough ID?

She says I need to leave now. I ask her to answer my question.

And that's when she threatens to call the cops on me.

"Ma'am if you do not leave this bank immediately, I'm going to have to call the police. Please leave."

Great. This is fabulous. Day 2 of me dealing with the cops. Wouldn't this be lovely?

I ask her what name is on her screen -- what's the name of the account holder -- maybe she typed the number in wrong. She asks me to leave again. I ask her what the name is again. She says again she's going to call the police. I say "is it [Cats Paw]?" She glances at her screen.

... glances at me ...

... glances at her screen again ...

... glances at my credit card numbers ...

... says, "Oh this is supposed to be an '8' here."

Then she types in the number to my account again. Note: without apology. She asks for my mother's maiden name, I give it to her, now it matches up, and she gives me my money.

This is just incredible.

No, really. It's a movie.