John Carrino

I fly out tomorrow and it was a great trip but I am ready to be back in the good ol’ USofA. We kept pretty busy for most of the trip except for the last day or so; which was a good for winding down.

It was pretty hot and humid every day I was here so it will be nice to be back in Cali where there is no humidity and nights are cool and refreshing. If you have had the luxury of living or camping in Illinois without AC, you know why night in Cali are awesome.

The play-by-play of the trip is below the fold.

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Wednesday we got into Beijing and went shopping for some cheap stuff. We followed that up with a big family dinner. Later that night we hit up the bar scene and partied late.

On Thursday, we woke up and went to the Forbidden city. Check out pictures here. Yisong and I followed that up with some awesome basketball games. I will send those pictures later, because there are over 400 of them to sort through. China won it’s match with Angola, which was fun to watch. The game of Russia against Lithuania was really close the whole way and was very exciting.

Shanghai is an awesome city. It’s too bad we didn’t get much time to enjoy it or the nightlife. I got in around 9pm and after a bus ride and cab ride, we were at the hotel just after 10. We had some food and got some sleep.

I had tried to fight the jet lag, but I was up at 6am the next morning and went around looking for a coffee shop, but nothing was open yet. We took a cab down to the Bund but the river trips didn’t start till 10am. We got some breakfast and hung out in the restaurant for a while because they had air conditioning and it was hot and really humid out. After the boat trip we hung out at the Jade Garden area and bought some souvenirs and a lot of food. We caught the night train to Beijing at 7pm and that was a 12 hour ride that got us into Beijing at 7:15am.

We took the subway then a taxi to Yisong’s grandparents’ house. We had breakfast, showered up and found an open wireless connection. Now we are about to head out and buy more cheap stuff and hang out in Beijing.

Check out the pictures of Shanghai here

We are coming back to Seattle to find more good people. Palantir has been growing mad fast and has more than doubled since I showed up. We need many more good people! We also have some open positions in Seattle, so if you wanted to stay in Seattle, but also want to be rich, this is your chance.

So I’ve been working nonstop for the past couple months with a nice break for Christmas and I’m really happy with the current state of the product I’ve been working on. We just released 1.4 and I get weekends back for a while. I even went hiking last weekend, got a haircut and played some disc golf.

Palantir is having another recruiting event, this time in Palo Alto. We will be showing off 1.4 and I think people will really be impressed.

After the 1.4 release, I got out a little to do some hiking with Steve. Here are the pictures when we went to mission peak.

So Robin and I wake up to a really loud bang at like 4:30 in the morning. We’re like WTF, but we aren’t really that freaked out, then there is a frantic knock on the door. When we look at the apartment across the hall from us, the door is open and the whole place is filled with smoke. Robin put on a robe, I grabbed the cat and threw her in her carrier and we ran downstairs.

On my left in the parking area bellow the apartment across the hall there was a car on fire. The whole hood was completely engulfed in flames and they were hitting the ceiling of the parking area. At this point I put the cat in the car and then moved the car to another spot (I thought everything was all burning down).

I really really thought about running in and grabbing my camera; it wasn’t really that out of control yet, and it was currently localized to the other apartment. Sadly, i didn’t get my camera and take really awesome pictures. What I do have for you is some crappy camera phone pics that don’t do the whole ordeal justice. It was pretty exciting and the fire looked like it was out, then restarted from what looks like the adjacent apartment by going through the wall.

The best picture is the top one. You can see my kitchen window on the right side of the picture with the lights on and our neighbors’ place with smoke pouring out. Note that this was taken when the fire was pretty much put out already.

First news link I found covering the fire.
Second news link
Third news link
Best news link
Robin’s recount of the incident

So, i just got home and Microsoft sent me a replacement Xbox. A replacement means that the games I bought on Xbox Live probably would not work. I attached my Hard Drive and hooked it up ready to be frustrated about my TMNT and Settlers of Catan not working. I hit the on button and it begins to hum. I sync up a controller, and then it throws up the red ring of death.

They sent me a different Xbox that had red ring of death! This is not cool! I just bought an HD copy of “Knocked Up”, but now I can’t play it in HD, because my Xbox is dead. I just bought Orange Box and Halo3, but I can’t play that either. Also, they sent me a 1-month card for Xbox Live. Great, that is great considering that I had a Live subscription for the 6+ months that my Xbox was out of commission.

My Xbox 360 is back from the shop today!!!!!! Hooray! It was been busted for about 6 months. I just bought Orange Box and Halo 3 to celebrate.

The bay area was rocked by a moderate earthquake yesterday that caused no damage or injuries. I have now lost my earthquake virginity. A bunch of other people from out of state at work were also pretty excited about it. Here is a link with proof that it existed.

I love this town. UIUC is very nostalgic now after just 2 years. I was glad to see most of my core group of ACM friends that I pretty much never see (even though some of them live within an hour of me). Ari’s talk was good. It went well except for the obligatory demo failure. Despite that, Ari did well recovering and the demo for the product that I work on went great as always. I’m gunna hang out with my family here in a few hours and it will be nice to catch up with them as well.

Also interesting news is that I just booked my flight to China for the Beijing Olympics. I’ve always liked the Olympics and the summer events in particular. We are in the lottery for 5 events and Yisong thinks we will get 2 or 3. He has family there, so we will be able to get free lodging, not that we would be hurting for cash while we were there. Also, it will be nice to visit with someone that can speak Chinese because we will be able to get around better and get all the good deals.