Catspaw's Guide to the Inevitably Insane

Ten years ago, when the world was young, I sat on a Moo gathered by friends and we talked about how we were all young and brilliant and how awesome it would be if we all worked at the same place one day. The world would be ours; we would be unstoppable. Around the same time was when I first read Ender's Game and realized that I would need to amass my Dragon Army if I were to conquer the world one day.

Since then I've been through multiple communities, often with little overlap between them. Examples of these are below:

What I'm finding so exciting is that very rapidly there's a shift where more and more people from each of the circles are getting jobs at Google. Most of them don't know each other -- KittyMarks doesn't know Maria who doesn't know Anais who doesn't know Olwen -- but they all belong on that graph somewhere along with nearly a dozen others who are on their way here.

I can't help but be kind of excited by this: the opportunity to strengthen and rekindle old friendships and work side-by-side the way that many of us once talked about ten years ago or five years ago or a month ago. And what better place than Google for this to happen. Amazing people in an amazing environment; it's no wonder that I'm hyped.

About six months ago, Mamie and I put together a short movie at work to advertise new testing standards at Google. For the first time ever, it's available here for your consumption.

Go to: http://www.insanecats.com/my last name_google.mov (Sorry for those of you who don't know me in person and can't fill in the blank. But this is a private production, blahblahblah. Also, out of respect for the actors, please don't link directly to the movie publicly. Merci. And yes I know this is really crappy security blahblahblah, deal with it.)

There's a lot of "in" jokes, so non-Googlers may not get a lot of it, but it was fun to make and finally see it out in the wild.

Remember that xkcd comic where they play chess on the coaster? You do read xkcd all the time, don't you?!

Well now people are sending in photos of actually doing it. Awesome!

See them all, then go make your own.

Two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane. For a second they stood quite still, wands directed at each other's chests; then, recognizing each other, they stowed their wands beneath their cloaks and started walking briskly in the same direction.

Sitting in a cafe, eating french toast, sipping coffee, and reading the final Harry Potter book. Life is sweet. (Sorry I'm not there to read the voices for you, fLufFy.)

No, not World of Warcraft. GRAVITY PODS!

GravityPods is an exciting new game which will eat up your whole day. Because productivity is for losers.

What level did you get to? And if you figure out a way to beat 49, let me know.

...there's just one itsy bitsy tiny catch.

Here's the job description. Highlighting courtesy of Joey DeVilla:

Title: Web Developer
Salary: $200K plus DOE
Taxes: No Federal taxes taken out for the contractors that accept a 12 month. (6 month contractors will have taxes taken out)
Location: Iraq
Start date: ASAP with 2 weeks training (one in Washington DC and another in Ft. Bening GA)
# of Openings: 1
Summary:A principal Department of Defense agency is looking for programmers, developers or coders to code, support field deployment and maintenance of a new database application which will be used by Army units in Iraq. Scope These are full-time positions (12/7) located at one of the major US Bases in IRAQ. Deployment will be period of 6-12 months. Training on the application software will begin prior to deployment and will take place in Virginia. These positions are available for full time employment or for independent contractors. These positions are available now.

Awesome.