Day 3: Freedom!

After the epicness that was day two, I needed a bit of a break on day 3. Well, for my usual schedule it was a break, at least.

Today, I had absolutely nothing scheduled. How liberating is that? I had nothing I needed to do, nowhere I needed to be. And I made the most of it.

I woke up, showered, and got ready for the day. I had been avoiding wearing my Google gear because I didn't want to mislead anyone at any of the official events, so I decked myself out in it today. Google t-shirt, Google hat, the GTUG jacket I got during day two... I was a walking billboard for my favourite corporate giant.

I spent the day... wandering. There's no better way to put it. I left my phone in my pocket, ignoring the direct link it has to satellite maps of the area, and just walked around with no particular aim or direction. I decided I wanted to eat, and instead of pulling up a list of restaurants in the area, I just wandered until something caught my eye. I ended up buying a hotdog and a soda at a tiny little stand outside of U.N. Plaza, then eating and working with my Chrome OS laptop while sitting by the fountain in the plaza. I even made a friend: a bird of some sort (I'm no ornithologist, and will be the first to admit it) sat staring at me the entire time I ate.

After I ate, I proceeded to wander for a few minutes. My aimlessness was cut short, however, by a text message from Kevin Purdy. He just got into town, and wanted to eat. So I called him up, and arranged to meet him at his hotel. Which, coincidentally, was right across the street from mine. His timing couldn't have been better; I had just finished arguing with some American Red Cross volunteers (they had no understanding of the inherent principles involved in organizing people) and was standing mere yards away from my hotel. So I met up with him, and he and I proceeded to wander and talk until a place caught his eye and we could eat. He chose Show Dogs, a hotdog joint near the U.N. Plaza (though a different hotdog joint). I guess it was just a hotdog kind of day.

Both fed, we proceeded to wander some more, and wound up around Moscone. We stopped by the Google Networking team and saw them finalising their preparations. We also managed to pinpoint the single point of failure for the network: a door propped open with a wire running through the crack.

We continued walking, and enjoyed the sight of the giant map marker that has become tradition at I/O every year.

Kevin was tired and jet-lagged, so we started heading back towards the hotels at that point. He napped for a few hours and I entertained myself, uploading photos and checking in/updating my social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), which had been neglected during the excitement of my #ioadventure.

In the course of updating my social media, I decided to put my I/O session calendar (a listing of what sessions I would be in) into a Google Calendar so that the 2cloud Project users who were attending I/O could find me and say hi. I did that, and noticed something funny: check-in had actually started already.

Obviously, the only appropriate reaction was to head down to Moscone again and check in. The girls behind the desk were very nice, and proceeded to have a nice conversation with me about my name tag. My full name is Sean Patrick Foran, but my mother always wanted a Paddy. So she and my father agreed to call me Paddy until I grew out of it at age four or five. Those who know me know I'm a giant six year old, so I never really grew out of the name. So while most my programming contacts know me as Paddy Foran, my Student I.D. (which I needed to present to claim my Academia badge) read Sean Foran. My solution was to have my badge read "Sean 'Paddy' Foran". The girls thought this was rather amusing, and chatted with me about it for a bit.

I then proceeded to pick up my Google I/O t-shirt. It's pretty awesome.

The morse code on the back intrigued me, so of course I sent pictures to Dylan (who was in BootCamp, which I had elected not to attend) and we decoded it. It led to a http://goo.gl short URL that led to a site telling us to Androidify ourselves with a special Google I/O t-shirt. It wasn't in the app yet, so I'm assuming it'll be there tomorrow.

My day wasn't over yet, however. At the #gtugcamp, I was told about a meetup for Chrome OS laptop owners. It was a small event hosted by Google in a wine bar a couple blocks from my hotel. Seeing as both Kevin and I had received Chrome laptops from Google back in December, he woke and met me to go to the meetup.

The meetup was small, informal, and fun. I met a host of people: a few "Consumer Operations" (like DevRel, but for consumers) employees from Google, a couple of Chrome OS engineers, a Marine, an independent developer, and Steve Pirk. Steve is the founder of Yensid and a friend from last summer. He's a nice guy, and I didn't expect to see him here, so it was nice to meet up face-to-face for once. Google footed the bill for drinks and dinner, so I once again had my dinner paid for. I was, again, the only underage one at the meetup, so I nursed my Dr. Pepper whilst the others drank wine. Which I wasn't bothered by.

They gave us some free Chrome stickers, and we parted. On the way out, the organiser pulled me aside and took my business card, so she could email me about the problems I was having accessing my school's archaic and silly LMS, ANGEL. I told her it was a problem with ANGEL and not Chrome, but she insisted.

All-in-all, one of the main things I pondered today was how nice Google employees are. I had met about a half dozen before coming to San Francisco, so I thought it might be an isolated phenomenon. But now I've met dozens from different departments, and it's shocking how friendly all of them are. None of them, whether it was the more-money-than-God Google Ventures team or the paid-to-talk-to-you Developer Relations staff, ever had a problem with taking some time to get to know you as a person and helping however they could.

And that is why I'm a GIT.