06/22/2006

The alarm rang at 7, but I didn’t get out of bed until 8:15. The jet lag, lack

of sleep, and absythne all caught up with me. I spoke with Eriko while Dave

showered. We decided to take a different route to the metro. It wasn’t faster

(and possibly was just a tad longer) but it was in the shade - which was nice.

We stopped by a bookstore, but it was closed.

We arrived via metro at work by about 10. I worked on some thoughts for the

2007+ budget as well as the TreeDelete feature requested by Kip. Both were fun.

Andrey brought in some fresh Cherries. We interviewed Alex and again I led the

interview. He was a bright individual but young and inexperienced – and he

looked identical to the super geek from the movie “Nerds.” He had a

mathematical background and produced very good code (albeit very slowly), but

he couldn’t think abstractly and had a lot of trouble with our questions. I am

a high degree of confidence in Andrey and Vladmimir’s ability to interview

candidates.

Again we ordered pizza - which wasn’t very good (and it hadn’t been good the

day before, but I thought that would be the only time I would ever have to eat

it.) Dave and I were careful to let Dmitry have the extra third slice as we had both been greedy the day before.

I heard a shout and Dave and Dmitry were at the window… looking at a truck

whose backdoor was open, revealing Isilon nodes. There was some fanfare and

excitement and I went back to work on TreeDelete.

Dave and I headed out about 7. With instructions from Dmitry in-hand, we headed

off to some shopping district to find some chocolate, bookstore, etc. We had

some heated disagreements about the route to take but we eventually reached the

general area we were looking for – but there were no chocolates to be found.

After more than an hour of walking, we were very hungry. We headed to Old

Arbart and eventually selected a restaraunt that had an English menu. My dinner

arrived as expected but Dave ended up with something other than what he had

specified. Oops.

Tired and weary, we headed back to the apartment – arriving about 11. Bed by