In the land of the interwebs

This month I tried my luck at the border once again, this time getting into the USA to visit my friend in Silicon Valley. I flew down and took a tour of her husband's work at Google. It has to be said: he is working for one of the coolest companies out there. It's nerd heaven.

The campus has pretty much everything you would want. Tennis courts, basketball courts, swimming pools. Check. A huge T-Rex skeleton with pink flamingos stuck in it? Sure. Beach volleyball court? Yep. On-site hair cuts? Car washes? Oil changes? Yes. Ice cream vans that come by every once in a while as teams of computer programmers run outside. Indeed. They have kitchens fully stocked with food every 300 feet so you are never too far away from nourishment. It's amazing.

To create a fun way to get around, they have Google bikes for you to use to get from building to building. They used to have zip lines but sadly they had to be dismantled as there was a fear of safety. I can only imagine how many times a day you would have heard "Weeeeeeee!!!!" overhead with that transportation system.

I was also able to try out Google Earth on huge LCD TVs (9 or 10 of them) all lined up on edge as I zoomed around with a joystick. I can't explain how much fun this was for me. I love travel, and being able to lose myself in Google Earth was spell-binding.

On the way to Google, we dropped by Apple in Cupertino, CA and took a few photos of the main building. It's cool to see where all the products we use are developed, but the buildings are pretty boring and so we did a lap on the Infinite Loop road and then headed out.

ebay is also nearby, and so we saw their main entrance which was really impressive with a huge "ebay" sign to welcome you. They have the coolest security cars which are like little scooters to chase you down if you do something untoward to the company.

Finally we went to see facebook HQ near Stanford University. Their building looked like an old 1950's church that had been gutted to make way for computers and workers. Strange choice of building for one of the most well known computer companies out there. I expected something grand and really hi-tech.

Back home to San Jose, home of San Disk, and the massive Cisco. Building after building, all of them identical. I kept trying to figure out where we were, but trying to use Cisco as a route marker is useless. In Taiwan they have a lot of 7-11's, but I was still able to find my way around. Here, Cisco totally confused me. They used up all the letters of the alphabet and then used numbers on top of that.

A really neat part of the trip to California. I came home with a sick feeling I had made a huge mistake not becoming a computer engineer.