Confessions of a Google Addict

Hello, my name is Andrés Pérez and - *choke* - and I am a google whore!

Every morning I open up my daily dose of favorite pages. The very first one is my Personalized Google page. Take a look:



Let me first point out a couple of the less obvious points in this screenshot. I've got 4 firefox extensions that have to do with Google services.

First, there's the little yellow line on the bottom-right corner.
It's for Google Notebook. It's a nifty service where you can select clips from web pages and they will be saved to a public or private "notebook."

Now let's talk about the extension that puts my name on the top-right corner of the browser. It's the Google Browser Sync extension. This extension saves my browser tabs, history, cookies, etc. and allows me to restore those settings in any computer that has the Firefox extension.

There are two that are not always visible. First is a greasemonkey script that I ripped off which pops up whenever a web site is referencing one or more feeds (RSS or ATOM). That thing on the right is what I see. It allows me to subscribe the feed to Google Reader.

Another extension that's not always visible is Google's Blogger Web Comments. If a website I am viewing has been linked to from a blog, it lists an excerpt of each. I have it set so only one excerpt is shown.



Now, one Google service that I don't use is Google Bookmarks. I think it's primitive. So you might have noticed from the screenshot of my personalized google page that I use Yahoo's del.icio.us service. I love it! Of course, I haven't exactly betrayed Google. It's a module on my Google page. And the module is of my own creation - ripped off and improved from someone else's. But, that means that I have to host it someplace, so I opted for Google Base!





Now, for email I use Google's Gmail like a good geek. It's just so dreamy. No, I don't have a problem! Although I also use Google Calendar. And when I say that I use it, I mean that I use it daily:



I conned my girlfriend into using it. Now we coordinate bills, errands and work holidays with it.

Along with Personalized, Gmail, Reader and Calendar, I supply my daily Google fix with Google Finance. Sure, it's not great, but every morning I take a quick look at my 401(k) investments and it provides me with enough information, in my opinion.

What else, you ask? Well, I actually do use Google Spreadsheets for some budget and expense tracking. Did I also mention that I have a site with Google Pages? Yeah, it's really nothing too exciting, as you can see!

Do you want more? I actually have a browser tab with Google Maps opened at all times for when I feel like mapping out an area. Although, if you know me you know how terrible I am with directions, and then you would probably approve and if you approve then you're an enabler, so shame on you (but thank you!).

Will the madness ever end? On my personal and work computers I have installed Google Talk, Google Desktop, Picasa and Google Earth. What is wrong with me?!

And, in case you missed it, Blogger - the site you are at right now - is owned by Google.

I please simply help love me Google!

Working man

Today is the first day of my 4th week here at JDSU. So far it's been great. The guys I'm working with are dedicated, intelligent and hard-working.

I've been looking forward to working for so long now. College was "fun" and all, but I was pretty tired of it and was really itching to get out and actually do some real work!

I got my first task assigned to me on the first day and I've been going at it since. It's nice to be working in UNIX when I program. I don't care how good Visual Studio is - and it is good - the *NIX environment is just much better suited for software development. With MSVS you get a software suite that provides a comfortable development environment. With UNIX, the entire OS is a comfortable environment!

The hardest thing for me to adjust to has been learning when to put the work down and go home. Even harder has been to learn to take time for lunch, instead of eating while working. So during lunch I've been playing around with Inkscape, an SVG creation tool, in order to create a wallpaper with the JDSU logo in it. I think I did well.

One thing that I haven't had to adjust to has been living with Keri. Today is our one month anniversary of moving in together, and I am having a freaking ball! After almost 4 years of us dating long-distance, I am really enjoying spending so much time with her. Somehow even the mundane stuff like cleaning the apartment can be a lot of fun.

So things are pretty sweet, I guess. Finally getting out of college has been liberating. I have finaly begun to live the life that I wanted for myself.