4 min read
Today was day 7 of my team's sprint and day 7 of actually coding for me. So far I've cranked out about 1,000 lines of C++ and some internal language, neither of which I have anything past beginner experience with going into my 4th week at Google. I'm still waiting on the first CL to be approved and struggling to write tests for the next project chunk that have proper coverage. Writing tests that pass is one thing, writing tests that check if a program that needs to run on a distributed system works without actually running it on said distributed system is another thing.
I didn't take any pictures again but we drove by the Android statues. Here's someone else's picture of them by the Visitor's Center
I'm not terribly happy with what little progress I'm making but I guess it's pretty good if my objective/to-do list doesn't change for the duration of the internship. I'm suspecting that's not the case. Actually, I did get another goal tacked on my to-do list today: learn how to ride a bike.
I was allegedly never supposed to learn how to ride a bike or hop or skip (but I did eventually learn how to do the latter two). My coworkers know I still don't know how to ride a bike. I told them one of the things I wanted to do when I came to Mountain View was learn. I'm still not sure if they were 100% serious when they added it to my objective list for the week.
The epic "conference bike" my coworkers and I tried to ride to Charlie's today... until we realized it was locked. We're hoping to borrow it this week for fun.
I started trying to learn last Thursday when I stayed after dinner to ride around when there were less people. I thought that meant I wouldn't get embarrassed by potential spectators. I was wrong. That night a group of people who for some odd reason (it's not typical to stay after dinner in Mountain View, unlike in NYC) were still driving around after 9 pulled up alongside me as I was walking with a GBike to ask if I was okay even though I wasn't injured. They meant well but it was kind of awkward.
Then today as I was trying to ride a bike after dinner with 3 of my coworkers past a Google security guard, he asked one of them if I was sober and said that it wasn't a good idea to try to ride a bike drunk. I'm not sure if he was being serious but I interpreted it that way at the time. Another guard in a car asked if I was okay and needed water, probably thinking I was too dizzy from the heat to ride a bike. After that I just about had it.
I abandoned the bike and started walking off in a random direction, too upset to keep trying with all the strange looks and questions I was getting. I just wanted to be ignored but it's kind of hard not to notice when a 20 year-old is struggling to ride a bike since pretty much every able-bodied person it seems can ride one. Then a coworker convinced me to go back over and try again. "This doesn't make any sense," I kept saying as I would fall one way and then the other as I tried to pedal down the sidewalk.
They're everywhere in the mornings and nowhere to be found except shuttle stops in the evenings
Eventually I went into the road since there were no cars and it was a dead end. Then my frustration made me start pedaling hard with a complete disregard of what direction I was going in. As a result I didn't fall over instantly although I was incredibly wobbly and driving in zigzags but I wasn't pushing myself along with my feet like 5 days ago.
I haven't been practicing for more than 4 hours total, but now I'm able to somewhat ride a bike although I have almost no control of the direction it goes. I never put training wheels on the bike but it seems I didn't really need them.
There's video but not on my phone. I'll add it when I have it. I did at one point manage to ride in a straight line for a bit but staying upright is like playing Flappy Bird: eventually you get the hang of it after enough attempts, but you're still going to fail sooner or later. I'm hoping by the end of this week to be able to ride for 5 minutes without almost falling over.