ajarora^1.0

London is on, and I’m going (thanks to an unnamed badass boss). I looked at my calendar and realized that the next two years of my life are packed with great stuff…So I’ve decided to sort it all out (and gloat) on the blog. For detailed event info, just check out my upcoming page.

2007
May 2 - 21st birthday (21 shots)
May 3-5 – drive across the country
May 9 - start internship @ yahoo in sunnyvale, ca
May 19-20 – bay to breakers + maker faire
June 4-11 – sis coming over for some family-terrorization of cali
June 12-19 – trip to london for hack day europe
June 22-24 - ashish’s bachelor party in vegas
July 3 – maybe see pnut back in chicago?
July 26-29 – drive back across country w/ arpit
Aug 4 – sis’s wedding in chicago!
Aug 20 – begin senior yr @ purdue in new building/bachelor pad
Aug 31-Sept 3 - lil trip to nyc for a yankees game?
Sept XX - yahoo hack day 2 (wonder who the band is gonna be!)
Oct 5-9 - stratford festival in canada?
Dec 15-Jan 7, 2008 - winter in South Carolina

2008
Feb 5 - mardi gras in n’ollins, la
Mar 7-16 - spring break in miami
May – graduate & goto europe: 35 countries in 75 days
May – cannes film festival (student cinephiles programme)
Later – get a job

I just realized that this doesn’t even include things like the Colts next superbowl victory Also realized that a lot of this is stuff I promised myself I’d do before I die. I’ll make a list for that later.

So I started my internship with the Yahoo! Developer Network on Wednesday (I’ll save the story for how/why I got/took the job for later). Luckily I wasn’t nervous at all since I went to Startup Camp at CommunityOne with Dan Theurer (the technical evangelist I’ll be working under) on Monday and met most of the team.

The first day was tough. After picking up my shiny new MacBook Pro and plugging it into my gargantuan monitor, Jeremy Zawodny drove me up to the city to skip work for a Giants game (and beer) with Chad (the head of YDN) and some other software pros from Adobe, Salesforce and IBM. Now I’ve known Jeremy’s name since I was about 15 and it’s easily one of the biggest names at Yahoo…not to mention the fact that his book is on just about every shelf in our CS bulding. And now I sit in a cube across from the guy. I gotta say he’s ridiculously down-to-earth and has the best sense of humor of any genius out there.

Every guy on this team is so cool and welcoming, and people around here know it too. Whenever I tell anyone in the company that I’m interning with YDN they tell me I’ve got the best job around (not that the other teams blow or anything). So pretty much I’ve been walking around with a constant cheesy grin on my face.

But the most amazing thing happened when I got back to my hotel after my first day of work. I was hungry and tired and ready to get into the sweet bed when I opened the door and saw a huge room service tray. There was also a champagne bucket with some Pellegrino and Vitamin Waters and a card with my name on it.

I opened the card and started reading:

“Dear Mr. Arora,
My name is Rosa and I have been servicing your room for the past three days, and I noticed that you enjoy this drink. (Aside: I had grabbed a Vitamin Water while I was at the Startup Conference the other day) I hope you enjoy it and have a wonderful stay.

Sincerely,

Rosa”

I can’t tell you how many mouth muscles I pulled with the smile on my face. I had no idea what I had done to deserve it. I’d give her a tip when she came in in the mornings, but it was only a few bucks. The tray was filled with the best fruit and hit the spot like nothing else. I slept like a happy baby.

The next morning I went to the local florist and picked up some roses that were on special for Mother’s Day. I grabbed a card and wrote,

“Dear Rosa,

I can’t tell you how happy your card and gifts made me. That was the kindest thing anyone has done for me in a long time. (Aside: It’s true, my birthday was two days earlier and I didn’t even get a real present) You are a wonderfully sweet person and I wish you all the best in everything.

Sincerely,

AJ”

I put the card in the envelope and wrote on the outside, “Las rosas para una Rosa.” It’s going to be a great summer

What a week. Having your birthday on finals week every year always causes problems…but this has been ridiculous. I turned 21 on Wednesday (Yes, May 2nd. Thanks for the presents you assholes) so all 3 people in my life that are willing to blow off finals took me out Tuesday night. Twenty-one shots later I was on my way to a cross-country road trip from Indy to Cali to start my internship at Yahoo. (Yes, I did all 21…it was ridiculously painful and I won’t be able to smell alcohol without puking for a week)

Technically I picked up the car a while ago in South Carolina at my parents’ place…so I guess I can officially call this a cross-country trip. The first day was easy, since I cut it short and crashed with my uncle who’s a professor at Iowa State (big ups on the promotion Pappu Chacha!).

The second day……not so much. Started hitting some nice scenery through Nebraska and Wyoming (not much else), but all of a sudden the thermometer in my car dropped 30 degrees, the sky turned white and snow started falling in sheets. In May. And just as I thought I had regained control of crayola (the corolla), big yellow signs saying something like “steep grade ahead (gorge to hell)” started showing up. At this point I’m practically hydro-planing down a mountain, down-shifting to second gear while still going 60 mph, and if I touch that brake I’m going to fly off into the river like the unfortunate Mormons that didn’t make it to Salt Lake.

But I did make it (after 20 hrs of straight driving), and after spending the night just past Salt Lake the morning views were spectacular. Throughout Utah, Nevada, and Northern California…snow capped mountains next to prairies next to lakes next to casinos. I stopped by Reno to shoot a few craps, spin a few wheels and play a few hands (came out on top $5, woo hoo). Tahoe was amazing, it was 71 degrees outside and there was snow right next to me (I’ll be back). And now I’m finally here at my hotel in Sunnyvale on my King-size sleep number (I’m a 45). I definitely plan on actually stopping at a few more places on the way back…I’ll be driving with my buddy Arpit straight to my sister’s wedding on August 4th. Hopefully my liver will be ready for some action on the way

Man, we just wrapped up Yahoo! Hack Day in Sunnyvale…and the general concensus in the blogosphere is that it was better than anyone could have imagined.

As soon as I got to the Yahoo HQ, I headed down to the café, where I had learned from watching the Yahoo! Company Tour that I could get free gourmet drinks Little did I know that coffee would be the most insignificant of the free stuff I’d be getting this weekend.

The day kicked off with some awesome workshops by some incredible speakers. My favorites included a talk on social networks by the founder of upcoming.org , Andy Baio, and the keynote from Bradley Horowitz .
But even before the workshops had begun, I had already met a lotta cool people, including some Chicagoans that I’ll probably be hanging out with in a couple of weeks. I met a few people at every workshop as well, and by the time the event was officially kicked off by Mike Arrington the kegs were already pouring out great beer .
Oh, and since everyone had already seen the boxes outside labeled Beck , we all knew the night hadn’t even bugun.

The show was amazing. Plain and simple. To be honest, I’d been a huge fan of Beck for a very long time…and even on the plane ride here I probably played Tropicalia three times…but I wasn’t quite as into his most recent album. F* that…Beck is back…and this one one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. His new album is full of great material, and he rocked it out for us Friday night. Maybe he was experimenting with us and trying out a new set, but none of us minded the 4–count ‘em FOUR–encores, and a custom movie made made just for us.
Oh and it got better. I was chillin with a few guys out by the his tour bus, and then I picked up a lonely basketball and started shooting around at the courts. Next thing I know, I’m shootin’ hoops with Beck’s band, and he even sign’s my laptop and hung out with us for a while. I can’t even believe it happened as I’m writing this, yet I was so chilled out while it was happening. The guy was just so easy to talk to.
So then I started my Hack .

The problem: I’m never able to find a good music or NPR radio station on my never ending road-trips. The plan was to use Yahoo! Driving Directions API to get driving directions, and then pull data from a custom datasource to overlay where all the NPR stations near your trip were and when to change to each of them.

The b**ch: was that there is no Yahoo! Driving Directions API…or any DD API for that matter. I guess it’s just to costly on servers and processing power to offer one. But I wasn’t going to give up yet.

The work-around: draw my own version of a Driving Directions path via little line segments on a regular Yahoo Map. But first I had to think of something that occurs only on a highway, every few miles, that I had the exact latitude/longitude of (or address for). I couldn’t use exits, because I guess you can’t type in “I-65, Exit 135, Indiana” and get a map. Bingo…rest areas. There was a bunch of data about the locations of rest areas, so I just drew a line from rest area to rest area and voila, a ghetto Driving Directions API.

So after I had the path (my presentation example was going down I-5 from Sacramento to San Diego), I just created some invisible map points of where all the NPR Stations were (with data from the FCC), and showed the ones that were relevant to the trip.

The app itself isn’t much…but the possibilities with an actual driving directions API could be really great. Imagine the next time you get directions for a road trip from Yahoo! Maps that it could take your hotel, restaurant, and music preferences and tell you where and when it would be best to stop for your favorite food, where to set your radio dial, the cheapest hotels and the cheapest gas stations.

So anyway, I was pretty confident in my Hack (when I finally finished it about 2 minutes before it was time for me to present)…but I knew it wasn’t as cool as some of the awesome stuff other hackers had made. I went up to present, and I figured I’d bust Mike Arrington’s balls a little but to get everyone’s attention (I was the second to last presentation). So I told him that the main reason I flew all the way from Chicago to be there was to meet him (which was true!). But then I followed it by saying I was kind of disappointed. I mean come on, I’d hung out with Beck the night before…Michael Arrington isn’t exactly Michael Jordan.

But then, the most unexpected finish to the event…I was outside grabbing some grub with my new friend Jonathan when they were announcing the winners (since I knew I wasn’t gonna win anything)…and as we’re walking in I hear them say that they’re giving 2 awards (Best Y! Maps Hack and Best Y! Local Hack) to one person. And then they say my name. And then, when all of the regular awards had been given…Mike Arrington stepped up to announce the coveted “special” winners. And, oh yes, that’s right…I won a third (and coolest) award. Worst Kiss-Ass