Our team consisted of five engineers. We were a close-knit bunch. In the first 3 months, we hashed out what we would build, wrote 13 design docs, and implemented most of the features of the product. It was one of the most productive 3 months of my career. This was our team:
| Steve | me | Omar | Mihai | Dave M. |
| 
| 
| 
| 
|
Friday, December 12, 2003, 5:40pm
Driving back from the weekly company TGIF. That week, they passed out T-shirts celebrating our chef Charlie. He had been the chef for the Grateful Dead, so the T-shirt said, "Charlie, serving Grateful Googlers since 1999".
However, we arrived a little late, and only the women's sizes were left. As we left afterwards to go back to work, we noticed that Dave was holding a woman's T-shirt.
Me: Dave, why did you pick up a women's T-shirt at TGIF?
Dave: This is my plan.
Step 1, Pick up a woman's size T-shirt.
Step 2, Find a woman.
...
Me: It's good that they didn't give away diapers, Dave. Then you'd have to go through the work of making a baby.
Steve Lawrence: (indignantly, with Australian accent) It's no' work! It only takes a few minutes!
| David B | Sergey | Chris | Andrew |
| 
| 
| 
|
We're eating lunch at the new cafe.
Dave M: "Canadian lifeguards put US lifeguards to shame. The US ones just run around on the beach. As documented in Baywatch."
Chris: "Ah, I love documentaries."
Thursday, February 19, 2004
In the spring, we were joined by an intern from Dartmouth named Todor, who worked on our team, and an intern from University of Waterloo named Mark Cook, who worked in the research team but sat in our cubicles and hung out with us as much as with his own team.
| Todor | Mark Cook |
| 
|
Chris: So Todor, you're writing that rap song about our team.
Omar: Yeah, what was it called? Todor Recall?
March 7, 2004
A few of us decided to take a trip to San Francisco one weekend. The interns wanted to see the city. We went to Golden Gate Bridge, and then walked around Chinatown and Little Italy.
On the drive up to the city, we were listening to a song where a rapper asks God to find him a woman. It ends in a rather vague way.
God? God? Damn, you're a woman? God... I need a bitch. At this point I'm not asking for much, just a sweet bitch ya know? She don't even have to have a big ol booty. Just something real nice, well proportioned to her body. Cuz I know I ain't perfect my damn self. What? You got someone for me? Aww... Thank you God. You're the best God. Ahh man! I mean... Ahh lady!
Me: So God does find him a woman?
Mark: No, because God is not kind. God is a mean-ass motherfucker.
Todor: In this song,
God is a woman.
Mark: Bitches can still fuck their mothers.
All the rest of us: [speechless with horror]
... After many seconds ...
Several of us: Oh my God!
Me: I didn't think so many offensive things could be represented with just 6 words.
Chris: You could
put that dialogue on a web page, with the words bleeped out. [bleep] can still
[bleep] their [bleep]. And no matter what people
mentally filled in the blanks with, the actual thing would have been worse.
...
Later that day, we're walking up a hill when we see a beautiful church in the distance, with reflective steeples, ornate walls and doors...
Mark: [looking up, sees the church] That's one hell of a church.
Chris: I want to create a book with all the things that Mark Cook says.
Todor: It'd be called the Mark Cook...book.
Friday, March 19, 2004
Eating dinner at the cafe. I have a guest, Eileen, my friend from college days at Caltech, who was at the time working for Oracle. We ate with Steve, who then left to go back to work.
Me: Steve Lawrence is awesome.
Eileen: Yeah. We need to create an award -- The Steve Lawrence Award.
Me: Awarded annually to the person most similar to Steve Lawrence.
1999 recipient: Steve Lawrence
2000 recipient: Steve Lawrence
2001 recipient: Steve Lawrence
Eileen: But I'm going for it this year!
2004 recipient: Eileen Hiromura
| Pie #1: berry | #2: apple | #3: pumpkin | #4: custard | #5: pumpkin for Hallowen |
| 
| 
| 
|
|
March, 2004
Around this time, we had the "upholstery" incident. Desktop Search inserts a Onebox by using a Winsock LSP. We installed the debug version of our product for a few beta testers around the company.
At the time, Onebox results sometimes came back too slowly, so we inserted a line "query timed out" in ugly grey font where the Onebox should've appeared. Unfortunately, we didn't do enough explanation so that they understood this only appeared for them because they had our product installed...
One day, we go to a meeting and come back to find a flurry of emails:
"A debug line is appearing on google.com! Our users are seeing this! We must do an emergency push to fix this!" "I can't reproduce it! It's not appearing on my machine." "I got it when I searched for upholstery. Do a search for upholstery!" "I did and still can't reproduce it." ...
March 31, 2004
A few of us eating dinner in the cafe.
me: I feel
like we'll look back on this as one of the best times of our lives. Working for
a company that's fun and silly, with a great team, and great project.
Mihai and Chris: [nodding]
me: We should live each day as though
it were our last.
Chris: [turns to Mihai] I love you, Mihai.
Mihai: [smiling] I love you too, Chris.
me: It's good that your love is
reciprocated.
Mihai:
Yes, it's not as good when the other person says, 'Thank you' and offers to
shake your hand.
April 5, 2004
We had a goodbye dinner for Todor when he went back after his first internship.
During dinner, Chris kept urging Mark to eat more. So I asked him if he was fattening up Mark in order to eat him. This turned into a big running joke where we talked every day at lunch about how we would cook him, what kind of sauce we would use, who would get to eat him, what side dishes we would eat him with, etc.
One night, at a party, a cluster of us are standing around with Mark, talking about our favorite topic of how to eat him. Larry Page, our company co-founder, walks up.
Larry: What are you guys talking about?
A brief silence.
Me: We were talking about eating Mark Cook. [gestures toward Mark]
Larry: [momentarily surprised] Oh. Well, I suppose there's nothing in the employee handbook about that. [to Mark] I can't do anything for you unless they actually eat you.
The next day...
Me: [to Steve] You missed a good party. Oh, by the way, I told Larry about our plan to eat Mark.
Steve: [voice rising a couple of notes] Which Larry?
Me: You know, Larry Page.
Steve: [voice rises an octave] What???
...
May, 2004
One day, we walk into the micro-kitchen to find a post-it note on an empty food
bin:
"Has insects.
DO NOT EAT."
then in a different
ink color and hand-writing
below,
"Why not?"
I laughed very hard at this.
Mark: "They might've started out
with just a sign that said DO NOT EAT."
Chris: "We need to put
that sign on Mark's chair."
May 13, 2004
It is the end of Mark's internship. The time of eating him has drawn near. One day, we went to Baskin-Robbins for Free Cone Day and I noticed a special feature of their cakes. Hence...
So we ate Mark Cook.
...
A couple of weeks later, I'm at another party with Larry Page. Steve had made a big deal about how telling him about eating Mark was inappropriate, but I figure that since any damage (in the eyes of Steve) was already done, I might as well update Larry on the amusing conclusion with the cake.
Me: [to Larry] So, remember how I told you about how we would eat our intern Mark?
Larry: No.
... The next day, at work:
me: [to Steve] Funny thing last night. So I went to tell Larry about eating Mark with the cake, and it turns out he had already forgotten about the whole thing! But by bringing it up, I reminded him again.
Steve: [laser beams shooting out of eyes]
...
Friday, May 28, 2004
Steve liked to put up monitors displaying our bug charts, videos that he'd taken at off-sites or at team meetings, etc.
One day, a helpdesk person walks by, pushing a cart with monitors.
Looks lost, stops near our cubes.
Helpdesk person to Steve: "Can I leave
this here? Will you watch over it?"
Steve: (perkily) "Yes, sure!"
Helpdesk guy walks away.
Andrew: "Did they just leave Steve a
monitor?"
Chris: "Yes, 'Steve, can you watch this monitor?' That's like
'Niniane, can you watch this pie? Omar, can you watch this bottle of wine?'"
Omar: "They're going to come back and the monitor will be up there
[gestures to window with Steve's two other monitors showing videos and graphs]
and it'll be playing a video ... of them leaving the monitor. Big text: 'YOU
FOOLS'."
Summer 2004
In the summer, we were joined by John, an Egyptian from U of Waterloo who loves shisha more than his own life, and Kevin, an intern from MIT:
| John | Kevin |
| 
|
In July, I convinced most of the team to come with me for manicures and pedicures. (I am quite proud of my persuasive abilities in convincing a bunch of male engineers to come to a nail salon.) Here is a picture of me, Dave, Kevin, and Andrew's girlfriend Jennifer:
August 2004
Andrew bought a blue bean-bag / pillow ball from Macy's. You can see it here on Chris's head.
It was soft and comfortable, and I liked sitting on it, so I named it the Ass Ball. Although Andrew only allowed me to sit on it once, after which he announced that "the ass ball is not for sitting". I also liked holding it against my belly while I typed.
Steve: Ass-ball. Is that the brand name? [does Google search for "ass ball"]
... Page after page of porn results show up on the screen ...
Steve: [embarrassed] Oh my God!
Me: Steve! I can't believe you forced me to look at this type of content at work!
August 1, 2004
Me: [motioning for Chris to throw me the Ass Ball]
Chris:
[throws it. It lands four feet away, halfway between us.]
Me: You throw
like a girl.
Chris: Oh, that's it. Throw it back over here.
Me:
Why, you want to watch me throw so you can throw more like me?
August 3, 2004
some other coworkers down the hall: Oh, I love your shoes!
Andrew; [mimicking them in a derogatory fashion] O-oh, I lo-ove your shoes!
Chris: [snickering]
Me: What's wrong with you guys?
Andrew: Some people are just too into fashion.
Me: So what? What are you going to do, throw the Ass Ball at them for being caring about fashion?
Chris: Great idea! Let's throw the Ass Ball at them! But we need a way to get it back.
Me: Why don't you attach a rope so you can pull it back. Then it becomes the Ass Ball and Chain.
August 6, 2004
We decide to send out beta invitations to trusted people outside of the company.
Me: Nikhil, how are you deciding who to send out
beta invitations to?
Nikhil: I'm sending it to everyone who's ever
sent me an e-mail.
Me: An e-mail about Total Recall?
Nikhil: No, an e-mail
about anything.
John: So all these Nigerians are installing it right
now?
August 19, 2004
Bug triage meeting.
Mihai: We need to
change the name from Total Recall to Google Desktop Search. This includes the
install directory, start menu, web pages ...
Omar: The registry.
Andrew:
We only need to change the user visible places.
Steve: I look in
the registry sometimes.
John: Then how about the mutex names?
September 10, 2004
Most of the company has installed our product.
We attend TGIF, where Nikhil and Michael (technical editor) dance around in bright pink fluffy-bunny outfits as a gimmick to get more people to help us beta test.
Sergey Brin: Nikhil is going to wear that bunny suit until they ship the
product.
I return to my desk to find in my e-mail:
[Bug 48862 New]
don't wear the same bunny suit continuously until ship
I open the bug to
read:
Description: instead switch between the two bunny suits, so one can be
washed while the other is worn
September 21, 2004
Bug triage, conference calling Omar in New York.
Omar: This phone is terrible. You all sound like robots.
John:
(very poor robot imitation) I AM A ROBOT.
DaveM: (with much better robot
imitation) WHAT IS YOUR COMMAND.
John: My robot is more advanced. It
sounds more like a human.
October, 2004
At dinner, discussing Halloween costumes.
Me: We could dress up as vegetables. Andrew, you can be a mushroom!
(Andrew hates mushrooms.)
Andrew: I knew that was coming.
Me:
John would be corn. Mihai can be broccoli. I would be ...
Ben Davenport:
You can be chinese broccoli.
...
John: We can dress up as
dictators.
Unnamed guy: Foreign or domestic?
...
Andrew:
Last Halloween I was a pilot, and I had eight stewardesses with me.
Me:
Wow! How did you manage that?
Andrew: It was me. It didn't take very
long.
Me: Was Jennifer jealous?
Andrew: Yeah! It was right
before we started dating.
Me: Did she do anything to make you jealous?
Andrew: [thinks for a while] Yeah, actually, she met some guy at a
wedding and told me about it. She called me up at 3 in the morning!
Ben:
Anyone who calls you at 3 in the morning is into you.
John: Except to
say 'You're a bastard; I hate you.'
Ben: Or 'The content ad mixer is
down.'
...
Mihai: So how do you make someone jealous?
Me: Well, there's lots of ways. The easiest way is to talk to them
excitedly about how great someone else is. ... But you have to hook
them first.
Mihai: Ok, let's say you see someone, how do you hook them?
Me: Well, you go up and say hello --
Andrew: That's it. You do
this a million times and hope for the person who says, 'You had me at hello.'
October 14, 2004
We launched the public beta at the Digital Life conference in New York:
Winning the "Best PC tool" award:
Me with fun conference attendees:
...
and then a week later, Steve's other baby came into the world in the form of desktop.google.com:
And now we've come to the end of the road ... for me, at least. Desktop Search has continued to grow and blossom, but I've moved on to lead the Gmail ads team.
It was a beautiful year. Together we went through births, deaths, breakups, and new beginnings. As a Simpsons quote said, "It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times." I will always love the Total Recall team dearly, and hold a special place in my heart for the experiences that we shared.
Back to my home page.