pray for j-fred

It's times like these that the Lord puts things in perspective and basically tells me to stop having a pity party for myself because other people are dealing with much more difficult things. My dear friend Jessica Frederick has been in nursing school in Galveston this year, but when hurricane Ike hit, she had to evacuate and leave all of her stuff behind. She has heard that her entire apartment was flooded and that rats have infested the island. Her car that she left behind caught on fire and is completely destroyed.

She's going back to the island tomorrow to survey the damage. The worst case scenario is that her whole apartment is destroyed including all of her belongings. I can't even fathom the feelings she's having.

Check out her blog if you'd like... I keep thinking of this verse:
"But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal" - Matthew 6:20

Could we all join together and pray for her?

Introducing Google Moderator on App Engine

Posted by Taliver Heath, Platform Engineer

At Google, we host a large number of "tech talks". These talks cover a wide rage of Computer Science topics like research in machine learning and methods for ranking images based on text queries. I've enjoyed attending these tech talks, but as the number of attendees has grown over time, the question-and-answer part of the talks hasn't been able to scale. There was never enough time for all the questions, and it wasn't clear that the best questions were the ones actually getting asked. And since many of these talks were led by offices outside of Mountain View, it became harder for distributed audiences to participate.

To help with this, I designed a tool in my 20% time that would allow anyone attending a tech talk to submit a question, and then give other participants a way to vote on whether or not that question should be asked. This way, the most popular and relevant questions would rise to the top so that the presenter or the moderator of an event could run the discussion more efficiently and in a transparent manner. The tool, which we internally called "Dory" after our favorite question-asking fish in Finding Nemo, quickly grew to other parts of Google including our weekly all-hands company meeting, as well as for our series of talks led by political candidates or distinguished authors.

Several of our colleagues and visitors to Google have asked if we could make it available externally for any kind of talk, presentation and/or event. Conveniently, Google App Engine launched in April and made it easy for us to do this! As a result, we're pleased to release this tool, now called Google Moderator, on Google App Engine. Google Moderator is available now and is free to use. To get started go to moderator.appspot.com and sign in to your Google Account.

distracting myself...

Still haven't heard anything yet, so I'm posting pictures instead of worrying :) Thanks for praying for me everyone... God is giving me a peace about things, and that can only be attributed to the prayers surrounding us! With that, here are some pictures of the latest happenings...

So, first off: Our dog has been acting strangely lately. Usually when this occurs, we know it's because he's wanting attention and he's not getting enough.

Take, for example, this photo. We were looking everywhere for him, and he wasn't coming when we called him (VERY unlike him). Well, we finally found him under our bed. Again...he never does this sort of thing.

Then, there was the time that we noticed he was being waaaaay too quiet. When we checked on him, this is where we found him. No, I haven't unpacked from Vegas yet. No judgment. Take note that I took a few pictures of this, and this is the one that made him look the most un-fat. We need to fix this little chubster!

But, a tell-all sign that he's really needing attention is when he pulls his bed out into the dining room and starts tearing it up or just shaking it around. Yep. He's there.

Anyway..... Last weekend was jam-packed with friend time! It was awesome! We met up with Ashley and Ellory at the spur of the moment to celebrate Ellory getting a new job! I know they are just ecstatic, and we're so proud of him! We also took the opportunity to take our anniversary picture. Not sure why I felt the need to hold my arm up, but there you go.

I also had lunch with my girls Ash and Kristin at the Chocolate Angel...that's the place I had my bridal luncheon 6 months ago! We had fun catching up, and we tried getting our nails done but the place was super sketchy. Oh well. We went antique shopping instead.

My great friend Vanessa and her husband Will were back in the states for a little while so they got to come over and watch the Gators game at our place. Vanessa and I were attached at the hip during junior and senior year of high school, and she was almost part of our family! She and Will have been in Scotland for the past year and a half, and now they're moving to the UK! Dont' tell.... but they kind of inspired us to move some place far away! Shhh.

We went over to Kristin & Alan's home for dinner, and had a fabulous time talking about their Jamaican weddingmoon over tacos! I hope we can hang out with them a lot more often because I love them! The boys played playstation (Ryan was in awe of the tv and surround sound they have!), while the girls chatted in the kitchen. Fun times!

On Sunday morning, we went to the service to see our good friend David get baptised! Not only was that cool, but the service was just incredible. Then we went to our bible fellowship class, and I cried about my job. Fun times!!!! I just love embarrassing myself when I cry uncontrollably! Thankfully everyone was super supportive and the rest of the day was super mellow. I needed that.

Monday night was Keno and a birthday celebration for my mom! Cindy bought the most amazing cake I've ever tasted, and Mom got some great gifts. It was a smaller crowd than normal, but we still had a blast catching up. P.S. Isn't my mom gorgeous!?

some Keno women that I love.

me & my moms, and a cool robe mom got!

Last night, for the first time in a while, our fridge, freezer and pantry were completely stocked. So I cooked my specialty--Hamburger Helper's beef stroganoff--along with some freshly sliced strawberries and crescent rolls! It was amazing! :) P.S. I love my dad. And only he knows why he's included in this paragraph :) Oh!! And, I found a few lingering spaghetti noodles from the incident.

Okay, back to this attention-seeking pup of ours.

He always gets his way. :)

Please keep praying. Thank you!

G1 Versus iPhone 3G - The Great Cell Phone Fight Has Begun!

It this corner, we have the champion, Apple's iPhone 3G, and in the other corner we have the new contender, Google's (and its partner's) Android phone. Well, everyone is buzzing now after the release of the first Android phone with T-Mobile's G1. The initial reviews are in and they seemed to be mixed. The G1 has a lot of nice features and great potential with its open platform. But the G1 does not have some key features like Exchange support so that counts it out of the corporate board room (for now). One key to Apple's success is its great music integration with iTunes, so I believe the key for Android is its alliance with Amazon to provide DRM free music. Could be the weapon that wins or loses the war!

I purposely left out the Blackberry which in its own right is a very functional device but it is not intended for the same audience as the iPhone and G1, in my opinion. For us in the wireless industry, it all means that we have to keep cramming more and more into the ever shrinking phone. What do you think?