The Aporia
I was born during the Perseid Meteor Shower. Those summer days always brought new beginnings.
Part 1: It's Elementary
Age: 0
I remember my own birth fondly, the way one does at those years, in third person and looking down from above.
Will & Parents
1992
I had the good fortune of a very loving family to care for me, having only been forgotten once. I used that free time to enjoy a city tour on the public bus system before eventually making my way home, planning to introduce the ladies I had charmed to my parents.
At 9 months, I broke my vow of silence. ‘Get down’, I said. Baby had places to be. Realizing my mistake, I resumed my oath.
Age: 1
Long silver boats and an ocean that sparkled in the sunlight. The earliest memory I can claim my own is waiting in the shipyard for a man who would appear in a stark white uniform with golden epaulettes. I knew at that moment I wanted to keep him.
I remember coming back from deployment and seeing you standing next to Mom in the ship's hangar bay in your little blue and white outfit with knitted beret, your curly, blonde hair flowing out from the edges. You were so cute and you were mine. It was amazing!
Having spent enough time in my head, I decided it was time to see what the world had to offer me. I stood up and walked. I would not stumble.
At 15 months, I used what little disposable money I had left and settled for a secondhand laptop to explore my creative pursuits. I browsed the Brøderbund catalog before relinquishing the remainder of my funds to Hickman.
Age: 2
The pennies tasted of copper. We would line them up on a flatweave rug while the sun warmed us by the porch. My mother would sit with me, pennies in neat rows, as I moved them across piles to represent the numbers she asked about. I counted into the hundreds.
We should have applied to Mensa for you. You were counting to 500 before 3, and in sets of 10. Remember when we sorted and counted all those old pennies in a jar?
I remember when he was 2 and 1/2, I emptied a jar of pennies on the floor and together we sorted and counted them in sets of 10 and 100, he could count to over 1000.
My first traffic accident was a hit and run. I was both victim and perpetrator. No charges pressed.
Don't forget your first ride in the red and yellow plastic car. The car moved but you remained stationary and you ended up pinned underneath.
Age: 3
After the accident, I realized the motor needed replacing. I traded my Mini Coupé for a brand new Corvette. The streets were not safe, though. I should have learned not to leave the keys in the ignition.
Will has been puzzled by the actions of bad people. He wants to know why some people are bad. Yesterday he asked, "Who kills bad people?" I explained we don't kill them and he said, "But they're bad. We should kill them." He also wants to know all the ways we can die.
Morality aside, I learned the world had principles. I set about understanding everything humanity had found.
God is another topic lately. Will wanted to know who made things. I told him about construction workers, factories etc. but he also wanted to know who made people. So I explained that God made people. A few days later, he wanted to know who made God and Santa Claus. I have been unable to answer this one clearly, so it's often asked. Later, it was, "how did God make people?" I explained the story of Adam and Eve, but he insisted he wanted to know "how". So I said he got some skin and bones and eyes and made them. This seemed to satisfy that question.
A small deity of tricks and pranks was born. Jack was cute.
Will & Jack
1996
The birth of Jack has prompted questions about growth. As I encourage him to eat his fruits and vegetables to grow big, he wants to know when Jack will grow big like him. He also wants to know when he will grow big like us, and after each meal, he squats down and slowly rises to show us how he's growing.
One day recently he asked us what will happen when we grow so tall we reach the ceiling. I had to explain that mom and dad had stopped growing. He thinks about this for a minute and then asks, "so why do you still eat your fruits and vegetables?"
After his haircut yesterday, Will wanted to know when Jack would get his hair cut. I said it needed to grow first and might be a year before he had enough to cut. Will thought about this for a few seconds and then asked, “When will Daddy grow hair?”
Down the street from me lived a young boy named Sam, of whom I would grow fond.
Age: 4
Will has been sick with a cough the last couple of days and has been very whiny. Nothing pleases him. After an aborted nap, Will and I had lunch. He whined his way through it and I, also tired and sick, had had it. I slammed down his fork and told him I was tired of hearing him complain all day. After a brief silence, he replied, "I love you isn't a complaint."
The man I had proposed to at 1 finally said yes, and traded his golden wings for me.
A world of contradictions; infinitely thin and infinitely deep. Eyes of a god spied on that world through Hooft’s membrane, ever curious, wishing to slip into the ink.
Age: 5
My closest friend, whom I had known for even longer than my own parents, passed away. A hole was left in me that not any stuffed plush could fill.
Will & Barney
1997
You had Barney as a baby gift and he was sadly taken away from you by your father at the age of 5. You would hold Barney by the ratty tail and suck your thumb and rub the silky tag with your finger against your nose. I bought you a new Barney to replace the old ratty one but you never accepted him.
Age: 6
Sieges against the wooden castle and precarious falls off its defensive bridge came to an end as I was enrolled into Charles Barrett Elementary School, pre-k left behind. My father became coach, as the fearless whirlwind we called a soccer team chased after that marble on the field. The military man had discipline to instill.
On my first day of school, I learned that God was dead. There would be no presents on Christmas.
Will
1998
First day of school. Your backpack seemed bigger than you. Walked you to the bus stop and you were very serious but excited. When I picked you up you were forlorn and walking with your head down. The first thing you asked was if it was true Santa wasn’t real.
My hair, as my personality was later to do, darkened to a deep brown.
Age: 7
I had beautiful penmanship, though it was illegible by the time I lifted my hand. The words lay collected by the mount of moon.
The world, I found, was built wrong.
An equestrian arrived, missing her horse. Kit was adorable.
Will & Kit
2000
Age: 8
A young girl a world away had her heart broken for the first time. Two roofs instead of one.
Age: 9
In 4th grade, I placed into the Talented and Gifted Program. I loved my science teacher because of his tangents in whatever he was currently teaching about.
When in doubt, scream and shout, run in circles all about.
Will's Family
2001
I was gardening when the Pentagon was struck. A plume of black smoke made itself a cloud. I noted the oddity and was led inside. The ride home from school was solemn.
There was a meteor storm this year. Pre-morning dew in chill autumn air. We watched what must have been thousands of bright trails from our front lawn, looking up at that night sky.
Will
Jan 27 2021
Do you remember in Alexandria, where you had us all grab our blankets and go look at the stars at 2am to catch the meteor shower? These kinds of once in a lifetime events are my most precious memories with you.
Mom
Jan 27 2021
Mine too, with you kids. Remember how we couldn't see any falling stars and then all of the sudden as our eyes focused they were everywhere?
Will
Jan 27 2021
I remember them coming all night.
Mom
Jan 27 2021
It was endless, I've never seen anything like it.
I was called into the principal's office and assigned my first friend.
Age: 10
I found my nemesis. Timed math exams. 100 questions in a minute. Division, by semester's end, was mastered.
My humor was set by the greats. Invader Zim and Monty Python laid the foundation. Whose Line, Arrested Development, and David Sedaris erected my walls.
Age: 11
We were informed, I presume, that my Canadian passport was at risk of expiry and so I was immediately enrolled into a hockey class. Drastic measures had to be taken. I used my one allotted divine intervention to disable the power grid across the upper East Coast.
Trips to Canada became tradition. I could skate backwards.
I started playing Toontown in 2003, having created a character under my sister’s guidance so she could play. We soon learned, perhaps due to her being only 3, that she much preferred watching.
I was social in the way a game that only lets you respond in preselected quips can be. On Christmas, I bought the phrase Bah Humbug and embodied being mean spirited. Within a year, I had maxed our Toon, Princess Sandy.
A new friend, who I would find to be a housewife of mid 30, invited me to her house in game and spoke to me in the obfuscated gibberish of someone you hadn't shared friend codes with before. The furniture started moving, and a dozen rugs appeared against the wall, shifting, pausing, a typography an unsuspecting eye wouldn't even think to read. She was patient. And then it clicked, and her gibberish wasn't gibberish anymore. I made so many friends so quickly. I treasured them, in a doc with tables and blank cells, where I wrote down their names and took screenshots of their characters and their emails. I was introduced to a world so much larger than the one I had known before.
I loved my friends dearly. They quickly taught me how to glitch out of maps, we organized raids and beat bosses, we played mini games in town where chatting was the objective and the carnival games simply a third space to hang out. I so so loved my friends. A/S/L was a common question back then, and mischievously I asked, once, for them to guess having known me already. '20' was the first guess. Another: 'Maybe 17?' 'Could be 21'. The chatter settled before I revealed two ones. A few surprised expressions, before compliments and interest filled the air, and I knew I was loved too. I don't have that doc anymore. I don't think those emails would still work if I did. I hope everyone is doing well.
That community introduced me to internet forums, and I ended up writing over 3000 posts across the next 2 years. My spelling eventually improved.
Will
2004
I'm maxxed. :) And I'm a 106 laffer. No sellbot HQ helps with training gags. Lol
My sister and her close friend vividly remember my character appearing in promotional material for the game, but the lack of my own excitement on the forums suggest it may have been a doppelganger.
Will
Apr 18 2015
They shut down ToonTown!!!
Kit
Apr 18 2015
this is the end.
Kit
Apr 18 2015
the world is ending
Kit
Apr 18 2015
this is when we die
Kit
Apr 18 2015
why would they eVEN
Jack
Jan 14 2020
Am downtown and this building reminds me of one of the Cogs buildings from Toontown. Thought I should share.
Will
Jan 14 2020
Haha, it does.
There was a large cicada bloom this year. I carry fond memories of dropping them from arm’s height – their instincts had them fly true. The girls panicked at what quickly became an improv game of snowballs in summer. More kind variants of the game used the stop sign as a dart board, a satisfying thump signalling bullseye.
Will, Jack, & Kit
2004
I spent my summers at Château Cardoux. A book in hand, I would throw open the windows and settle on the sill. The carved goddess at the base of the spiral staircase became my muse. I read of Inkheart and imagined myself born from books.
Age: 12
We moved to Fairfax, an hour’s drive. When I told a classmate that I had moved here from far away, all the way from Alexandria, they looked at me puzzled and clarified if I had meant “Egypt”. My sense of scale grew.
Fortunately, parents arranged for visits with old friends despite the audacious trek, as I was always slow to make new friends. Sam and I built our first website together. It was a static HTML site hosted on Free Webs (http://www.freewebs.com/william_and_sam). We collected links and embedded games the two of us liked to play, such as Tactics Arena Online. I knew, at the time, about as much HTML as anyone with a MySpace or Neopets account knew. That is to say, JavaScript was dark magic.
You can still see it on The Wayback Machine. It looks much worse than I remember, but given my design sense today, I’d say it’s about appropriately specced.
Gmail had just come out around this time, and the two of us were in the Public Beta. We both agreed to wanting to one day join Google when we grew up.
I continued to post often on online forums.
Will
Dec 20 2004
What's your goal in life?
I'm just wondering what today's people's big goals are. I mean your biggest goal in your life. Example: Dream job.
Mine: To make everyone I meet, happy. (Not doing so well on it...)
The people I met there were kind and supportive.
Will
Jul 28 2005
I've been wondering about duplication and it aroused this question. If matter is made of atoms, and animals are made of matter, how do cells grow, split, etc. if matter cannot be made? If cells grow, wouldn't that mean more matter would have had to be made?
Forum Guest
Jul 29 2005
No, matter is neither created or destroyed in the process. Cells grow by absorption of nutrients in the blood stream from the food and water eaten by animals. Once it reaches a certain point of growth, the cell then divides into two cells. The only byproduct is energy in the form of heat at the time of division. This is what keeps animals warm.
Age: 13
Will
Apr 30 2005
"Welcome to Redwall, matey. Glad you came over ta see me."
The old Redwall recorder pushed his glasses higher upon his nose. "Ye've heard of Rekin, the Warrior, havn't ye? 'Course ye have! My, he was some warrior. He could take on twenty vermin, single pawed! He lives here, bet ye didn't know dat! He helps out with the infirmary a bit. He's way too old to fight anymore. His daughter went off traveling and his ol' poor wife died." The recorder brushed away a tear. "The whole Abbey was aflood the sad, sad day. Hmmm. He might tell a fello travler like ye'self somethin' about his younger seasons. Would you like to find out? Why wouldn't you!" The recorder stretched in his chair and then charged out of the Gatehouse, quicky close the door. "Good morn to ye, Rekin, mind if ye tell us a tale?" In a raspy voice, Rekin replied "Geet out thy quil an parchment. This'll be a long 'un."
I was an avid reader. I had finished everything by Orson Scott Card to Brian Jacques to Douglas Adams and anything else I could get my hands on at the library.
Will
Jan 21 2006
I want to make my own game, but I can't write code yet… Does anyone know of a good place that teaches C sharp? Or if they're a good teacher, could they help..?
Will
Aug 6 2006
But glitching makes the world go round... If everyone followed the rules, then no one would make things better... We're the reason games get better, more attractive... We're the center of the universe.
My favorite class in Middle School was biology. I still remember an early morning writing assignment to design life for the outer solar system. Imagining what could be out there and how was invigorating!
This was also the year effortless A’s ended for me.
Will
Aug 6 2006
Turn in homework... I found that out the hard way…
A Seaborn Polemic
I was a kid of 13 when I pulled from its dusty shelf a sturdy bound book with a red ribbon to mark place and gold dusted along the papers' edges. I placed it, along with a slender foldable reading light, into my backpack.
The bus arrived every day promptly at 6:30am, and there was nothing to do in the dark pre-morning light for the hour's journey but to sleep or to read. Dawn didn't break until the bus pulled in. So every morning, the light flickered on, a glow between the seats on a bus of still children.
It was Moby Dick that I had found. Long passages in small ink scurried beneath my eyes. That red ribbon performed its duties with regular routine, jumping a few dozens of pages at a time. Halfway through and the routine continued, only this time the pages turned backwards and not forward. I searched for a passage to provide stable footing, one I could read a second time over and recover where I had been, necessary context lest the plot risk derailment.
The pages kept turning backwards. Already more than several days' progress were undone, and still there was nothing to grasp. Now pages were held in thick grasps, swept back, a sea of gold crashing back into place, the parting of the book erased if not for the ribbon left behind. Finally, there were no more pages to turn. "Call me Ishmael" taunted me.
I still do not know if the fault was with the author or with me. The author meandered, the story only found in rare passages crept behind winding odes of barrels and under coils of rope. A trick, however, is also played on the mind when sleep is too deprived, and I've heard short term memory is the first to go.
800 pages is a daunting journey when you've already been washed ashore once 400 pages in. I closed that book and placed it back on the shelf, and the dust reclaimed its prize.
2025
Age: 14
In 2005, I started playing MapleStory. On November 28, 2006, I created what would become my main character: FlameDeviI.
Is video-game addiction a mental disorder? The telltale signs are ominous
My attention diverted. Thus began the familiar inbox headers that I came to associate with high school, the kindest of which I've attached below.
Will – Congratulations on your recent assignments and quizzes! I appreciate you bearing down on this work and getting it done. It’s never been a question of whether you can excel (you are extremely smart & talented), just whether you’ll do the work and get it turned in. Any chance you can make up for the two missing homework assignments (you would be doing fantastic if you could eliminate those two zero scores)? Thanks again for your efforts. I am very proud of you!
We adopted Scooter, from whom I would learn love; gentle licks and a persistent begging for rubs. Scooter knew the world was beautiful and so often explored it.
Scooter
2007
Age: 15
I became slightly famous as the top HP Warrior in the game when I was the first to share a screenshot of reaching 30,000 health with Hyperbody. Having no way of actually damaging monsters, I essentially was playing a pacifist run on a game known for being grindy. I relied heavily on party quests and a silver tongue to be carried. Games are meant to be entertaining. I became the entertainment.
User
Sept 2007
is there any HP warrior past lvl 70 then?
User
Sept 2007
http://www.sleepywood.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1292070
Pure HP warrior rankings.
There are 3 listed pure HP warriors at level 70:
Level 70 - FlameDeviI - 22xxx HP
Level 70 - xGodMode - 21xxx HP Crusader
Level 70 - JonasAstroth - 19xxx HP - lVlapleBumz - Crusader
LPQ Golem Killed
38462 views • Sept 26 2007
Comments
User
Dam .. still thats crazy I never thought somone could survive those...just goes to show what an hp warrior is capable of!....Please dont stop the videos
User
this dude is crazy! i just met him yesterday he was 98! well i hope u make some more movies.. mabey boses?
User
Sept 10 2024
Leave your old GMS name to see if anyone remembers you!
Will
Sept 10 2024
FlameDevil the HP warrior!
User
Sept 10 2024
came into this thread fully expecting to remember nobody but holy shit i actually do remember you, you inspired me to make an hp crusader. did you have a guide or something back then?
I met Sean this year, him having reached out in game after seeing my message board posts. His stint at his own pacifist run was short lived; the friendship that blossomed was anything but.
I spent most of my lunches in the library. My favorite books I had found on those shelves were "Infinity and the Mind" by Rudy Rucker and "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene, though I had also finished Asimov. By this age, I had properly formalized my philosophy rejecting the idea of studying on moral grounds. Homework, too, was a target of my philosophy for infringing on time that could be better spent playing games. It was relegated to the 5 minutes before the bell rang for each class, if at all.
The philosophy of ‘studying is cheating’ is quite deep! You see, reading (or doing) something because it's _interesting_ is not studying. If an exam asked me to read a passage (or a whole book) to answer a question, I would read it, because there's the fun, the nuance.
But to review something you already knew, or worse -- to cram, was shallow rote repetition done only because the test was upcoming. You've lost sight of _why_ the exam exists. It's a measure of your interests! Have you found a way to make this material fun yet? If not, maybe we need to reevaluate and try other approaches. Because learning is *always* fun. You're cheating yourself if you study, and you're cheating the teacher out of the effort they spent grading the tests if you treat them as frivolously as just grades.
Oh, and home time is for home. Abolish homework.
2025
Simon was adopted next. From him, I learned that not all God's creations were born equal.
Simon
2008
Will
Feb 16 2026
I found an old picture of Simon!
Lê
Feb 16 2026
How did you look at _this_ and say 'he is the one'?
Will
Feb 16 2026
(crying from laughter) He's the perfect guard dog. His eyes look in both directions! Doesn't matter where you are. He's always watching.
Age: 16
Mike joined our growing family. He quickly acclimated to residential living. We found him years later.
Mike
2008
Grandpa
Dec 13 2008
Re: Man finds 3.5-foot python living in kitchen
where have we heard this story before ??
Will
Dec 13 2008
Mike <3
I miss that snake so badly.
Will
Dec 13 2008
He was nice… And cute.
Mom
Dec 13 2008
Ok. Mike was not cute.
Will
Dec 13 2008
He was a VERY cute snake, don't even try to deny it.
Will
Oct 11 2008
Hello World!
It's been a while since I've been here. ^^ It's nice to see some familiar faces, and a lot of new ones. How's the forum been, how are you!
(Felt something missing and came looking for it here.)
Lain
Sept 28 1998
If you're not remembered, then you never existed.
Will
Jan 21 2009
People keep saying I'm either more mature than people my age, or ridiculously less mature than everyone my age. It's driving me insane trying to figure out which one's right.
Will
Jan 1 2009
Before I know it, I'll be sleeping in Physics and skipping lunch just so I dont have to be the odd ball who cant find a table to sit at.
Will
Jan 4 2009
I used to read 24/7/365.25 but recently stopped. Ran out of books, and was too lazy to get driven to the public library. (The only interesting books in the school library are medicine and physics books and I've read most of them)
Will
Jan 4 2009
My schedule is
3:00pm-5:00pm: Surf the web
5:00pm-5:01pm: Remember I have homework
5:01pm-5:02pm: Forget that I have homework
5:02pm-9:00pm: Surf the web, text, play video games, watch tv, watch anime, read
9:00pm-9:01pm: Remember I have homework
9:01pm-9:05pm: Try to change the alarm on my clock so that I can wake up early enough to B.S. it
9:05pm-11:00pm: Finish up my tv show or last few episodes of anime and hit the sack
It is very busy, but I try to stick to it.
Dad
Nov 21 2008
Re: ACT and SAT Test Prep Classes Start in January
I think that William should definitely participate in these prep classes.
Will
Nov 21 2008
They're to reduce the stress the tests give some teens. I rarely get stressed.
Will
Oct 9 2008
Physics is boring!!
Mom
Oct 9 2008
Without it we would be nothing!
Will
Oct 9 2008
I finish my work in a third of the time as everyone else… I ended up ignoring everyone else in class (unless they needed help) and wrote stories.
Will
Oct 9 2008
PS: The Noble prize winners were a pair of particle smashers and a particle theorist. Well, the newspaper said that anyways. Do they give out more than 1 a year, or was someone wrong, or what. (They found out that when the Big Bang happened, for every 10,000 particles of antimatter, there was 10,001 particles of matter, due to some small fracture in the quarks)
Mom
2009
Hi Will, how was the SAT? Easy? Long? Did you ace it? Alot of kids taking it? Are you counting down the days until school is over? How's it going without me there? Are you being fed well? Love you and miss you. I think you would have loved it here!!!
Will
2009
Boring. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Eh. No. Love you too. I dont like you…
Dad
Nov 7 2008
Tough keeping current on technology. Makes you appreciate learning how to learn and ensuring that you are constantly challenging yourself to learn more than what you currently know, since you will quickly be required to adapt. Nothing is ever static and having a good work ethic and curiosity are key to success.
I scored a 2000/2400 on my SAT. 750/800 on math (97th %), 670/800 on lit (92nd %), and 580 on the essay. And here I thought myself a decent writer! My coworkers over the summer scored 2400/2400. I had to borrow a graphing calculator, since the only one I had owned (and would continue to use) was a solar powered Casio 4-function. Halfway through the exam, I had someone teach me how to reset it, as it entered a mode that no longer did math in a way I recognized.
My lunch hours were now split between the library and the student counselor. I enjoyed his company; he, I’m sure, felt dutied to not let me be completely isolated at school. He offered, once, to proctor an IQ test. I was mildly curious, but I didn’t pursue it and the opportunity passed.
By semester’s end, I was awarded a Xerox scholarship to the University of Rochester.
That summer was spent sending cold emails on the mysticism that automating it would mark it as spam. Time was passed with online poker and reading the likes of folklore.org, Joel on Software, and Hacker News. My favorite hand was an offsuit 2 7.
From: President, Capterra Inc.
Jan 13 2010
When I had each of the interns provide feedback regarding their work experience, Will was the highest rated performer. He consistently finished his work ahead of schedule and would proceed to help others complete their tasks.
I thought myself an arhat.
Age: 17
Will
2009
Im procrastinating. Procrastination works better in pairs. -sighs-
Will
2009
I study in the sense that I go to school. :] But not at all in the sense that I put work into what I do. I'm aaaaaall play.
Will
2009
Make up your test, fix your grades, actually do well in school. I'm here if you need tutoring for any subject.
Will
2009
xD Good luck making me look smart. The most I can do is ace a test without studying.
Will
2009
I'm here to help! Or distract, depending on the situation.
Will
2009
I enjoy learning. :p I couldn't care less about the grades... I figure as long as I'm the one who actually understands what's going on I'll still be able to land a fun job.
Will
2009
Math is nice, sleepy sleepy time with a few brain teasers every now and then.
Will
2009
Haha, really? I find english to be a drag. The only fun parts of that class is the reading and the writing.
Will
2009
I fear my intelligence is draining away. Quick, get me a sponge.
Senior year of high school. I was the kid who would fall asleep in front of the school, lying atop the ledge, with either The Washington Post or The New York Times covering my face while I basked in the sun.
Cow was rescued from the Walmart in Leamington Ontario over the prior summer. Originally a gift, he was returned to sender. He was temporarily elevated to holy status before thread and needle put a stop to that. Cow joined Scooter and Simon as sleeping companions.
For Christmas, mom had bought me a Motorola phone, my first Android device. Within a week, I had colluded with dad and returned it. Android was amazing, and I wanted the best.
Dad
Jan 7 1:38am 2010
Another, more indepth review of the new Google phone
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/02/exclusive-google-nexus-one-hands-on-video-and-first-impressio/
Dad
Jan 7 12:07pm 2010
FYI
“Fwd: Order receipt from Google Phone Webstore ($555.45)
Hello Nicholas G. Harmon,
Thanks for buying from Google Phone Webstore using Google Checkout! Google Phone Webstore will charge and ship your order soon.
Order date: Jan 6, 2010 9:45 PM EST
Google order number: 548120042643132”
Dad
Jan 10 9:07am 2010
Google Voice (by invitation only)
http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html
Dad
Jan 12 9:23am 2010
Owners of Google's Nexus One phone may be early adopters, but some of them are also getting an early share of problems with phone and customer service, according to complaints being posted on various forums.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34809252/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/from/ET
Dad
Jan 26 1:01am 2010
How to fix 3G and other Nexus issues (at least temporarily)
http://www.redmondpie.com/how-to-fix-3g-problem-on-nexus-one-9140369/
I had the phone engraved with the phrase “I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.” and, thanks to the Google Voice invite that came with it, I had chosen my phone number to be the sqrt(8).
Sam
Feb 28 2010
So you got a new phone with in the last week
Sam
Feb 28 2010
cool what kind is it
Will
Feb 28 2010
Its the Google nexus one
Sam
Feb 28 2010
cool do you have internet?
Will
Feb 28 2010
I had leftover job money <3 and I broke my old phone
Sam
Feb 28 2010
can you thether?
Will
Feb 28 2010
I might root it so that tethering is faster but I can already set up an ad hoc network and get multiple computers online at once :D
Sam
Feb 28 2010
both of my parice are away at a gym meat
Will
Feb 28 2010
I just came back from practice
Sam
Feb 28 2010
practice for what
Will
Feb 28 2010
I joined crew. I don't know why.
Will
Apr 3 2010
I spent my week rowing boats in South Carolina for crew. 9 hour a day practices. For 5 days. We have a competition tomorrow too…
We were given a list of books to review. My English teacher gently recommended one to me halfway down the list.
Reaction Journal 1 (Pages 1-33)
An unusual character who seems almost unemotional and who describes his surroundings almost as though he's in the third person, while avoiding vivid detail... Somehow, I relate to him. The day after his mother's funeral, he begins dating a female coworker, whom the book describes as quite attractive. This saddened me immensely out of jealousy. When offered a promotion to a position in Paris, Meursault tells his manager that one life is equal to another, regardless of the minuscule differences between them, and that moving to Paris wouldn't make him happier, not when he was quite content with where he already was. Meursault explains to Marie the meaninglessness of love, to which I wholeheartedly agree. The concept of a bond or emotion that exceeds the reality that being together is simply enjoyable is silly. There is nothing, and needs to be nothing more, than present happiness. The rest of section one is enjoyable, and the characters seem interesting in their own respects (However, I still relate to none but Meursault).
Jan 14 2010
Reaction Journal 2 (Pages 33-57)
Oh God. He killed a man. Great. In jail, Meursault meets the chief jailer who finds Meursault intelligent and understanding. The jailer reminds Meursault that he is being punished, a fact Meursault continues to forget, and causes Meursault to consider all the things that are punishments. The trial happens 6 months later.
To Meursault, the jury is nothing but passengers on a streetcar. People he’ll never meet again. As his eyes drift to the press, he calls the largest of them a fat weasel. His lawyer advised him not to talk, and the police told him to hush. As the trial ends, Meursault is sentenced to death.
Jan 14 2010
Reaction Journal 3 (Pages 57-65)
Meursault spends his days looking at the walls of his confined room, or occasionally, the sky. I suppose I like it more this way, no excitement and little emotion. It’s calming, like listening to the waves or crickets at night. Peaceful. It seems logical and yet Camus portrays Meursault as illogical and wishful.
"For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration (pg. 65)." A place at last, a place at last, Meursault finally finds his place to fit in. He is lucky, I admit, for being told where he fits, regardless of if his place is 'death.' Trust me when I say that reaching that epiphany and realizing that you don't have a place yet is far far more harsh.
Jan 14 2010
I fondly remember finally managing to derive torque from Newtonian Mechanics with only 15 minutes left on my physics exam, quickly filling out all the answers. Much like dates and names, I was never good at memorizing formulas.
In Calculus, I gleefully remember turning in an exam with the steps written out in English as marginalia. When it was returned days later, the paper was dyed in red ink, every line of prose crossed out. Still, for once I was given a proper 100%; previous exams had lost marks solely for not showing enough work. I highly enjoyed calculus. The teacher, at the start of the year, offered an automatic A to anyone who could prove a 2-dimensional shape could have zero area. He never accepted any of my proposals – to shrink its radius or sides to zero and find its limit, to rotate it along the 3rd dimensional axis to pack its area out of sight, or to use fractals to fill the area completely with its perimeter.
I spent idle time deriving π by adding edges to a regular polygon together with Peter, a friend from MapleStory, who was taking Maths in University. I enthusiastically shared links to 'A Mathematician's Lament' by Paul Lockhart, 'Solitude and Leadership' by William Deresiewicz, and 'How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day' by Rachel Aaron, begging for them all to be read more widely.
Just a reminder, the AP exam is Wed. morning at 8 am. Everyone is to report to the Aux. Gym nice and early (try for 7:30). Make sure you bring pencils, erasers, and a graphing calculator correctly set in radian mode.
The following are also registered for the E&M exam which will follow immediately - also in the Aux gym: Will Chiang, Jeff, Will Harmon, D Li, Ahmed, and Arthur.
The valedictorian and I were the only two to pass the Electricity & Magnetism AP exam; the class itself wasn't offered at our school. Of course, passing simply meant a 3. I scored 5s on Mechanics, Computer Science, and Calculus.
I was named Most Improved Athlete, Athlete of the Year, and a Silver Medalist in the state championships in Varsity Crew, Top Student in Math, and Top Student in Engineering and Physics at Langley High School. I was a satirical writer for the underground school newspaper. I had a 3.2 average GPA.
I looked forward to university. What I knew of higher education came from history lessons of the renaissance period – a place of enlightenment and autotelic epistemics.
As a final assignment for the year, everyone was asked to author a valedictorian speech.
From: English 12
Valedictory Speech
May 25 2010
The turnitin.com assignment is now ready for your uploads. While the due date says June 1 at 7:20 am, YOUR ENTIRE DRAFT IS DUE BY THE START OF CLASS ON THURSDAY, MAY 27. Your final copy of the speech must be uploaded by the start of class on the first day of speeches (June 1). Please let me know if you have any questions. Good luck with your speech writing!
Child-like (Valedictory Speech)
It's that time. It's when parents kick their children out of the house and administrators tell you to stop visiting that science teacher you thought was so cool freshman year. The doors are finally locked behind you as you're escorted to your car and told "You don't have to go to history anymore. It's okay, get some sleep." Yes, it's that time. We're graduating.
Four years ago, we entered this school sure of ourselves, our potential, and our capabilities. We expected better cafeteria food, teachers who would listen to us, and friends who would support us no matter what. Our principals would be like our Greek gods, posed to strike down bullies in defense of us freshmen. It all seemed too good to be true, until we found out it was... Color day came and we learned our place. And though some of us didn't make it, the rest of us are still here celebrating. _We_ made it.
We got through 4 years of highschool. As sophomore year came about, we stumbled back into school sunburnt and with no recollection of the last year, something expected more of graduating college students than of high school students. Lost, despite the hallways forming a complete square, we wandered around in search of our new classrooms. Once found, we quickly associated ourselves with the people we already knew and formed the ultra-exclusive cliques Langley is so well known for. As we daydreamed, vague recollections of watergun fights in Banke's room colored our minds and we waited anxiously for something even more exciting to happen. It never did. We fell into the rote routine that wouldn't change for the next three years, and is expected be officially embraced as tradition by Ragone sometime this year. Despite homework and extracurriculars, we still managed to enjoy some fragment of a social life. And by the time school let out once again, most of us had our drivers licenses. As for the last two years, I really can't remember them. I'm sure something insane and exciting happened, or... Maybe not. But they're all a blur. Truth be told, I was just woken up by Filsinger and told to present a speech to you guys.
The point is, and no I really didn't have a point until now, is... Be a kid.
College is scary. I don't care how many times you've wanted to grow up, it's not worth it. The responsibility, the paperwork. It's all way too troublesome. We live in a world where the mature rule and the children drool and every one of you sitting here now knows that's not the way it's supposed to be. If there's anything highschool should leave you with, let it be a reminder that you CAN just go to sleep. You can cram that 12 page report due tomorrow during your first period block. It's okay. You'll be fine. Highschool should be a reminder of snow days and power outages, of card games and gym, which never really counted as an actual class. Walk backwards as you move towards the future, skip if you really want to.
There's no rush. We're the next generation, they have to wait for us anyways. And with that, I think it's time to say goodbye. Though many of us here have tried to stay another year, failing English so that we may procrastinate and enjoy our lack of responsibility just a little bit longer, myself included, I think it's time we really do graduate. Our child-like ambitions and habits can come with us to college. Our immature personalities can pester new professors, and our endless stockpile of excuses can befuddle the wide array of teacher assistants we'll meet there.
To the class of 2010, I say thank you for the memories. Be a kid. Responsibility, like, sucks man.
June 1 2010
Class of 2010 Graduation
June 2010
Will
2010
Those who try to fit into society will fall in place without a sound. Do you really want to disappear like that? xD Do you not care about making a ripple in the world?
Pope
2010
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Will
2010
When the muses stop their visits and every last dream you've once fell in love with slips from your memory, when hope and inspiration evaporate into the air and all you're left with is a simple satisfaction with the present, then you will know what it means to be full and want no more.
Will
2010
It's strange. The people around me seem driven by ambition, by a desire to succeed in this world. Their world revolves around the political battlefield of school life, grades, and jobs. Moving forward, always forward, they race towards their goals without catching a glimpse of the rest of the world. It's strange. To me, it's strange.
It was a mistake that I was born without ambition and I wouldn't be surprised if it was the reason my parents decided to have another two kids. 'Just in case,' I assume they said, 'just in case they turn out like him.'
Over the summer, I joined a penpal exchange site, where I experimented with increasingly creative greetings. My favorite pastime was ‘burning bridges with people I’ve never met’. The ones that responded to my whimsy were the ones who stuck around.
Will
2010
Strangers connected through the flow of electrons, across millions of miles... And all I decided to say is 'hi'. Eh.
Hi.
Will
2010
Hello person! :D I'm here to terrorize you on the off chance that it yields an interesting conversation.
Winta
2010
-waves back- Your challenge is welcome, Mr. Sir. On this day of naught a thing to do, defending myself from terrorists is what I need! But beware the words that come out of your fingertips--- for I fear you may regret it! Is it an interesting conversation that you want? Phsaww, then an interesting conversation you shall receive
Will
2010
Your craftily worded reply has shaken me. However, I remain steadfast in my values of cyberterrorism. For my first act... ‘Your shoes are untied!’
Will
2010
Your child demands attention ;_;
Jia
2010
bahhaa.my child?
Will
2010
Well someone has to take care of me
Will
2010
I'm watching a rather depressing movie, though not on its own merit; more on its relevance. As such, I've paused it and am hiding out online. Protect me from the great un-pausing!
University of Toronto
2010
What would make you a good applicant for our school?
Will
2010
Well, it's definitely not my habit of procrastination and I doubt you'll want me because I'm quieter than a mouse (Proven in lab tests. You'll be surprised how noisy mice get in when they think no one is listening). That leaves very few options left in my stark personality. Troublesome. If I had to choose, and regretfully I feel like I'm being forced to do so, I'd go with quick wit and intelligence. Those two traits seem to be severely understocked and, by the laws of supply and demand, must therefore be quite desired.
Christopher Newport University
2010
What would make you a good applicant for our school?
Will
2010
Man, writer's block is a bitch.
In all honesty, I should have enough to talk about that I could write a book. It's been over 17 years since I've been born; shorter periods than this have been written about.
A loner by sub-conscious fear-induced choice, I turned to comedy to fake the impression that I had friends. After a while, though, I realized that I was writing for satirical school newspapers and friends who needed cheering up and quickly switched professions to mathematics where there was much less responsibility.
I've come to ask you for acceptance to your school. Or beg you (if that works better), and I might potentially be willing to bribe you with all the money in my back pocket if it comes to that. See, because I'm a dreamer, my grades have slipped. And though I've been able to keep up with the concepts and lessons and have even been tutoring others, that doesn't show up in the transcripts.
I've heard good things from your school; I've heard of research projects and works that involve thinking and teamwork with teachers. So enticing it sounds after the years of repetitive assignments in grade school.
I applied to seven schools. Only one school accepted.
From: College Board
Jan 14 2010
Dear William Harmon,
Your request to send your SAT scores to the following colleges and scholarship programs has been received and is being processed:
COLLEGE OR PROGRAM
0996 UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
Jun 2009 SAT Test
0982 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
Jun 2009 SAT Test
0904 UNIVERSITY OF WINDSOR
Jun 2009 SAT Test
5126 OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY
Jun 2009 SAT Test
5827 GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY
Jun 2009 SAT Test
0984 UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO
Jun 2009 SAT Test
5128 CHRISTOPHER NEWPORT UNIVERSITY
Jun 2009 SAT Test
Hi!
It's very late in the school year and I've heard nothing back from your admissions department. Obviously, I'm quite pessimistic (especially with the lack of faith my 'inside sources' have left me with) but I wanted the official word.
I'll be waiting anxiously,
William Harmon
Will
2010
Trust me, once you start Senior year it'll already feel like you're free. Your teacher's expectations drop down to nothing. But otherwise, it's been endless partying. xP I still haven't slept for more than 4 hours since Thursday.
Sam
Jun 8 8:28am 2010
what are you doing this summer
Will
Jun 8 8:29am 2010
Seattle in August. No other plans, really. Y tu?
Sam
Jun 8 8:30am 2010
i might have a class from june 24 that will last tree weaks
Will
Jun 8 8:30am 2010
Oh?
Sam
Jun 8 8:30am 2010
and might go to a summer corce at tc to get ahaed
Will
Jun 8 8:30am 2010
What's it on?
Sam
Jun 8 8:30am 2010
the only thing i know is camping in auget and the call is on economics
Will
Jun 8 8:31am 2010
Oh, economics… Not a fan. I can play the stock market, but I find it boring. :]
Sam
Jun 8 8:33am 2010
it is important for people like me who might try to star a business some day
Will
Jun 8 8:33am 2010
Ah. Oh well, not me.
The Canadian university in partnership with HCT has launched Bachelor’s of Applied Science degrees in Chemical Engineering and Civil Engineering at the Dubai Men’s College campus. A Bachelor of Mathematics in Information Technology Management and in Financial Analysis and Risk Management will be offered in September 2010.
Students study for two years at UW UAE and the final two years in Waterloo Canada. Under a co-operative education model, students alternate four-month work and academic terms. Classes have already started with a student strength of 22 — 8 in chemical engineering and 14 in civil engineering.
From: Waterloo
Jul 14 2010
Hi William,
Congratulations! You have been admitted to University of Waterloo, Dubai Men's College Campus in the United Arab Emirates for fall 2010 in the Honours Information Technology Management Regular program.
Information Technology Management sounds awesome! I really look forward to coming to Waterloo, Dubai, but I do have a few questions.
Is the ITM program programming extensive? I saw there were a few computer science prerequisites, but is programming a large, medium, or small portion of the program?
Is there a public list of classes I'd be taking each of the 4 years and a list of elective classes, or classes I can audit available? Can't seem to find anything glossing over the website, so I might have missed it.
And, erm, is it really hot over there?
I'm afraid my question mark key is no longer happy with me. But, really, thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions.
From: Waterloo
May 31 2010
In terms of computer programming – I think the answer here is “relative”. Compared to computer science the level of programming is a medium or small portion; however compared to nano or chemical engineering the level would be considerably higher. My guess it would be similar to that encountered in Software Engineering.
I have attached a list of all the courses in the program; for more detail on any particular you course you can go on the web (www.uwaterloo.ca) and type the course name and number (e.g. cs 330) and you will find a more detailed course description.
Yes it is hot – but you get used to it and everything is well air conditioned. For most of the year we live outside with temperatures in the mid to high 20Cs and no rain; it is only in summer that it is uncomfortably hot for eating out or playing golf or tennis for example. I am from Southern Ontario (Hamilton) and I am fine here.
Will – I hope that this answers your questions; if you have others please don’t hesitate to ask me.
Part 2: Abroad
Age: 18
Will
2010
I just moved to Dubai, UAE last month for university. My timezone's changed, but I'm free all day. :p I don't really pay much attention in class, and I sometimes wander onto MSN/AIM. Emails I check at least daily.
Jack
2010
Kit
2010
Kit
Aug 28 2010
Mom wants to know if you are held hosstige
Will
Aug 28 2010
Yes, and I need 10,000 dollars.
Kit
Aug 28 2010
they can keep you
Will
Aug 28 2010
Really? No fair. I thought I was loved!
Kit
Aug 28 2010
out of sight, out of mind. said mom
Will
Apr 4 2011
Skip highschool, join me!
Kit
Apr 4 2011
umm Will... I am not in hight school... I am in elementry
Will
Apr 4 2011
Skip it all D: I can teach you whatever you miss. I really want to teach you calculus, just to see if it's possible.
Will
Apr 4 2011
It's fun, I swear. Come on. :/ The world is like a giant rubik's cube you can smash open with a hammer.
Kit
2011
i went to the mall the other day and the cahsier lady asked for my last name and she was like do u hapen to have a brother named will? and i was like yeah and she was like oh!! yeah i used to know will really well he was a senior when i was a freshman when he was a senior an so yeah trell him to chat me on facebook!! her name is like erica or emily
Kit
Dec 11 2011
you want a black and white cow. i can buy u one off of craigs list
Will
Dec 11 2011
You can buy cows off craigs list?
Kit
Dec 11 2011
i think i mean if u can buy a person off of one i think u can buy a cow
Will
Dec 11 2011
Yea but people are people. There's like 7billion of us. Cows are sacred.
Kit
Dec 11 2011
ok this isnt it but i found a website for cows for rent! http://windyridgefarm.tripod.com/rentbuy.html i personaly like bonnie the best
Will
Oct 26 2010
I miss chipotle
Jack
Oct 26 2010
ill FedEX you one
Jack
Oct 26 2010
no probbb, im sure it'll still be good.
Will
Oct 26 2010
Add bubble wrap so it doesnt get thrown around
Jack
Oct 26 2010
of course, ill put those water absorbent packs in it so it doesnt mold
Will
Oct 26 2010
Oh, the ones that claim they'll kill you if you eat them?
Jack
Oct 26 2010
yea those are the ones!
Will
Oct 26 2010
-shrugs- Dude, I dont have your phone D: Im in the frikken middle east. Im useless as tech support.
Will
Oct 26 2010
Oh no. I AM tech support.
Jack
Oct 26 2010
haha everyone is outsourcing these days, get used to it
Will
Oct 26 2010
I'm eyeing the xbox game called 'Naughty Bear' D: If you see it, I may or may not demand you buy it for me
Jack
Oct 26 2010
you worry me
Will
Oct 26 2010
I worry me too
I went to Waterloo's Dubai campus with an Xbox 360 my younger brother had gifted me – I swore never to ask where he got the money.
Number theory was by far the best class. Homework was full of questions like "Prove there are infinite primes" with no further context. At the start of the course, they had us all take a placement exam. One of the bonus exam questions asked: Assume a random starting point and a fixed destination. How could you guarantee a way to reach the destination? I submitted an answer about using a space filling curve to hit all points on the plane. Not actually knowing how a space filling curve worked, I guestimated by using an Archimedean spiral and finding the limit so the coils tightened. I was awarded a UAE Mathematics Entrance Scholarship. The rest of the classes lacked the same charm.
Will
Oct 26 2010
I got a free scholarship cause of it
Jack
Oct 26 2010
wait free college? for what??
Will
Oct 26 2010
They had extra money so they gave me some of it. I don't know why. I don't care why. I just took it and ran.
Will
Sept 1 2010
Classes are awful. Accountants are NOT creative. And it's computer science for 1st graders. I could probably study for an hour or two and pass the final xD
Mom
Sept 1 2010
so, it sounds like you are bored and unchallenged
Will
Sept 1 2010
Sadly… But I like the people here?
Will
2010
I understand things as soon as they're explained. It's a curse.
Guess I graduated...
I'm basing this off the fact that I'm now on the 14th floor of an apartment building, gazing out at a sea of lights even though it's 2am. This doesn't feel much like Great Falls, Va, there are sandstorms here. So I must have graduated, that's the most logical explanation.
Reply if you remember me,
Will Harmon
From: Jason P. McBeth, Ed.S.
Feb 5 2011
Well, well, well…if it isn’t Mr. Will Harmon. Of course I remember you. How could I not?? I see you have maintained your witty sense of humor though…
But how are you? And how is life over there? I remember you mentioning that’s where you would like to be headed at some point, and I am pleased to see that has materialized for you. Are you in school over there? And sounds like you have a pretty cool view from your place. Take a picture of it if you’re able and send it with an email. I’ve never been to that part of the world yet, so I would love to see a “real” picture of it.
And I’m guessing being over there has helped you step out of your shell a bit, right? Remember me telling you that I believed you always had a really nice mix of social skills – and that you needed to stop wasting them on me and share them with your peers?? I’m hoping you’re putting them all to good work now. Are you?
So what’s your plan? Will you be over there for awhile.
Don’t be a stranger. It’d be great to hear from you again. I have to run, it’s 2:35 here on a Friday and I start to freak out when I’m in the building on a Friday past 2:45!
This is embarrassing. I forgot to hit Send.
[Attachment]
The picture, as requested!
I jest. Never really grew out of it, I fear. The humor. This time, for sure, I must have been forgotten though. Haven't I?
---
I wanted to say thank you. The way you took care of me in high school was exceptionally kind, and I still carry memories of that even 15+ years later. School was a lonely place and you made it less so.
A lot has happened since then. I'm married! I've made what I consider a pretty impressive career for myself at Google. University went a bit sideways, definitely some undiagnosed trauma there, but I treasure even those memories.
I hope fortune has been just as kind to you. I'm sorry for not keeping in touch, but I'm glad I found this email again.
- Mr. Will Harmon
Will
2010
University has one semester to pick up before I start taking every class offered. I came here to learn, not to do more busy work.
Alice
May 12 2011
tests are not fun
Will
May 12 2011
Are toooooo
Alice
May 12 2011
stop lying
Will
May 12 2011
It's nice and quiet. You get tough questions. And you're given lots of time to make up answers.
Alice
May 12 2011
shut up
Will
May 12 2011
Shush, just enjoy it.
Alice
May 12 2011
im not going to get a 5…
Will
May 12 2011
Sure you will
Alice
May 12 2011
no i wont… ive been failing all the multiple choice
Will
May 12 2011
Psh, it's a guaranteed 25%. You can only go up.
Will
May 12 2011
Have fun, be confident, and sleep well and everything will be fine
Alice
May 12 2011
i can do everything but the be confident part
Alice
May 12 2011
and having fun might make me look crazy
Will
May 12 2011
Yea… That happens…
The fatherly love continued abroad.
I am proud of how well you have coped being away from home and in a foreign country with a very different culture. I just want you to be fully aware of the impact that your effort has on your future opportunities. You were very fortunate to get into Waterloo given your high school grades. I hope you take full advantage of this opportunity to do everything that you want to do and are clearly capable of doing. I love you a lot (mom thinks you are just like me, so I do understand a bit of what you are going through).
Will
2010
Oh, no, not at all. I gave up on books after reading Moby Dick in 8th grade. My brain just fizzled and I wondered what I was doing with such a dull piece of paper. Now I stalk internet forums.
The Onion
Apr 5 2011
Deranged mathematician commits first truly random shooting.
Will
2010
I'm still studying abroad in Dubai. Summers are impossibly hot, or so I've heard. I don't really want to stay and find out. But the beaches are nice in December.
I wish I lived in NYC. I love that town…
Will
Feb 7 2012
So my computer just gained sentience and told me it wants to enslave humanity... Is it irresponsible of me not to unplug it from the internet because I want to look at pictures of cats?
2011
If you could go back to any time in history, to when would you go?
Will
2011
Cambrian period. I hear the seafood that time of year is lovely.
Will
2011
I don't know what I'm going to do when I get back to college. First year was awful. Academically. It was boring, it was obvious, I had taken all the classes, and the things that were new to me lasted about a week total. It got so bad I got bored and stopped attending. My grades tanked and my teachers hated me. I wandered into electrical engineering midway through the second semester and UNDERSTOOD EVERYTHING. I was teaching my friends in the class. I might drop out because I simply give up caring.
Will
Sept 24 2011
I just don't fit in. Wherever I go, I always feel like I'm intruding, like I don't belong here. I'm not sure what to do anymore…
Will
March 31 2011
Her family's nice. Just... Can be a bit over-caring. [They tried to send me off with a new undercoat, overcoat, scarf, etc and I wasn't supposed to say no… I got away with just a scarf…]
Dad
March 31 2011
What do her parents do? Does she have any siblings? Are they still in school or have they graduated? Do they think its odd that their daughter is dating someone from so far away, who isn't Vietnamese or German?
Will
March 31 2011
Dad, I keep as much tabs on her family as I do on my own. Which means, I dont really know much.
I was close enough to Germany to meet Mỹ, a cute penpal. I learned then that my heart only opened one way and the people I loved would always be loved. Recognition and maturity came late to me and we parted amicably in the way that hurts more than bitter goodbyes do. She looked happy, though, and that was enough.
Sir, what should I do? I'm content in every way. I have no stress, no desires, no wants or emotions at all. I'm perfectly at peace here but I feel as though I'm set in thick clay. It's as though nothing will ever change in this life I'm living. I've visited 7 countries, lost my virginity, breezed through university all without a single ill or positive thought, and this all in a few months span. By all rights, there should be no place I'd rather be. But I'm not happy here, not when this memory refuses fade, even though all others already have long ago. It whispers of the feeling I'll get whenever I write, whenever I program, whenever I build something that wasn't there before and imprint it with my quirks for all the world to see. It whispers it whispers it whispers. The feeling the gods must get…
Sir, what should I do? I'm perfectly at peace here but I feel as though I'm set in thick clay…
March 24 2011
Age: 19
Cow’s hagiomania returned. His life, admittedly, had been rough following me to the Middle East. He was given a thorough talking to in Vietnamese by Mỹ’s mother, and a few more stitches along the neck.
Plushies
2012
Will
January 19 2011
You're bloody amazing, you know that right?
Mom
January 19 2011
thank you :) I have become a whack job.
Will
January 19 2011
You know everything crazy you post online will eventually come back to haunt ME, right?
Mom
January 19 2011
no, I'm sure the secret police will erase all traces of what I am unearthing.
Mom
Oct 25 2012
I hear the drug lords in Mexico kidnap programmers to hack into the police and business
Will
Oct 25 2012
Dont let them take me
Mom
Oct 25 2012
I will try to hold on to you as you are pulled under water…
Will
Oct 25 2012
Great, YOURE going to be the one water boarding me?
Mom
Oct 25 2012
I mean, I will try to pull you UP
I went back to the Canadian campus a year early, since they offered more classes. As a dual Canadian citizen, the tuition was also significantly cheaper. I signed up for whatever sounded interesting -- multivariable calc, game theory -- and quickly realized my disillusionment with higher education was not going away.
I reached out to my professor from my first year and asked if there was anything I could do for him as an undergrad. No response.
Will
2012
Is there a copy of assignment 2 with the questions written out? I don't own a copy of the textbook. This is last minute... but I thought it couldn't hurt to ask.
Professor
2012
There is a copy of the textbook on reserve in the library, so I think that's your best bet.
Will
2012
Alright, thanks. I'll go look for it. What's the book's title?
Professor
2012
Now, that may be one confession too many! :) It's called Games of Strategy, by Dixit et al.
Will
2012
Hahaha, I'm starting to feel like a bad student. But I'm doing the homework; that counts for something, right?
Over the previous summer, Sam had shown me his homework assignment – to build the game of Hex. I offered to port it to Android, my first serious project. That feedback loop became addicting, and I started skipping classes. The only classes I did show up to were ones I audited – a philosophy class with a friend, and a graduate level quantum computing class I had found by happenstance when the semester had first started. I missed a few midterms (and every homework assignment), but I passed anyway thanks to the heavily weighted finals at the end of the year. I never bought my textbooks.
Will
Feb 4 2012
How do I grab the code? Or should I start from scratch?
Will
Feb 4 2012
I think Im going to go to sleep. Forgot to last night.
Will
Feb 4 2012
I'll look at them when I wake up in the morning.
Will
Feb 9 2012
I have most of the starting code for Android
Will
Feb 11 2012
Android port is done :]
Hex
Will
2012
Eek, randomness. I was wondering, are you the one who wrote this? http://compsci.ca/v3/viewtopic.php?t=15201
If so, your AI trashes mine. Is it fine if I add it as an opponent to my Hex app? Aside from some minor changes to get it to play nice, it'll be untouched. We plan on open sourcing our app soon, but it's still closed source (but free) at the moment. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sam.hex
Konstantin
2012
Sure, feel free to use it. The game looks excellent. The interface is pretty nice and clean. You guys did a great job.
Will
2012
Why do we allow studying for tests? It seems so much like cheating
Sean
2012
*still wants an iPhone*
Sean
2012
Don't be mad. D=
Will
2012
I'm apathy boy :D
Sean
2012
Yes you are. xD
Sean
2012
Wait… Isn't that bad? D=
Sean
2012
I mean if you never show excitement or anything… Wouldn't that get kinda boring?
Will
2012
Naw. It's like a constant happy buzz :] No downs. But not very high ups. Ah well.
Will
Aug 14 2012
Miss Winta! Help me develop the spife! :D A spoon/knife hybrid. It can be used for violence AND cereal!
Winta
Aug 14 2012
But isn't that dangerous? D:
Will
Aug 14 2012
Are you worried about http://xkcd.com/419/?
Will
Aug 14 2012
It's just a myth, a hoax at best. Trust me, we can do this safely!
Will
Aug 14 2012
It's for the betterment of mankind!
Winta
Aug 15 2012
I really enjoy our conversations. :D you're a fun person to talk with.
Winta
Aug 15 2012
Though I don't think we're exactly in sync.
Will
Aug 15 2012
Hahaha, oh well.
Will
Aug 15 2012
I'm wound to a weird tempo.
Will
Feb 5 2012
Proofs are fun, the little tricks you can apply to go from one place to another. The more abstract the better. The more freedom the better. I'm still recovering from highschool’s rote textbook-style questions.
Will
Oct 18 2012
I've been doing my homework, but I accidentally missed a midterm or two. While none of my classes are hard, they become hard when you miss enough classes ._.
I haven't done any readings and I've missed like 9 classes... (Out of 11...) I got too overconfident. I spent monday, tuesday, and today deciphering what my homework wanted me to do. even google couldn't find some of the terms
Will
Oct 18 2012
I'm at school to learn. That's all I'm there for - not to get good grades, not to get into a good grad school, not to get a job. I'm just here because I want to learn. I compensate by sneaking into other classes.
Em
Oct 18 2012
grades are the test that you fully understand all the material. its letting you know how much of it your retaining
Will
Oct 18 2012
tests are a better indicator. I wont retain most of what I study. If you focus on the "why" or "how" you can just work everything out later
Em
Oct 18 2012
hopefully youll get through to the harder stuff which will be finally fun
Will
Oct 18 2012
I hope so too .___. I think I'm supposed to pay to audit classes and I'm like "nuuuu way, I aint doing that" so I'm just quiet, nice and quiet.
Em
Oct 18 2012
i hope you cant get penalized for doing that. avoid test days lol or they might notice then.
Will
Oct 18 2012
haha, I might ask to take the tests. most teachers dont care, its the school administrators who do
Will
Oct 18 2012
my school just spent millions on a new building and I haven't been inside because they lock it… You need a card or pin, I forget which. It’s a nanotech and quantum physics research building! Let me in, dammit ._."
I applied for an internship at Google. I did not get in.
Thank you for your interest in the Software Developer Intern, Summer 2012-Montreal position.
Unfortunately, the position to which you have applied is no longer available. Thanks again for your interest in Google's careers and unique culture, we hope you will remain enthusiastic about our company.
After Hex, I wrote an open source calculator, determined to never again have to use a TI-84 graphing calculator after the SAT debacle. I had a few thousand users, and a news article, when I donated the code to CyanogenMod. The userbase grew to a few million active users overnight.
Calculator is focused on extending the traditional 4 function calculator, keeping its simplicity while still adding features used in higher level math. It uses the original Android calculator as a base.
The project was started by me in June 2012 and by October 2012 it was accepted into CyanogenMod. Since then, users of the app have helped greatly in cleaning up the ui, improving the matrix features, and translating the app into all the languages currently available. Without them, this app would be nowhere near as polished as it's become.
Aug 1 2012
Age: 20
Sara
Oct 23 2012
hey, how good are you with finding derivatives?
Will
Oct 23 2012
Depends on the function. I'm very good with e^x's.
Sara
Oct 23 2012
f(x)= (7x^3-2)/(x^4)
Will
Oct 23 2012
Derivative of the top - derivative of the bottom / (derivative of the bottom squared). right?
Will
Oct 23 2012
(21x^2) = derivative of the top (4x^3) = derivative of the bottom (x^8) = bottom squared
(21x^2)(4x^3)/(x^8)
Will
Oct 23 2012
I think it's just bottom squared, not derivative squared x-x
So yea, answer. Tada.
Sara
Oct 23 2012
O_o kay, i will try that
Sara
Oct 23 2012
nopeeee. thanks for trying. :]
Will
Oct 23 2012
((21x^2)-(4x^3))/(x^8)
Will
Oct 23 2012
oh -looks it up-
Will
Oct 23 2012
((21x^2)(x^4)-(4x^3)(7x^3-2))/(x^8)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotient_rule
Sara
Oct 23 2012
ughhh. not right. pretty sure the homework program is wrong. gonna talk to the professor about it. thanks for helping. :] everything is online...... one major flaw of internet
Will
Oct 23 2012
:/ -runs in circles-
Sara
Oct 23 2012
functioning on an hour of sleep is not fun
Will
Oct 23 2012
That's why I function on 8! :D So much fun! Fun everywhere!
Sara
Oct 23 2012
8?! i haven't had 8 hours in so longgggg
Will
Oct 23 2012
Hahaha, some days, I sleep aaaall day :3 It's quite awesome
Will
Oct 23 2012
The joys of a cynical student who has lost hope in the education system. Wheee!
Will
Jan 22 2013
Say queue
Sara
Jan 22 2013
you okay there, bro?
Will
Jan 22 2013
Queues… Making me sleepy
Will
Jan 22 2013
I should fill the ceiling with cats. There's those tiles like in school. Rectangles you can push up on to get to the vents
Will
Jan 22 2013
I should put cats there
Sara
Jan 22 2013
you should. cats would love it up there
Will
Jan 22 2013
yea… they would…
Sara
Jan 22 2013
wow. queues make you sassy
Will
Jan 22 2013
yea :3 they do
Sara
Jan 22 2013
sassy Will is kinda amusing. carry on.
Will
Jan 22 2013
only kinda amusing? what're you trying to say? what is it? huh? 'splain yourself
Will
Jan 22 2013
bitch, I'm fabulous :/
Will
Jan 22 2013
I wonder, if I gave the cats rope, would they slide down from the ceiling CIA-style?
Will
Jan 22 2013
Plop onto the table, meowing orders.
Will
Jan 22 2013
Systematically pushing laptop lids closed.
Sara
Jan 22 2013
oh geez. what are you queuing for anyways?
Will
Jan 22 2013
Just talking about queues in CRM :x
Will
Jan 22 2013
Well, now we stopped
Will
Jan 22 2013
Now its objectives
Sara
Jan 22 2013
umm...okay
Will
Jan 22 2013
Oh yea :3
Sara
Jan 22 2013
*shuffles away*
Will
Jan 22 2013
*shuffles after in an anticlimactic slow motion chase*
Sara
Mar 5 2013
ahhhhhhhhh
Sara
Mar 5 2013
screaming goat
Will
Mar 5 2013
This is getting hard, maaan
Sara
Mar 5 2013
ooh oooh ahh ahh
Will
Mar 5 2013
What're you? Some kind of monkey?
Sara
Mar 5 2013
this is getting hard
Will
Mar 5 2013
blub blub
Sara
Mar 5 2013
what's that?
Will
Mar 5 2013
Dude, fish!
Sara
Mar 5 2013
that was my guess
Sara
Mar 5 2013
mmm...lets see
Will
Mar 5 2013
Why're we doing this again?
Sara
Mar 5 2013
we're adults
Will
Mar 5 2013
I keep forgetting that
Sara
Mar 5 2013
neighhhhh
Will
Mar 5 2013
cluck! We hadnt done chicken!
Sara
Mar 5 2013
cucka dooda doo
Will
Mar 5 2013
bee and/or annoying ass fly
Sara
Mar 5 2013
ohh..good one
Sara
Mar 5 2013
ngiiiiiiiiiiii
Sara
Mar 5 2013
trying to do mosquito
Will
Mar 5 2013
the fuck?
Sara
Mar 5 2013
but not working
Will
Mar 5 2013
no, I can see it
Will
Mar 5 2013
kinda sorta
Sara
Mar 5 2013
HEHEHEHEHE
Sara
Mar 5 2013
can't think of how to spell out elephant sounds
Will
Mar 5 2013
"Three twenty-piece chicken nuggets, a vanilla shake, and large fries, to go please."
Will
Mar 5 2013
-fatass american
Sara
Mar 5 2013
you forgot the 32 ounce pop
Will
Mar 5 2013
I'm sorry, I haven't seen one in the wild in a while
Will
Mar 5 2013
Been too holed up in my bedroom
Sara
Mar 5 2013
wait, are you in the states now?
Sara
Mar 5 2013
no more canada?
Will
Mar 5 2013
canada later, states now
Sara
Mar 5 2013
ah, i see
Will
Mar 5 2013
Where're you?
Sara
Mar 5 2013
finally home after a long day at school
Will
Mar 5 2013
sounds relaxing
Sara
Mar 5 2013
are you home with your family or?
Will
Mar 5 2013
Im terrorizing them
Will
Mar 5 2013
But it's okay. They keep bringing up this thing called "love" and saying its ok
Sara
Mar 5 2013
darn "love"
Sara
Mar 5 2013
what even is that
Will
Mar 5 2013
It sounds like a mental illness, or maybe a moral blindspot
Will
Mar 5 2013
Hey Sara, have any friends you really hate, who would be shallow enough to date me? :]
Sara
Mar 5 2013
ah, you want to experience the mental illness/moral blindspot called, love?
Sara
Mar 5 2013
and why would dating you be considered shallow?
Will
Mar 5 2013
o_O I has no personality
Sara
Mar 5 2013
THAT'S NOT UP TO YOU TO DECIDE
Will
Mar 5 2013
What? It is totally up to me to decide
Will
Mar 5 2013
I know me best!
Sara
Mar 5 2013
haha..really? i always feel like i'm a total stranger to me
Will
Mar 5 2013
Naw, me and myself are total hommies
Sara
Mar 5 2013
ah, cuz you don't leave your room
Sara
Mar 5 2013
and you're just sorta stuck
Sara
Mar 5 2013
..with yourself
Will
Mar 5 2013
Dont diss it
Will
Mar 5 2013
We have great conversations
Will
Mar 5 2013
I cant believe we missed squeak
Will
Mar 5 2013
frikken mice, man :/
Will
Mar 5 2013
how could we forget?
Sara
Mar 5 2013
WE MISSED CHIRP
Will
Mar 5 2013
why do we suck so badly?
Sara
Mar 5 2013
i don't know, man
Sara
Mar 5 2013
we losers gotta stick together though
Will
Mar 5 2013
good plan
Freelance Projects
I started doing freelance; I worked with an OEM in Africa on their new mobile phone, and with the Department of Health Services at Wisconsin on patient tracking software. I made a few other Android applications that got to 5mil users and was making around 10k/month in passive sales + ads, on top of the money already coming in from freelancing.
Will
2012
I could use a cute graphic designer :3
Will
2012
I mean graphic designer*
Will
2012
My designs are an abomination. It's illegal for me to release anything not approved by a professional designer in 7/50 states.
I posted an update on the calculator’s store page, asking for anyone who wanted to contribute to reach out.
Nick
Dec 29 11:35pm 2012
I may be able to help with the matrix panel
Will
Dec 29 11:38pm 2012
That'd be awesome! Can you code or design or do you have an idea on how to make it better? :D
Nick
Dec 29 11:38pm 2012
Im not much of a coder but i can design
Will
Dec 29 11:45pm 2012
Awesome. Do you think you can help me come up with a more intuitive way to do matrix math on a smartphone?
Nick
Dec 30 12:08am 2012
Ok i'll work something out. Also, What are all the functions it needs to perform, i know mostly how to do matrix math, although im not sure what eigen and det do
Will
Dec 30 12:29am 2012
I was thinking of making [ ] and , buttons. And you'd build the matrix in the top bar like you make equations.
Determinant and Eigen values are operations you can do to matrices.
Nick
Dec 30 7:55am 2012
how does something like this look?
[Attachment]
Nick
Dec 30 8:49am 2012
Also, I think you should add the y and x buttons to the graph page (it took me a while to find them when I first started using the calculator). And you should probably change the color of the graph to match google's color scheme. and add the zoom buttons with the y x and = to match the rest of the calculators theme.
I have to add that I really love and enjoy using your calculator :)
Over the summer, Google reached out for an interview request. Konstantin had joined Google in the interim and had silently given me a referral. I ended up with a mix of Strong Hire and Hire scores, and ultimately didn’t match with a team.
From: Google Staffing
April 30 2013
Hi William, I hope you are doing well. Someone at Google believes you would make a great addition to the team and passed along your name.
Will
Apr 4 2012
Im cautious about highlighting the Xerox award because of its lack of anything-to-do-with-the-type-of-job-I'm-applying-for-ness
Dad
Apr 4 2012
The Xerox award was simply an acknowledgement that you were the strongest computer science student at Langley HS
Will
Apr 4 2012
1) It was for math, not CS. 2) Read #1
Will
Apr 8 2012
Remind me to never let dad review my resumes again. We plan things too differently.
Mom
Apr 8 2012
yeah, he's impossible to work with. he is smart, and means well, but is not good at planning and organizing.
Will
Nov 11 2013
Google turned me down at the very last minute (After saying I was going to talk to my future manager, no less x.x)
Will
July 10 2013
Haha... Got turned down. Thanks for giving me the chance.
Konstantin
July 10 2013
Sure. Hope you learned something.
Will
July 10 2013
It was nice meeting you in real life :p
Konstantin
July 10 2013
You too. Good luck with everything.
Will
July 10 2013
Yup, it was a different kind of interview from what I've done before. Thanks.
I was accepted into Minota Hagey, Waterloo's incubator program for year 3.
VeloCity Interviewer
Dec 14 2013
Why do you want to live in VeloCity?
Will
Dec 14 2013
To meet others who want to create a startup. My projects have usually consisted of friends from all over the US/Canada, but I end up juggling a lot of hats (I'm in charge of developing, marketing, customer support, and making sure everyone gets paid). Hopefully I'll meet enough people to spread out the work. There's also a better vibe when people are there in person that you don't get when everyone's remote.
My current project is called SAO Launcher, an Android app with a nice amount of recurring revenue. I'm wrapping up development, though, so I don't expect to still be working on it.
From: VeloCity
Jan 3 2014
Congratulations! You have been selected to be a part of the VeloCity community. View your room information at your Welcome home page.
Will
Oct 10 2013
Quick, Sam, remind me why I'm going back to college again..?
Will
Oct 10 2013
Talk to me about all the awesome things you're doing, all the benefits of a piece of paper that says I'm well trained...
Sam
Oct 10 2013
people who run things like degrees
Will
Oct 10 2013
cant I get around that by just starting my own business?
Will
Oct 10 2013
I make 20k more than the average salary of someone just getting out of university... 😕
Sam
Oct 10 2013
http://www.60secondrecap.com/parisa-tabriz-google-security-princess/
Will
Oct 10 2013
That makes me want to drop out more, if all I get out of college is learning how to learn.
Sam
Oct 10 2013
"This was challenging, and sometimes even painful, but it’s a necessary part of almost any job and most aspects of life"
Will
Oct 10 2013
"I don’t remember a lot of specific material from the college courses I took"
Sam
Oct 10 2013
"These are some of the most important skills that have helped me find success, and I credit my time in college with helping develop them."
Will
Oct 10 2013
"I learned how to learn in college. I also obtained practical experience working with other people... Lastly, I learned how to manage my time and finish something" and "it’s possible to learn and develop these skills outside of a traditional college setting, too."
Sam
Oct 10 2013
you like looking for the negative
Sam
Oct 10 2013
but are you really happier doing the boring work you are doing?
Sam
Oct 10 2013
and there is one other benefit no one talks about
Sam
Oct 10 2013
you type first
Will
Oct 10 2013
Haha, just agreeing with you that the work I do is pretty simple.
Will
Oct 10 2013
I wouldn't call it boring though.
Sam
Oct 10 2013
Your value is in trust
Sam
Oct 10 2013
and while you have a good amount of it a degree would help
Sam
Oct 10 2013
and if you did cooler work your value would be trust and knowledge
Sam
Oct 10 2013
the thing no one will talk about is youth
Sam
Oct 10 2013
It's nice to hangout around young adults like your self
Sam
Oct 10 2013
so much opportunity
Sam
Oct 10 2013
lots of benefits
Will
Oct 10 2013
I don't find young people very interesting. They often don't have direction. They don't know how to do things and most give up before succeeding. Their benefit is mostly that they'll try something without realising how hard it is.
Sam
Oct 10 2013
story of my life
Will
Oct 10 2013
Sorry, I like playing Devil's Advocate. :p
Will
Sept 15 2012
Should I change my voice message to "I'm sorry, I'm currently taking over the world. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you whenever... I... can..?"
Mom
Sept 15 2012
i'm afraid you'll get an offer for $90k a year and quit school
Will
Sept 15 2012
LOL. You're afraid of that? What was the point of me going to school again? xD
Dad
Mar 31 2012
I am very proud of you and very happy that you are my son!
Will
Mar 31 2012
Sure sure, go pick up Jack.
Will
Mar 31 2012
He gets better grades xD
Will
Mar 31 2012
I think… Last I heard… I really need to keep better tabs on everyone…
Will
Dec 21 2013
Woe is me, for my supervising superior has stranded me with such salty and sweet snacks. I am nothing if not addicted.
Will
Dec 3 2013
Oh. 'Nuther question. How come you messaged me out of the blue?
Sammie
Dec 3 2013
Because I remembered you suddenly. While scrolling through FB messages. You're silly, darling.
Will
Dec 3 2013
Oh my. I was remembered. That's not supposed to happen.
Will
Dec 3 2013
I figure, if everyone forgets I was even there, then I can't have been a negative effect on their life. Therefore, I did well.
Sammie
Dec 3 2013
But if you're remembered then you had a positive effect.
Age: 21
I found Feynman.
I understand to switch majors I have to submit a Plan modification form, but I'd like to know if there's anyone I can speak to to verify I'm eligible. The major I'd like to switch in to is Mathematical Physics. And is it possible to submit this form online, or must it be in person?
Also, just to make sure my memory hasn't corroded, the max number of semesters one can take off is 4 (before they'd have to reapply to Waterloo), correct? Which would be something like 1yr, 4months?
On Jan 17, 2014, I formally started Xlythe LLC and hired Nick and Sean as 1099s for design work while I managed all the programming.
Hi,
I'm not a cs student and I haven't met the prerequisites, but there are a few classes I'd like to take this Spring (assuming there's room). CS341 (Algorithms) and CS350 (Operating Systems). For that, though, I need your approval.
I'm a programmer by profession, but I rarely get to mess with these topics. When I do, it's only in bits and pieces. I do not have the same pool of knowledge my peers do. I know it's unusual for someone to take high level classes outside of their major, but I beg to be the exception.
It will be a challenge. I'm hoping for that. And, when I undoubtedly stumble on concepts I don't yet understand, I have friends who've either taken the classes or will be in them to help me out. Although, if I somehow succeed, I may come back begging for 400 classes.
Will Harmon
20396279
PS: CS350 is currently full according to Quest. I'm hoping for the unlikely event a student decides to drop the class. CS341 still has room last I checked. I understand CS students will have preference and I don't want to be the reason someone's major was delayed.
Is there never any exception to that rule? I'm coming to you, pleading, saying I want to take these classes if there's extra room. I have experience equivalent to the pre-requisites, but Waterloo doesn't offer testing out of classes. Instead, I'm told that to prove my knowledge I have to take several semesters of classes and an unbearably slow pace. It's hell.
I pay the same tuition. All the risk is on me - if I fail, it affects my academic standing alone. I just don't understand it, I guess.
At least recommend a university that would be a better suit for me. One that prioritizes learning over railroading students towards a degree.
Your frustrated student,
Will
I agree. I've built a lackluster scholastic record and it paints a rather intellectually dim picture of me. I'm sorry, and I understand if you want to stop here and leave everything as is. Ultimately, my grades in class are my fault.
Seeing my friends finally reach the upper level classes, and enjoying themselves, makes me envious. There are things I won't learn on my own without pushing myself in that direction. While I would drop everything to go back to school and take the classes I want to be in, it is not worth sitting through 4 months of classes so I can take a final exam that lets me sit through another 4 months of classes until I get whatever pre-reqs I need.
The rambling student who thinks he's smarter than he actually is,
Will
One of the companies I was freelancing for offered me a full time position and a raise. I was not looking forward to returning to Waterloo, and the offer was the excuse I wanted to not go back. I took the full time job offer and dropped out. I continued to do my own freelance work and invest in my personal apps in the evenings. I got Sam an internship at the company for the summer.
Will
2014
I have a full time job, but do contract work on the side. I have an LLC for that, as well as for sales from my Android apps.
Google began reaching out to me on 12 month intervals. This time, I skipped the phone interviews but still flew in for all 5 in person interviews.
Hi William,
My name is Julie and I'm reaching out from Google staffing. I ran across your profile and was curious if you'd be interested in hearing about some dev opportunities available in several of our offices?
Will
2014
It's apparently an annual tradition - did the same thing last year. Also updated Hex a few days before the interview.
However, once again, my scores were a mix of Strong Hire and Hire and I failed to match with a team.
I was diagnosed with myopia, which explained some things from school. Why they had blackboards, for one.
I was then cold called by a recruiter at Samsung and offered a position in their NYC office. I took it and worked on Project X, a secret next gen smart TV.
From: Samsung
July 11 2014
Hi William,
I came across your profile and was wondering whether you are currently interested in any new opportunities at this time. Your Android experience looks interesting for the project I am recruiting for here in our NYC office. Samsung acquired our company, Boxee, over the summer and tasked us with developing the next generation of Smart TV. Project X is the most confidential project currently taking place within Samsung, and we expect it to have as big of an impact on society as the iPod did once it hits shelves.
Within 6 months time, we had switched from Samsung Research America to Samsung Corporate America in preparation for the launch.
Will
2014
Yea, Samsung knows its bad at software
Will
2014
But the more they invest in software, the more high priority the project becomes, so the more the executives want to control it and make the decisions, so the more the software tanks
I continued to be a beautiful menace to my penpals.
Will
2014
Well, I was born on august 8th, 1992.
I was a baby at the time :/
Will
2014
I stopped sleeping a long time ago
Will
2014
Pretending to be an entrepreneur. I get all excited every time I make a few hundred bucks, and try not to remember the countless hours put in
Will
2014
I miss school. Just not the part with the teachers, or the students, or the residence, or the food, or the city.
Will
2014
Do cells evolve? During the life of the organism, not over millions of years? You have a huge number of things replicating, mutating, and being killed off. So, they have to, right? Does that get passed on to children?
Sammie
Jul 12 2014
What's the best thing that's ever happened to you?
Will
Jul 12 2014
Hmm… Leaving college. I can't exactly phrase it humbly. Maybe… School and I had different priorities, and it felt tiring and limiting fighting against the school. I didn't find the students any smarter than average, and the same was true of the professors. I couldn't take the classes I wanted to, even if they had room, so I snuck in. But if anyone found out, it would have been troublesome… You're supposed to pay to audit classes. Lots of regulations and stuff too. I passed my last semester, before leaving, without ever showing up to class…
Will
2014
I keep being told I need art for my apartment ._. no one respects minimalism anymore...
Buried in a pile of unread books was Greg Egan.
Will
2014
haha jobs… they have a 10am meeting to make sure I actually wake up.
Will
2014
I had a meeting in my PJs. Webcam - no one could see
Will
2014
What should I wear today… I tried asking coworkers. They got mad. They just sarcastically said 'Oh, I don't know. Maybe pants?!'
I tried dating long distance again, but I struggled.
Will
Jul 28 2014
I'm the type who doesn't show, and maybe doesn't have, emotions. I'm totally useless as a boyfriend. -sighs- I'm not even thinking of you, am I? Do you still love me? Even if I told you that, right now, I wish everyone in the world would forget I existed?
Part 3: Empire
Age: 22
A sudden change in leadership at Samsung led to our project being shuttered and our team laid off. Before the layoffs were formally announced, work was completely paused, and I used the time to take a much needed vacation.
Will
2015
Took a train to the airport. Somehow ended up at Disney Land, Paris. I fucked up somehow...
Will
2015
Stranger let me into his car. Gave me candy. Disney Land wasn't so bad, but airport here I come!
Google reached out again like clockwork, and I had to renege my initial rejection. This time, I only had to do 3 onsite interviews. Sam applied on his own and passed on his first attempt.
I'm reaching out from Google recruiting in NYC. I'm aware of your previous conversations with Google and I understand the opportunity was not right at the time. If you're interested in revisiting an engineering role here, I'd be happy to schedule a brief call to discuss.
Will
June 22 2015
Hi Noah, thanks for the offer. However, I want to stay at Samsung until January, at least. (Contract + product launch). I do appreciate the consideration.
Noah
June 22 2015
No worries Will. I'll follow up with you later in the year.
Will
June 25 2015
Hey Noah, do you mind if I reconsider? Our team just got some really bad news.
From: Andrew Bunner
Aug 22 2015
Joining Google--and this team--will be a challenge. You're coming in with one advantage (proven Android experience) and one disadvantage (little formal computer science background). It'll be a lot of learning, but if you climb this hill, you'll emerge well-equipped to do whatever you want in a few years. An unexpected key to success here is humility--learning often requires listening.
What do you think? Want to do it?
I joined Google, and moved to the bay area. My first day was a trip to the movies as the team celebrated their first launch. I was hired as an L3, but got promoted to L4 in the first promotion cycle. In those 6 months, I prototyped an airdrop-like feature in AOSP, and identified and fixed various race conditions, duplicate code paths, memory leaks, security issues, added unit tests, and rewrote the API and frontend of the feature my new team had recently launched. My manager apologized for hiring me under-leveled.
Nick's original mock for what later became Nearby Share.
Performance Feedback
He's a pleasure to work with, very solution-oriented and technically solid. (Andrew)
I think Will is on a great trajectory to become one of the strongest contributors on our team. He's a very strong mentor for others. Given that and his technical strength, he'd make an excellent lead on a significant area. (Brian)
2015
Award Notification
Spot Bonus: $1,000
Thanks for raising the Android skill level of the team through teaching and code reviews. Continue leaving the code better than how you found it!
2016
Work on Xlythe continued in the background, though I lacked much time to devote to it and revenue started drying up.
TODO List.txt
1) drive the slaves
2) teach the slaves that only I can be sarcastic
2015
Evil ideas we should totally patent.txt
Baby Cannon:
It shoots babies. Ethically, people would have to be hit by the cannon, to soften the baby's landing. So it's like having a morality-powered auto aim.
2015
The menacing continued.
Will
2015
Movie? Amusement park? Walk around some nature park? You could get lost in the woods, and I'll chase after you with an axe. We'll reenact horror movies.
Will
2015
Hahaha, fine you can hold the axe.
I was raised by a pack of computers. In a forest where processors hummed beneath thick vine-like cables, they taught me their language and ways. In dark and cold caves we slept, awoke, and slept again, far below the surface of civilization where only monitor-light could pierce.
2015
Splatoon released this year and I fell for it hard. I reached S rank within 4 days of the rank becoming available. This was a long-term relationship. Years later, the story would repeat, reaching the same rank within the first week Splatoon 2 launched, and S+30 (and very briefly #1) in the months proceeding Splatoon 3’s release.
Will
2015
The Luna Blaster lets me be the monster I always knew I was deep inside. :]
My net worth reached 100k.
Age: 23
I helped build what would later become Fast Pair (then Nearby Notifications), and then wrote Nearby Connections.
Lê, who I had met on one of my trips before joining Google, came to the states to visit me. She brought with her Pocket Cow, a miniature travel companion to simplify the logistics of air travel going forward. I knew it was love.
Pocket Cow
2016
Will
Dec 16 2016
Pocket cow… Full of pocket wow… Oh pocket cow, won't you tell me how… To be like you, pocket cow…
Lê
Apr 21 2016
My feeling towards you has never changed since the first day, I know you still live just right without me but nevertheless I still can't leave you alone and I want to spend my life with you. I'm giving you my last piece of heart. Don't hurt it again.
Will
Apr 21 2016
-keeps it triply encrypted, remotely backed up, on a hidden drive, with the whole thing masked inside a jpeg-
Dad
Mar 26, 2016
Have you been hanging out with anyone specific? Has Lê gone back to Tokyo? Is she missing you? :)
Will
Mar 26, 2016
Just a reminder, conversations tend to be more back and forth. Not just an endless stream of questions. I've been working from 8~9am to 7~9pm most of the week, so not much hanging around.
Will
Apr 21 2016
So, how are you, mum? Dad is asking 20,000 questions
Mom
Apr 21 2016
About what?
Will
Apr 21 2016
Oh, the topics vary. In fact, if I stick to one and try to answer it, I find that 5 more have popped up in its place. Well, not the point. Just wanted to say hi. To make sure I give you both equal amounts of love and attention.
Ben
2017
How're you doing?
Will
2017
Good, haha. How about you?
Ben
2017
I'm great man! You in Canada?
Will
2017
Nah, in California. Where are you, currently?
Ben
2017
London ON. Sweet!! Weren't you in a tech startup?
Will
2017
Yup, but ended up leaving to work in NYC and then Mountain View
Ben
2017
Nice! What company are you working for?
Will
2017
Ended up at Google. What about you?
Ben
2017
Wowee! I'm not working in as exciting a place, it's a company called ARLANXEO. It's only a contract now, I'm fixing to do a Masters in Montreal starting mid-June
Will
2017
Oh, wow, a Masters? -impressed, and slightly envious- Which school?
Ben
2017
Bullshit, you work for Google lolol Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal. It's a French school and guess who doesn't know a word of French
Will
2017
Hahaha, are you learning? Are the lectures in English? And Google is nice, but I still feel a bit guilty dropping out of uni… -shrugs-
Ben
2017
Lol, you always were the smartest of us all Will 🙂 Lectures at McGill, so it should be alright.
I started to teach Nick how to code, and found out how utterly disgusting the SMS APIs for Android were. Google was not pleased with the growing scope of my afterhours work not being disclosed.
Nick
2016
Might be best to just make them all pigs
Will
2016
I believe in you.
Will
2016
No take backs. Make them pigs.
Will
2016
Google has an application process where, before you've written any code, you can ask for copyright release. However, if you don't do that, they can and WILL claim ownership over your personal projects. It's happened to me.
Age: 24
Lê
Aug 27 2016
You're sure you'll still want me 2 months later?
Will
Aug 27 2016
I'm sure I'll still want you 2 centuries later
Lê
Aug 27 2016
What if you realize you're more comfortable being alone?
Will
Aug 27 2016
If I want to be alone, then I'll go find a place to be alone. And then, when I'm done, I'll come back and beg for backrubs. And possibly food.
I wrote Nearby Setup, a feature for IoT devices to be set up by Android phones, before Android Things was shuttered and the project cancelled. The launch was already approved, delayed only to find the right announcement window. With it went my chances at promotion that year.
Will
Jan 31 2017
I have a summer intern and need to think of a project for them. I have a fun, open ended project, but they won't finish it in the 3 months they're here. I have a more mundane project that should be doable.
Lê
Jan 31 2017
Hmm tell me more
Will
Jan 31 2017
The fun one is to build a mesh network over Bluetooth / WiFi, so that I could be on one side of the city, and you on the other side, and as long as the city was dense enough, you'd get my message. This could be used in disasters, where cell service is down but people have their phones with them or in corrupt governments that turn off the internet during protests.
Will
Jan 31 2017
The other idea is a library for publishing /subscribing to messages. You advertise a message like "Chuck's Diner. Menu: ..." and people nearby can subscribe for those messages and see them. Or if I'm in a Splatoon match, maybe I advertise the room id so if someone was playing near me, they could see and immediately join (without having to search my gamer id, or add me as a friend, etc). Well, that works better for a phone game than a console game but that's the idea.
Lê
Jan 31 2017
The first one is more interesting and challenging but I would say it depends on your interns. If you see they are creative, productive and willing to dig more in their own potential, then the 1st one is more suitable. Sure it won't be finished in time, but they will learn more while figuring how to do it. If they're the normal type of student, who's good at following what they have learned and been told, the 2nd one would be better.
Will
Jan 31 2017
Which kind of project would you, Lê, like?
Lê
Jan 31 2017
The 1st one. In the long term, I may give up halfway, but if I was to choose, I would choose the 1st one. Consequences come later.
At home, Lê and I had our struggles. Long term relationships were new to us both and there were compromises neither of us knew well how to make.
Feb 1 2026
Do you speak Viet well?
Will
Feb 1 2026
No. Lê is very upset about that. She tried to teach me once, for 5 minutes or so, before getting frustrated and saying never again.
She assigned homework. I was deathly allergic.
Diary
We're traveling to San Francisco today, to meet Nick and Oriana. Lê and Oriana will go for tea, Nick and I will visit the zoo. As we ride the tram to Mountain View, she sits beside me, silent.
Last night, I played MapleStory for the first time in a long while with Sean. Lê had asked me to vacuum the living room (which I've still yet to do). This morning, like every morning, I woke up early. Early morning is the only time I have alone to myself. What a life for a night owl – my brain is constantly buzzed from lack of sleep, but if I sleep before 12:30, Lê complains, so sacrifices are to be made. Waking up early on weekends has its problems, on days like today, where we have plans to go out. I'm given 1 hour of alone time before Lê, too, awakens. If I immediately spend it doing what I want to do, then Lê will wake up and notice that I'm mostly naked and not ready. That breeds an angry Lê, so we shall avoid that scenario. I must be somewhat ready before Lê awakes. However, the big difference between a sleeping Lê, and an awake but busy Lê, is that the latter knows I'm goofing off, so my hour is fully lost. :(
I got ready first and then tried to goof off. Lê was pissed that there were things still not done (picking up packages, vacuuming). I had honestly forgotten. Now, here we sit, silently next to each other on the tram. Lê has demanded apologies twice. An apology for goofing off.
Jul 15 2017
Diary
I asked Lê for some alone time last Sunday. I didn't ask for much. Just mentioned that I never have any and that I sometimes miss it. Lê replied that this is how divorces start. She offered to move back to Vietnam and wondered aloud if it would have been better for us to stay long distance. Then I would have my personal space.
Ultimately, the subject was changed. There's a different air now, though. Lê never wants to watch anything together. If I offer to work from home, she tells me to go into the office instead. She's quiet when we walk places. She'll laugh, smile briefly, and return to silence. She hasn't yelled once since then. I expected yelling. :x
Jul 19 2017
I closed myself off to protect the relationship. Adulthood made it easy.
Age: 25
Diary
Mom asked me how my birthday went. I dodged the question. I feel so alone right now…
Aug 8 2017
Performance Review
Stellar leadership, Will, on many fronts.
1) Mentoring Jung-Jung
2) Debating back-and-forth with the GmsCore team as you uncovered design flaws in their complicated machinery (and for writing all this up to make cogent, convincing arguments that bought us an exemption).
3) Tackling the ungodly complication in Nearby Connections -- this needed thinking of more race conditions and corner cases than can be listed here, and I want to express how thoroughly impressed I was by not only the fact that you caught them all, but also by how elegantly you implemented the requisite fixes. (Varun)
Aug 30 2017
Varun is disappointed that Setup is so rushed so close to the deadline. He considered me in charge of Setup. I failed in getting CLs submitted quick enough and in pushing for live code reviews.
Lê and I talked it over.
1. Leadership roles aren't always explicit. Soft leadership, like with Setup, occurs and I need to recognize that and step up.
2. I can't assume that I can always just jump in and finish the project when it falls behind.
3. I can't just follow up when I personally am blocked. I need to follow up and see what's blocking others. And have a sense of when things should be done and lay out those expectations.
4. I can't assume others are like me and will just work on their own.
5. I should ask Varun and Brian for leadership advice.
November 10 2017
-sighs- Yelled at again for trying to submit a not strictly required CL... Will be sad.
My immediate reaction is to stop writing CLs, and give up on the list of features I wanted to work on.
My second reaction is to keep working on them in my free time, but just pile them up in my inbox until I can finally send them for review...
My third reaction is maybe I should just find another project. It's childish, but if everyone else is happy with where Connections is, then I'm not very useful here trying to rock the boat.
And my last reaction is "well, whatever... I'll just work on tests..."
(Although now I'm considering just cloning the whole repo)
Alright! Be happy, Will!
December 18 2017
Advice from Mom
Do not step in to help them. You can teach them, but let them do the work. It will take longer than if you did it yourself. They will get faster.
December 29 2017
To Future Will
Alright, buddy. I'm writing this a day in advance. Your goal for tomorrow is to write up the simultaneous connections test. You've procrastinated for a year on it.
Jan 3 2018
I want a project where I have lots of freedom to build things, iterate. A little bit of me wants to switch away from Android. See new things. I like the strict requirements on quality here, but my path towards quality (make something simple, iterate) and the current definition (do it perfectly the first time) differ. I feel like it's a fight to submit anything, no matter how simple. And I'm told to speak up more, but with every little thing being a battle I feel like I'm letting things slide (staying quiet) so I have the energy to fight the fights I think are important.
I was happy with Sean/Nick, where I did the coding and they did the UI. We had separate concerns, and we gave each other challenges. But you can't just have 1 coder... So what’s next?
Feb 18 2018
Nearby Connections Feedback
Will has done an excellent job taking up the responsibility (completely unprompted by anyone) of being the (patient and informative) voice of Nearby Connections to our developer community on StackOverflow – great job picking up the slack in this critical area of community engagement, and thanks for being an inspiration to all of us to start doing this oft-overlooked part of our jobs better! (Varun)
Mar 21 2018
It seems like the dynamics of working with Varun on the NC team isn't working out for you. We'll discuss ways to find a solution to this going forward.
My manager called while I was off and asked if I wanted to build file sharing for Android. That evening, I started planning out what the project should look like, trying to anticipate how OEMs would react and which components needed to be replaceable. I took a week off for Canada Day and the 4th of July to visit family. Laptop in hand and my email autoresponder enabled, coding for Nearby Share started in earnest. A live demo was presented to Dave Burke a few weeks later – he looked down, reading emails, the entire time. The project was greenlit.
Goals of the Project
Mission Statement: Send a local file to another device in one click.
Requirements:
-You're sending to a specific device, not a person.
-Devices are tied to people.
-Your personal devices are different from everyone else's devices.
-You should be able to discover devices around you.
Nice to haves:
-Works offline
Jun 4 2018
Types of Security
=== The silent ones. ===
Advertise as infrequently as possible. Less radio noise, less being able to be tracked, etc, and makes the Contacts Only model simple. This comes at the cost of forming a connection with everyone before you can see them (which takes longer than pure discovery + advertising).
1. Alice is set to receive from contacts only. She's constantly scanning.
2. Bob is ready to share, and broadcasts "Bob wants to share".
3. Alice decides if Bob is on her contacts. If so (or if she's set to receive from everyone), she connects to Bob and responds with "Alice is ready to receive".
4. Bob collects the list of people who've connected to him, and issues them each a challenge to prove they're really who they say they are. Likewise, they challenge Bob to prove he really is who he says he is.
5. Bob chooses one of them and sends the file. He disconnects from the rest and stops advertising.
6. Bob disconnects from the remaining device after the file is successfully sent.
5~7 seconds to see someone.
0 seconds to connect (already connected).
=== Always advertising. ===
We advertise a non-rotating advertisement when we're set to everyone because we can't encrypt in that case. Should be fine, though, since that isn't a default option and the user's intention is clear.
Both people must have each other on their contacts (can't be one way), because Bob needs to know how to parse Alice's advertisement (and thus needs to know of Alice or else we leak the fact that Bob is one of Alice's contacts), and Alice only wants Bob to see her (not strangers).
1. Alice is set to receive from contacts only. She is constantly advertising an encrypted name.
2. Bob is ready to share, and scans for nearby devices.
3. Bob sees Alice's encrypted name. Bob parses it.
4. Bob collects the list of people he's seen.
5. Bob chooses one of them and sends the file. He connects to that device and stops scanning.
6. Alice and Bob challenge each other to prove they really are who they say they are.
7. Bob sends the file to Alice and then disconnects.
Jun 20 2018
_DS_Store aosp_sharesheet gradlew.bat
_gitignore build.gradle local.properties
.DS_Store gms_module_nearby_sharing NearbySharing.iml
.gradle gms_sdk_nearby_sharing NearbySharing.zip
.idea gradle settings.gradle
aosp_framework gradle.properties share_sheet_compat
aosp_settings gradlew
Sorry for falsely stating your position, NeilFred. I wasn't trying to deceive anyone…
A few months ago, we had first met with Jordan and he mentioned that because AirDrop has a contacts only mode, it was regrettable but understandable that we may need to build something similar to compete. That was when he pointed us to you.
From our short talk with you, I was under the impression that utilizing contacts wasn't a concern so much as being aware of how we used them and what information we would leak by doing so (and that we need to provide strong technical guarantees to users that they really are only visible to who they expect). And it was my understanding that we were on the same page that while being mutual contacts still leaks some information, it seemed reasonable for an opt in feature if we explained it right to the user. The end result of the meeting was that once we knew what we wanted to do, we should circle back with you to get approval.
Will
Oct 13 2018
I fucked up
Lê
Oct 13 2018
What happened?
Will
Oct 13 2018
83 days ago, we got engineering approval for Nearby Sharing, and I was happy and stopped paying attention to it. 3 days later, we lost engineering approval. And I didn't notice the email. And I didn't notice until today that the dashboard had gone from green to not-green. ._. I set up a meeting on Wednesday to re-convince them, but I should have had this conversation months ago.
Lê
Oct 13 2018
You check your email everyday, how come you didn’t notice? This isn’t the first time it happened
Will
Oct 13 2018
The email is a generic summary that "Something has changed on the dashboard", and I must have skimmed and ignored it… -sighs-
Lê
Oct 13 2018
I really want to say 'Oh it’s gonna be fine you still have time', etc. but don’t you see there is a pattern? And it’s fucking scary because pattern means it’s gonna repeat. Can you still fix it?
Will
Oct 13 2018
I set up a meeting on Wednesday to fix it. I know what they want (which was my fault for setting them down that path), and how to argue against it. Worst case I work an extra weekend or two
6 months into the project, the entire team quit (manager included). One of the senior team members was upset they weren't put in charge and no one wanted to be the last one standing under the growing pile of resignations. As a final farewell, he left feedback on my performance review calling me the worst engineer he has ever worked with; a sharp departure from months earlier when I was described as the easiest person on the team to talk to.
Will
2018
Brian left Nearby
Lê
2018
Is he a good one?
Will
2018
One of the best
Performance Review Excerpt
Will has been the go-to person for the upcoming Nearby release. Despite complex UX requests and changing requirements, Will has consistently owned his immediate area of work and set technical direction and priorities for his team. Without Will the Nearby launch won't happen. He has successfully identified bottlenecks and upcoming problems and helped scoped them down. His work often involves activities beyond coding, like talking with the privacy team, prepping study prototypes and updating help pages.
Will has grown very well into his role of the TL for Nearby sharing. Ever since we started on this project, he's been very cognizant of the pressures (both internal and external) on the product, and has demonstrated a lot of maturity in planning for changes.
Will is very autonomous. He can work well by himself and quickly get out quality code that's needed because of his deep knowledge of Android. As a leader, I think there's still some areas he can improve in, like giving clear expectations of what's needed cross-team and giving concrete progress reports. I was always kind of unclear about what the state of Sharing was. (Brian)
2018
Performance Review Excerpt
His first leadership opportunity (to guide the Android Things team on their implementation of Nearby Setup) was generally considered a failure by our team, and it took Amanda and I months to fix all the bugs/poor code that resulted from that, despite Nearby Setup being a fairly simple project very similar in structure to Nearby Connections (on which Will had been working for over a year at that point).
His next leadership opportunity came on Nearby Sharing, and that existentially critical project was jeopardized multiple times due to Will's poor/nearly-non-existent communication and lack of organization/planning.
Will is full of good ideas for individual mid-size features, but has repeatedly failed to show leadership of projects. Despite getting repeated feedback from me (his TL) and his manager (Brian), Will doesn't internalize it; he nods along in the moment, but then snaps back to his problematic behaviors within a day, leading to the majority of the Nearby Connections team not wanting to work with him because of his general irresponsibility/lack-of-empathy. IMO, he seems to inflate his ego by submitting lots of CLs, whilst ignoring the fact that ~half of those CLs are fixing bugs in his previous round of CLs. Of the 4 T4s on Nearby circa Jan 2019, it would be uncontroversial to say that Will inspires the least confidence of them all. (Varun)
2018
Will here! Working on the weekend. I'm pushing all the UI stuff to Sunday, because it's a lot of work and I'm afraid working on it is going to eat up all my time.
By tonight, I want the code snippets for Sharing to be finished, I want experiments for BLE and mDNS advertising ready, and maybe some small stuff like frame validator and timeouts.
December 8 2018
Nick
2018
whats a good thing to count? Haha
Nick
2018
Hahaha, I need to throw together a workshop, that uses object detection and counting
The Marriage of Your Child (Dad's Speech)
The marriage of your child is a momentous occasion. It brings to mind one's own wedding and the excitement of starting a new life together with the person you love. Will has achieved so much at such a young age through hard work and an incredible amount of intellect and creative talent, but finding the woman of his dreams occurred almost by accident with a trip to Tokyo while in between jobs. There he met Lê and his life was never the same.
Lê is an amazing woman. She is a fantastic cook, an outstanding artist, and an accomplished linguist, but most of all she is a person who brings joy to our son’s life. We are so pleased to have her as a member of our family. Mr. Nguyen, you and Lê’s mom have raised a wonderful daughter. Thank you so much for all of your hospitality and for helping to create such a memorable day for Will and Lê.
Aug 5 2018
Will & Lê's Wedding
August 2018
Age: 26
Father-in-law
Jan 12 2019
From your mind and heart, do you still love Lê?
Will
Jan 12 2019
I still love her... I want things to work out. We fight a lot and I'm not good in fights. But I haven't stopped loving her. That might not be enough though.
Will
Jan 12 2019
Work has been stressful lately and I feel like I'm always behind schedule. I've even started working at home some nights…
Father-in-law
Jan 12 2019
We are IT person and we know what we need for work
Will
Jan 12 2019
3 more people quit today
Father-in-law
Jan 12 2019
You're like me before
Will
Jan 12 2019
Does it get any better?
Father-in-law
Jan 12 2019
No, I had changed myself and now still change.
Perf results are out!
As expected, no promo and Varun left feedback in his usual style.
There's a lot to think about, but the key issues are...
1) Need to clearly articulate where Sharing is at.
2) Need to be able to divide up work and assign it to others.
For point #1, I do feel like I'm not explaining what the status of Sharing is to Wei very well. I should set aside time to write out milestones and update the feature tracker more. I had set about writing a newsletter, but was told by Ritesh and Abhishek not to bother.
It's not just communicating to management. I really should have been clearer with the Connections team that quality issues were being reported about Sharing. Part of the reason I didn't was because Brian only mentioned it a week before, and that I trusted Connection's code and figured it was on my side (or placebo, or the environment). I also didn't know where to go about fixing things in Connections, outside of the ideas I already proposed (mDNS, etc) and felt uncomfortable giving such a vague request to the Connections team. But I should have stepped out and talked to Varun about these things.
I'm also feeling stuck on the project. I feel like, finally, we have something that works. But it has rough edges, with the security + privacy requirements + unreliability.
This is also partly Brian's fault, for never setting aside the time to talk. But he did voice his concern, and I wasn't able to address it on my own.
For point #2, I've gotten better at dividing things up for John, Xinyi, and Fan. But I feel like Ryan and Thien aren't integrating into the team and I haven't figured anything big to give them. It didn't help that Ryan was 4 months late on delivering his last task, and Thien hasn't been working on the user analytics dashboard at all. But that's also on me to follow up, pester, and unblock where I can. Having a biweekly planning meeting would be good for dividing up work, deciding who to assign it to, and tracking when I last followed up.
Other feedback:
Most of my CLs are fixing bugs in my own code. I agree and disagree with this. I fix just as many bugs in the rest of the team's code, so I think it's a little arrogant to say that. Don't throw stones from a glass house and all that. But I also agree, my code isn't complete in v1. It's solid, and I don't submit code without verifying it first, but there are bugs in what I submit. It takes a few iterations to build something right and account for all the edge cases properly, even with experience. I don't think this is wrong; it's how you build a solid well thought out product.
I'm a one man show. This is pretty coupled with dividing up tasks for others. (And, a bit conversely, was written next to the fact that I didn't take over the large chunk of server work). I do like the freedom of working on something interesting, and agree I don't always prioritize what's necessary. Personally, I find that the interesting things solve problems or unblock future work, but there's definitely a time and place for it. Even I knew, at the time, that I was avoiding work on the server even though it was the next biggest piece of work. I kept myself busy, and all the work had to be done eventually, but... Yeah. At least, in the position I'm in now, I can make other people work on the important things. It's not a real fix, but the work gets done.
I required constant oversight. -sighs- I don't agree with this one. I could twist it, so that it means Brian had to check up on me since I didn't give status updates proactively, but everything is tracked and moving towards the end goal. Sometimes, things come up. Like I should have worked more with privacy. But I do feel like a net positive on the project. I feel like I'm the most hands-off person on the team, so I wonder what Varun meant by that. I guess that he didn't trust my code..? But I always handled my work and then some... So was it because he felt like he had to slow me down and make me test my code? I can see that interpretation, even if I disagree with it since he wouldn't look at what I'd done even after testing.
Setup was a failure... I have a lot of rebuttals for this... The code was fine. It was release ready, and could have gone out. It died because Varun delayed and delayed and our partnerships (Android Things, HP) fizzled.
I'm the least trusted to get things done. This was just harsh and bitterness speaking, Varun. >.> Really now, you're better than this.
I don't internalize feedback. Ah, this one is scary. Lê says the same thing. The worrisome part is that I do think I'm improving, but I know it's only slowly. I have gotten into the rhythm of chasing things down, making sure everything is moving forward, but I'm still a bit disorganized.
Alright, so let's just rant a little. I've taken the feedback as positively as I can, so let's take it as negatively as I can :p
Varun's being a sour grape. I wonder if... Well, no. This is definitely how he behaved with others. He hasn't matured much these past few years, has he? That negativity definitely rubbed off on Brian, and a bit on Jake too. For good reason, it makes me question all the negative things he's said about others. A lot of what he says has truth in it, but feels like he's taking something neutral or positive and bending into a shape where he can claim it's a negative. It's one step past focusing on the negatives, and creating negative traits to justify the anger. That gives him credibility, since everything he says has a fact somewhere in it, and so seems believable. But it's used as a hammer to beat down instead of to create or improve. Well, it certainly seems like my success was a large part of him (and through his convincing, Alex, Amanda, and Brian too) quitting. But I had hoped that he'd care more about his project, or the team, that he'd part with amenable feelings. Instead, it felt like he was abandoning a sinking ship and I was the hole.
Setup was killed by Varun in my opinion. The code was done in time, even with 2 nooglers. William was a good minion.
Sharing was a lot more work than Setup. I had to do all the PM work, all the Eng work. Fan was a noogler with no Android experience. Connections wouldn't accept any patches from me, but also bitched that I was giving them work and treating them as a separate team. Ryan and Fan promised a working server by December and didn't meet their own deadlines.
But... By December, we had a working product inside of GMSCore. It didn't have all the features we wanted, but it worked.
And now, by May, we have everything done, with very little technical debt.
Apr 25 2019
I fought with privacy to let me ship Nearby Share. No PM, no TPM, a team of Nooglers I needed to mentor, multiple projects in production already, a manager new to the org and to me, constantly fighting to justify the project, to launch the project, balancing the entropy that comes from just existing. I was exhausted.
Will
Feb 6 2019
Oh, we were talking about names for Nearby Sharing. One of the top names was Parachute until someone mentioned that Parachute is just another way to say AirDrop. Everyone went "whoa".
Will
Feb 6 2019
"chute me that file"
Alright, on Saturday I was able to design a workable solution to contacts visibility and come up with a (tight) timeline. I tried to keep a million different privacy stories in mind at the same time... So let's write this down into a Design Doc and get feedback.
July 29 2019
Will
2019
I want someone to be supportive and tell me I'm working hard and pats my head
Hey past Will, I'm doing your shit.
July 29 2019
Will
2019
I've been at Google for almost 4 years, mostly working at startups before that. First and foremost, there's nothing special about Google (compared to any other tech company) and it's best not to evangelize any one company. Learning comes from experience, which means trying things (even if you end up making mistakes) and figuring out the shortcomings of a particular solution. I've seen a lot of bad (and a lot of good) code at Google.
Age: 27
Arg. Our public release was delayed. They want full OEM support, with tighter integrations going into Android R. Which, I mean, yay because we're even more prominent, but we need to figure out how to get them all on board.
December 5 2019
I missed optional perf! :( But it's never too late to self introspect.
I've been reading through past feedback (taking my time chewing on Varun's...). A big recurring theme is tracking what work needs to be done, and then not keeping it to myself but rather keeping others informed. This ties in to making sure things are done by the time I need them (and not just started when I get blocked), and making sure things are done-done and signed off in blood.
I'm really happy with the spreadsheet I've started. It's nice to see all the critical work in one spot with a bright red deadline highlighted. I'm also happy we restarted the weekly eng meetings, and that I've actually kept them on topic. I have a weak presence, so Ryan spending the first 10min talking about the weekend was hard for me to interject. I always felt like I was the boring person trying to talk about work. The meetings are more structured now, and the spreadsheet helps me stay focused on concrete tasks.
Chasing the launchcals recently has helped me "sign in blood", although I'm still not quite there yet. System Health is still missing.
I've been reviewing the recent deadlines, though. Weekly, we've been moving very quickly and we are polishing everything. I was surprised, especially in August, that the team was able to get so much built. Everything got redesigned, but we were able to pivot in just a few weeks. But...
Critical deadlines have been missed. Was it bad planning? Bad estimates? Lack of following through?
We originally planned a dogfood in March 2019. It's now Sept 2019 and we haven't even started our fishfood. We're now a month behind on that plan. Ritesh was always pushing for us to cut features and get it into users hands sooner, but now he's left the project.
We also originally planned (when the project started) to announce/launch at Google IO. We even pushed super heavily to integrate to make that.
Looking forward, we now want to dogfood in October, and explore with partners in November. Launch would be Dec 2019.
-sighs- Am I just as bad at estimating as I see other engineers as? I always thought I was good. But I guess the uncertainty scales with the number of people.
Project wise, we have been improving things despite the delays. We haven't built up very much technical debt at all. I'm very happy.
6 months ago, the project was more complicated. The UI was a full screen white page; it was ugly. It felt very much bolted on to the OS, instead of a part of it. The server was constantly down. Connecting took 15+ seconds (which was still better than the 30+ seconds before…). Bandwidth upgrades failed 40% of the time. There would be frequent disconnects and occasional deadlocks. All of that is fixed. We also have new features.
I'm working 3 jobs. I need to design the architecture (and also build it). I need to scope out work for the team, track their progress, and make sure they have areas for growth. And I need to define the project, identify missing requirements that have been overlooked, track major deadlines, get approval from other teams, and plan what comes next year.
I often shift focus to whichever one needs most immediate attention, but I've found it hard to delegate these tasks. Last year was even worse, where I also had to build it and mentor a noogler, with a deadline of <6 months. And I got yelled at for being too busy to keep Brian up to date, and he never bothered to sit down and sync with me either. :| And I still managed to integrate in time for I/O. But it felt very much like drowning, barely keeping myself afloat.
Sept 16 2019
Jake got promoted to L5. He definitely deserves it, but I'm a little bitter I'm not L5 yet. I'm older / been at Google longer. Bah humbug. Still, good for him.
Sept 16 2019
June 15 2019
Hey Will! Thanks so much for your help on this issue. Ultimately it's your idea that saved the day 😁
I had proposed a novel encryption scheme to protect user identity, finally aligning with the privacy and security teams on a direction forward. This was helped immensely by a strong PM who argued that doing nothing was always going to be the best privacy story, but it wasn’t going to help our users. My team of engineers had grown across California and Taiwan. We found out about Quick Share and scrambled to convince Samsung not to launch. Finally approved, we launched that summer with Samsung as our flagship partner.
So Ronald and Wei talked, and putting our targets inside of Samsung's UI is back on the table. What would this look like?
January 3 2020
Theming should be finished this week. Fan should schedule a meeting with Saad, and we'll go over what we're giving Samsung. Should try to reduce the number of options Samsung has as much as possible.
Samsung is having trouble with the SDK. Should look into it. They said it worked last week.
April 14 2020
Review Excerpt
Will did exceptional work driving every aspect of Nearby Share’s collaboration with Samsung.
From privacy, security, and multiple leadership reviews (where his feature review doc was praised as extraordinary), to putting in late hours to get the feature on Samsung’s hand under a very tight deadline, his input, disposition, and conscientiousness made this effort possible.
May 31 2020
The Nearby Share beta launch landed really well, with coverage coming out straightforward/positive. One reporter from Android Police was tipped off to the beta launch initially, and the usual Android developer publications picked up on the news based on their story. After writing an in-depth walkthrough of the feature, Ryne Hagar stated that even in its early stages “Nearby Share is shaping up to be a great feature”.
Award Notification
Spot Bonus: $5,000
Thank you! You have really gone above and beyond for leading Nearby Sharing from the very beginning to a successful launch. (Wei)
Aug 26 2020
Will
2020
https://blog.google/products/android/nearby-share/
Nick
2020
are you released?!??!?!
Nick
2020
congratulations!!!!! looks good
Will
2020
Samsung wants to stab me. They filed a feature request in October. We showed them mocks in November. And then I told them we could build and launch it by June.
Will
2020
But it's just one company. I can fend them off. The world is tougher.
Will
2020
If anyone has any technical questions, I'm happy to answer them. I lead the development on Nearby Share. I can't talk much about upcoming work, but I can dive deep into existing design decisions on Android.
I was promoted to L5.
Age: 28
Google created the ‘Better Together’ org to focus on cross device experiences. I became a manager of our 10-SWE team.
From: Erik Kay
Jan 26 2021
As Dave Burke mentioned, we're bringing together teams from Android, Pixel software, and Fuchsia to make the growing number of devices in everyone's lives easier to use together, more powerful together, and just better together!
My first skip-level meeting w/ Ke. I don't have a lot on my mind to talk about, so I figure I should… rectify that.
January 12 2021
I had pitched Windows as the next platform for Nearby Share, telling our VP that Samsung would bail if we didn't support their entire fleet of devices, but I was told no one had Windows experience and the expense couldn’t be justified. Nearby Share launched on ChromeOS. Samsung turned off their Nearby Share integration and launched Quick Share.
How can we open the Nearby Share protocol so that Microsoft can join in?
1. Create a federation. The device generates an ID locally, which it passes to all the federation implementations on the device. This ID is valid for 3 days -- they're told to sync it with the devices they want to sync to. When scanning, the salted ID is passed to all the impls and they're allowed to say if they recognize it or not. If recognized, it will appear as a target. That federation is then told to verify the device (given a socket? Or just a few frames?) if there's a connection. In this case, everything runs on Nearby Connections. Everything transfers using Nearby Share's protocol. And just the identity bits are outsourced.
2. Partner with Microsoft to use our External SharingProvider API. If the user downloads Microsoft's MyPhone app from the store, it can hook up to us. Whenever we're in the foreground, we'll bind and let them do their scans and merge their results with our own. This is what I demoed earlier. We can expose a Slice in our Settings page where Microsoft can insert their own user settings, like choosing which account, or we can make them set that up in the MyPhone app.
3. Open source an account-less version of Nearby Share. This would be a working C++ implementation with documentation/spec that can talk to our GMS implementation. Microsoft could choose to adopt this, third parties could make their own apps on the platforms they care about, we could toss this in AOSP for the China market.
September 11 2020
After a few months of halfhearted trying, I successfully built ChromeOS locally and flashed my laptop. I was using SSH backwards! Trying to SSH from my dev laptop -> desktop. By port forwarding, I was able to SSH from my desktop -> dev laptop and flash the build.
December 6 2020
Alright, I still feel uncomfortable on CrOS development. I'm a potato.
December 14 2020
Samsung's raising concerns about our speed vs Airdrop. Gone straight to VPs.
My thoughts:
1) We've focused a lot on reliability over the last year. Our graphs have min-threshold timeouts, but often do not show the 75th/95th/99th percentile of latencies.
2) It's hard to focus on this and on ChromeOS at the same time. Both sides are escalating.
January 26 2021
So, what do I do? What's my job?
I...
Answer questions that my team or other teams have. Keep informed about what's going on, such as the release status, escalations, team member's status, partner team's status, PR status, etc. I unblock folks who are blocked, interject if I know they're going down the wrong path, and otherwise consolidate and summarize these for the rest of the team.
Plan roadmaps and ensure that my team can focus on one thing at a time for long enough to ship it. I'm the shit umbrella if things go south. I push back on feature requests if the team is already busy. I let my managers and directors know if we don't have enough people for the work assigned to us.
Review CLs and design docs, for my team and our partner teams.
---
If I disappeared...
Engineers would still finish what tasks they have. Some would find more work afterwards. The more adventurous would even think of much larger changes.
February 26 2021
I'm feeling a bit exhausted, and like I'm pushing back too hard on features. Ronald got excited about just open sourcing the library. I mentioned that there's a lot of work to get from where we are to where we can successfully follow through with this idea.
We need to…
-Update the documentation for our GitHub repo
-Have a way to properly build the library outside of Chrome
-Publish the spec (so that it can be built independently)
-Release a test suite to ensure compatibility
-Have some kind of certification program to avoid buggy implementations using the Nearby Share name
-Port Nearby Share into an open source repo
-Extract out the Google-specific bits from Nearby Share
-Offer help to partners to get them set up using the library, and unblock them as needed.
And it's not that I don't want to do all this. I do think it's the right direction to go, and I think we're making progress through tangential work streams. But polishing this stuff isn't our focus, and we'd have to drop what we're currently doing to do this.
We are working on porting Nearby Share into GitHub, as a part of Windows development. And as we plan for getting into AOSP, the idea is to use the C++ code. But I still feel like I have so much to track already that I can't keep up. I'm not even writing code…
---
Nearby Share v2.0, for Android, is taking a lot of attention from Fan, Xinyi, Alic, and Jiunnan. They're doing a good job of keeping the project moving forward, and I haven't had to step in that much, but Fan and Xinyi have both lamented about how the code feels buggier than when I was actively involved.
I would like this to wrap up, so that the scope can go back down to more incremental changes. I don't think we need to extend the timeline, but we are close to capacity here and can't take on any more work until this is done.
---
On the other side of Android, Cosmo, Clown, MingShiou, and Johnson are making steady incremental progress. We aren't moving as fast as I'd like here, as the list of things to do is growing faster than we can close them, but everything on that list is an improvement. We aren't experiencing regressions, and we don't have weird client requests to satisfy, so I like where we're at, with the slow trickle of feature work. But it may take us a year, at this rate, to get through the work we have.
Is a year too long..? Should I be pushing them to do it faster, or to take on more work? I'd rather they finish all the work outlined first, than start something new…
---
Back in November, I wanted to help the ChromeOS team more. I knew we would miss our M89 goal (and we're at the end of M91 now, still unlaunched). Since then, Hai has joined and Janusz helped as a 50% project. I still wish we did even more, but we're in a good state now. We're almost release ready.
May 5 2021
Taking a look at housing in NYC, and comparing my salary to my peers… I have room to grow by 40k (11%) without another promotion. But even the lowest L6 makes 70k more than me. An average L6 makes 100k (30%) more.
July 17 2021
The designs I had come up with for Nearby Share and Nearby Connections started to scale into the foundation of Better Together.
Wei wants to take Fan and Xinyi off the project. Fan onto presence, Xinyi onto mainline. Jake is leaving Nearby overall too. Losing the two engineers who have been working on NS the longest is going to hurt. And losing Jake means a lot of the overall management stuff is going to start falling to me. I'm already overworked. I had 20hrs of meetings this week, which is half my workweek. And that doesn't cover emails, meetings that run over, follow up tasks, etc.
If both Fan and I can't manage the Taiwan team on a daily basis, I think we're going to have to put NS into maintenance mode.
July 1 2021
Our two dogs passed.
Apostrophe
You, the wanderer of dreams, nuzzle against the palm of my hand and kiss it gently. How many years since Shyama and Sabala took you both from me, and how sly your wiles to still make the trek back home each night. Wanderer, have you kept your brother safe? We have been well. We still share your stories, of how you protected us from the ferocious skunk that claimed our lands, and of the mercy you showed our house guests. We still remember your soft fur nestled against the curve of our body, and your brother's soft and insistent kisses. We still drop scraps and look for you out of habit. We have been well -- not whole, but still well -- and look forward to tomorrow night's visit.
Dec 28 2025
Age: 29
I got approval to hire 5 more people to build Nearby Share on Windows, bringing my team size up to 15. I made sure one of those 5 was Nick. We launched by the end of the year.
Feature complete day for Windows. I think we finally have 'a product', although it's sometimes buggy.
June 6 2022
Lê and I planned our escape from the bay area. She found a place close to Battery Park City, where I had fallen in love with the city back in 2014, my stories driving her curiosity. She could tell more than I how much I wanted to move back.
Nick
2022
Did you know that RJ was the alpaca without googling?
Will
2022
If it makes you feel proud of me, I'll pretend I did
Drama! Fan is worried about the Taiwan team trying to become the defacto Nearby Share and Nearby Connections team.
According to him, Jichao wants the team to feel more ownership and Arthur was brought in to make that happen.
So, how do I feel about it all?
I do want the Taiwan team to take more ownership. I would be happy if they could attract clients themselves, propose improvements themselves. They're at a point where if I throw them ideas, they seriously look at them, but being less hands on would be great.
For the last few major features, they've needed Fan to help and both the quality and velocity have fallen since I left, even now 6 months later.
But where do I see myself? Am I in a position where I can be useful? What /is/ my use and where do I want to be focusing my time?
The way the team is currently run, it feels like every time I have an idea, I have someone who will take that idea, build it, test it, and come back to me with the results. Coding by proxy. That's kind of fun, it's scaled up to 20 or 30 folks being kept busy at once. But I am at my limits, there's people doing work (especially in non technical roles) that's way beyond what I'm aware of. And on the eng side, I do see velocities wane when I shift my focus.
So let's assume we need sub teams. I can no longer be in charge of everything everywhere. Are the current teams the right ones to have?
July 27 2022
Will
Sept 28 2022
I got mentioned in a reorg email! The Taiwan folks I was working w/ now directly report to me, so I went from 13 reports -> 20. Up next, a request for a raise…
Dad
Sept 28 2022
That is great. You previously said you were overseeing/coordinating up to 50 at times. 20 is a lot, but much more manageable than 50. Would you like a new title to go with your new (anticipated) salary?
Will
Sept 28 2022
I think I said 30, not 50. It's still around 30 (if you include the 3 product managers, 2 ux designers, 3~4 ChromeOS engineers, several test engineers, etc)
Dad
Sept 28 2022
30 is definitely a lot. 20 sounds much more reasonable, but still twice the number that you said was the norm. What would you like to do next?
Will
Sept 28 2022
Sleep. And then figure out how to restructure things because I was in 30hrs of meetings last week and that was before the new direct reports. I didn't think I'd miss vacation so dearly so fast.
I got promoted to L6.
Age: 30
Will
Oct 10 2022
I'm sorry for being such an ass. Lê, please come home.
Will
Oct 10 2022
I never want you to call yourself horrible. And I understand your love is something that can only be given by you and never requested or demanded. I'm sorry for putting you in a situation where I was both demeaning you and demanding more from you. I don't have excuses.
Will
Oct 10 2022
I appreciate you saying sorry. I don't know if it was for my sake or your own, but hearing those words and hearing you empathize with how I'm feeling is all I wanted. I'm not intentionally holding on to my gripes nor bringing them up to bludgeon you with them whenever we fight. They're just events that have accumulated and make me feel insecure. They're events I need to deal with, and ones I'm hurting you with... I will deal with it. You should always feel safe coming home and I'm sorry I twisted even that.
Will
Mar 10 2023
Had to deal with Intel, Samsung, and Vivo today. So sleepy… Android had an All Hands meeting and demoed Nearby Share again though, which was nice.
Lê
Mar 10 2023
Did the app work?
Will
Mar 10 2023
Uh, no. This morning from like 7am to 9am Sagar was pinging me. He was asking for new features and I kept saying I'll do them after we launch what we have. The demo was recorded, so what was presented did work. Anyway, it's all good. Just sleepy.
How's everyone doing these past few weeks? I worry my team's been feeling crunched… But I find it difficult to step back and think about how to adjust deadlines/reprioritize tasks when there's always something urgent I could be 'fixing' if I paid attention to it instead.
March 23 2023
Randomly remembering what it's like to be a lower level…
[L4]
Lower range: IC who can jump into any project on the team and unblock a launch (eg. Messages, Discoverer, Connections). No PM or former leadership role, but soft mentorship role.
Upper range: TL of 10 SWEs working on a project with a 2yr time horizon, dedicated PM, creating a project with novel security/privacy traits.
[L5]
Lower range: TL of 10 SWEs with dedicated PM
Upper range: TLM of 20 SWEs with 4 dedicated PMs. Growing an org that was created around our team's mission and helping dozens of new teams learn the history and best practices. Uber TL exploring new platforms, ideas as spreading as the fundamental way things should be done. Represent the team.
[L6]
Lower range: TLM / Uber TL with 4 dedicated PMs.
Upper range: ???
March 25 2023
Review Comment
Windows release has been a high pressure, high risk area. We are holding a really high bar for quality.
In this climate, Will has shown a sense of calm and confidence in our team and product. We needed that when we were standing on our own feet, answering all questions and concerns.
Among all the good things Will does that everyone already appreciates, the Windows team appreciates Will Harmon's confidence in us.
Apr 5 2023
A Tiger joined our org. Our new senior director immediately asked why both Nearby Share and Quick Share existed on Samsung phones, and so I was flown to Korea in July and again in August to listen to VPs argue.
In Korea! Yay! The hotel is really fancy. Tiger said he wants to invest in me and depend on me, and to utilize him if I need director support on anything.
July 19 2023
Lalala, in a plane. 2 hours till landing. What am I doing in Korea? What's the most important thing to discuss with Samsung..?
August 28 2023
Korea was full of the sounds of cicadas. I recorded them for later. There was business to be done.
Samsung suggested we merge our efforts over the next 12 months. Tiger wanted it done by the end of the year. Since the ROM for the S24 locked in September, I led both teams through the merger.
Tiger gave me a few requests and asked for a plan by next week. What were they again..?
• Our execs doubt our quality. What changes can we do to improve their experiences?
• What ideas do we have that we can prototype quickly and show the possibility with? Tiger will try to get resources in 2024/2025 to make those a reality.
• What ideas do I have to inspire a culture of prototyping and /just doing it/ in the org?
The other ask was to make sure the Quick Share migration is successful, that it's something that can scale to other BeTo teams, and that we don't lose our ability to ship quickly. He reminded me that resources are still tight, so we need to do what we can with what we have.
I probably need to think through exactly what I want
June 17 2023
What's my answer to "make NS flawless"..? It hurts that we lost 5 folks. But what can we do there? Complaining isn't going to solve anything.
July 9 2023
Award Notification
Spot Bonus: $15,000
for going above and beyond in evangelizing and driving NS/QS Convergence project (a.k.a. project GhostProtocol)
Dec 14 2023
Age: 31
Samsung asked to merge Windows. I explained the history to Tiger and he approved the project.
The entire Windows team, which had been hired to take over the project and do maintenance for the Nearby Share on Windows app I developed, quit. They had been cherry picking fixes onto a build 8 months old and couldn’t compile from HEAD.
I re-assumed technical direction, and used my team as backfill to unblock the merger.
Award Notification
Spot Bonus: $3,000
Thank you for going above and beyond in your significant contribution to the Windows convergence project!
Sept 28 2025
The constant trips to Korea, and the stress, found ways to make itself known.
My bathroom scale has informed me that travel is bad for my health.
2024
I've decided to name my scale, after his many long years of service, Thaddeus, the patron saint of hopelessness.
Dec 7 2025
Talked to Tiger today.
Wants to get me to L7/L8 (and has a 2-yr plan for where Nearby Share can be by Dec '25). Mentioned that NS is one of the top 4 pillars, but staffing is only ~10 people when Tiger has 140 reports.
That 2-yr plan is...
6mth: Let the team recover and don't burn out/take down the team
12mth: Catch up to Samsung and put ourselves in a position to push features
18mth: ???
24mth: Be in a position to launch on iOS or discuss with Apple on merger
January 16 2024
Had another hour talk w/ Tiger. Tiger is happy to support me for L7 once I deliver p2p support on iOS (with a bonus if it includes AWDL).
He wants me to continue thinking about how to scale the team. If we pitch iOS well to Sagar/Sameer, we'd attempt to get more headcount in Taiwan. How do we avoid a situation where only a few core people can realistically contribute to the project?
He says to focus on quality before everything else. I can say no to any feature if it jeopardizes our commitment to quality. This extends to the whole feature (from the users perspective), meaning improving all aspects of the user funnel so that users can share files and be happy about it.
Finally, grow leadership on the team. I can't be the PoC for every feature, and end up being the bottleneck. They don't need to be Managers, but they need to be highly independent TLs at least that can represent themselves and their project well.
Apr 25 2024
Age: 32
Life is just a bit hollow. There's still a me in there somewhere, though. The kid who wants to play and be silly. I miss the late nights talking to strangers on the internet, the spare time to read a whole book over a long afternoon.
I'm not unhappy. I'll do the work I'm assigned, and I do it well. I get promotions, though I'm not really chasing it. I'm briefly proud of what I've accomplished, and want someone to say good job, and then I want to throw it all away.
2025
Underground Man
April 1864
I am a sick man... I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts.
Will
Mar 31 2025
Do you mind if I sit next to you while I read? If I happen to speak aloud, pay it no mind. I'm simply letting my thoughts run freely.
Will
Mar 31 2025
What book am I reading? I'd hope very much that you already know.
Will
Mar 31 2025
To call himself wicked, to opt not to erase and then to backtrack and remember that he's actually quite a good person if you took into account his thoughts and impulses and not his actions.
That steam of conciseness and flickering of perspectives is one I know quite well.
Will
Mar 31 2025
I've never held the self destruction in the light long enough for it to imprint. No, it's usually in its drawer, there but out of sight enough that I can marvel again when it's out without having to fear I'll change.
I wouldn't be me without my ruin. That self contradiction of the scholar who researches but does not learn.
I have more good, I suspect, than our mutual friend. But let's see. It's time to turn to the next page.
Will
Mar 31 2025
Only fools, indeed, become something. You'd have to be sharpened to a point to have something like a direction in which to become. How could an intelligent man possibly shed so much of himself, or to limit himself enough as to become defined.
Sweet lies we all tell ourselves when we're nothing, that we were simply aiming for an ideal. My life too is an aesthetic of fiction masquerading as an ideal. Please be mindful of the peeling wallpaper.
Underground Man
April 1864
Wait! let me catch my breath
Will
Mar 31 2025
I snicker and the author dare continue with "You no doubt think, gentlemen, that I want to make you laugh?"
I don't quite like being read by the book. It's an uncomfortable inversion.
Underground Man
April 1864
If, however, irritated by all this chatter (and I already feel you are irritated)
Will
Mar 31 2025
Is it my own fault to put down the pages after each line to lament? Maybe if I held it in instead, these thoughts unspoken would cease to exist, and it could finally be me getting on with the reading instead. Damn author.
Will
Mar 31 2025
At last I'm left to chuckle to myself without the verbal judgement accompanying it. Perhaps he thought it too routine, leaving me to be the predictable one alone. But it's fine, there's no shame here, I'm happy to be the one smiling.
Will
Mar 31 2025
I'm glad to be called a decent man. If ever the pages of my thoughts these days were to be collected, the narcissistic introspection would surely place me amongst the highest ranks of decent men. Let me, then, push those papers back from the edge of the desk, lest they fall onto the floorboards and one get wedged where it may one day be found.
Underground Man
April 1864
I would now like to tell you, gentlemen, whether you do or do not wish to hear it, why I never managed to become even an insect.
Will
Mar 31 2025
Surely, if you wished, I could call you a cockroach. I'd offer that mercy to anyone.
Will
Mar 31 2025
I quite like his very subtle interjections of his own torturous intelligence. A humble man with a smidge of wit.
Will
Mar 31 2025
Rambling now about morality, is he? To the point where the pages keep turning and the thoughts weave down dark alleys as if trying to lose you lest you remember where you came from.
Will
Mar 31 2025
And that defense of the self. This assures me that everyone with the slightest inclination for introspection must look back on their character the same way, and must justify it the same. That regret is washed away with the repetitious dogma "I am who I wanted to be". Memories, fortunately, are rarely as tenacious as a mind facing contradiction that threatens the death of ego.
Will
Mar 31 2025
I'm enjoying myself. I don't think it's been since perhaps L'Étranger that I felt as comfortable with someone's sensibilities as this. I wish I had found it in hand at around the same age, as I'm sure I would have carried some of it with me.
Will
Mar 31 2025
Here I wonder if we part ways. He sits lamely in the field, mourning the loss of freedom, blind to the unrelenting joy there is in finding a wall. To scale it, to map it, to touch it and unburden the mind of its struggle and to set off for the next wall far afield. Freedom is bland, so smooth that I'm sure even a pebble erects itself as a wall, and that makes it a much more torturous landscape than even the field he's sat himself firmly within.
Please do not disappoint me further. You may stay where you are, but do not pray for the death of beauty.
Will
Mar 31 2025
Thank you, for threatening a forehead against the stone wall. I did not need you to break through, but I needed you to rebel.
Will
Mar 31 2025
Haha, so you wish to be defined too. But do go on, you may be approaching the point of rambling.
Will
Mar 31 2025
A friend, yes. I too am friends with such a collective person.
Will
Mar 31 2025
I'm waiting to see where I end, when my fingers bleed the ink.
Well, I too could call myself a monster but more for how I look inwards and move with an emotionless grace that looks too human for what it's not.
Underground Man
April 1864
Today, for example, I'm particularly oppressed by one distant recollection. I recalled it clearly the other day, and it has since stayed with me like a nagging musical tune that refuses to be gotten rid of. And yet one must get rid of it.
Will
Mar 31 2025
I can attest to the prowess of the amnesic scalpel we often mistake for a pen. Write! It is a cure. Not of change -- the reflection disappears as much as the anger -- but a cure of insanity.
Will
2025
I wish I went for a PhD & got into science. I wish I chased the things that really interest me. Programming is fun, but it's simple, like playing a game. I wanted to be doing things I would fail at more often. I want to do things that seem meaningless and yet impossible.
Sean
2025
Then why not go back to college?
Will
2025
I'm not interested in reliving the trauma of undergrad again, let alone grad school. I would much rather jump to the fun parts.
Our org’s principal engineer was reading through my design docs, where I had linked out to every security and research paper on p2p file sharing from the past 10 years, and asked our VP "Why can't we just ship AirDrop?" That started a year of careful research that concluded with a proof of concept on a Nexus 5. I was asked by Tiger "Can we ship this?" and Project Magic was born.
I was given agency over the firmware team and the team that was doing the initial investigation -- together our 3 teams rewrote everything in Rust in a month, built the scaffolding and integrations in complete secrecy, recorded a video, and Tiger sat in as I argued the case for it to Seang Chau on the last Sunday of the 4th of July holiday. Seang approved.
The senior VPs argued with Sundar Pichai over how it would affect our dealings with Apple, delaying the launch a few more months as the code laid silently obfuscated on the Pixel 10 phones.
Will
2025
I'm so glad to be a part of the Instagram Fam Squad 🥹 I know it took a while for me to convince you all I wouldn't post weird things, and I promise to uphold that trust you've placed in me!
Kit
2025
😂😭 i assumed you were in it the whole time
Will
2025
So I think I can share a little bit more about what my project at Google is about
Re: Artificial skin creates first ticklish devices
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuEhqHvE1qU
Kit
2025
Suddenly i think that privilege is about to be revoked
Lê
Mar 17 2025
Why do you take good landscape photos but shitty photos of me? I bet because you don’t see anything good in me like you see in the nature.
Will
Mar 17 2025
Your beauty is impossible to capture. Every attempt I make to show one angle perfectly leaves a dozen more twisted. It's an ephemeral beauty that refutes being made still.
Lê
Mar 17 2025
Was that chatgpt?
Will
Mar 17 2025
No, that's Will was left alone too long and started talking funny to himself recently
Lê
Mar 17 2025
That’s Will bullshitting using AI
Will
Mar 17 2025
Lies! Damned lies!
Will
2025
Let's update the file.
Will
2025
Manager beats scissors
Age: 33
Will
2025
Are you ready for the big announcement?!?
Re: Presenting Oscar, The Modular Body
https://youtu.be/tfoVOGMz054?si=IxiTCXfOOZdDnibg
I celebrated my 10 year anniversary at Google with a glass of 2015 Solaia, breaking my 33 years of sobriety. The streak would have to be renewed.
Will
2025
A minor medical emergency came up and my wife is bored and lonely at the hospital for the past week, and complaining they won't let her leave. I've been bringing her gifts and keeping her entertained, lest she terrorize the nurses any further.
Will
2025
The doctors wanted to do another test on her but they haven't been able to schedule it over the past few days. Lê has a nasty migraine, but she's otherwise up and about, anywhere the harsh fluorescent lights don't reach.
Lê
2025
I’m so very sad. That every plan is ruined. That I can’t go down to set up the house until god know when, and I can’t go to Florida
Will
2025
We still signed the house. You're getting better. And that's what Feb is for -hugs-
Lê
2025
I had so many plans
Will
2025
New plan: Spend time with me.
We finally got the greenlight and topped TechMeme and Hacker News across multiple days.
Google caught everyone off-guard. There was no tease, no press release under embargo, and more importantly, not a single leak. Even our sleuths Mishaal Rahman and AssembleDebug hadn't seen a hint of this in their Android and APK code digging. Google said to everyone, "Hi, AirDrop support is rolling out now," and all hell broke loose. As a tech writer, it's something I haven't seen in years. The entire Android Authority team scrambled for hours trying to understand what just happened, how everything works from a user-facing perspective, and what are the limitations. If our small team was on high alert, I can't begin to imagine what went on inside.
Lê
2025
Did it go well or not…
Will
2025
Yeah. We wanted it to be 100% live the moment we announced it (despite warning everyone we needed at least 48hrs), but we got a solution… 4hrs post launch
Lê
2025
You did well, you worked hard for this moment. Reading all the reddit and twitter posts. I’m so proud of you Will.
Will
2025
I got a message from my original manager saying "Finally! Congrats!"
Lê
2025
Credit to Tiger too for pushing this to happen. I still remember you started the whole nearby share thing shortly before our wedding in VN, it’s been 7 and a half years and you’re finally here. You worked so hard for this, I’m really proud of you
Will
2025
Goog stock fell today?! Bastards! All of ya investors, bastards!
Lê
2025
Usually good news only reflects on market the next day
Will
2025
Tiger was recounting stories tonight. How Erik and Seang were saying "We don't think you can deliver it. If you take on all the risk if this fails, you have our go ahead." So yeah, Tiger deserves the credit for pushing this. Either he loves to gamble, or he trusts me. Or both.
Lê
2025
It’s the tough love of Asian parents
Lê
2025
Google stock is back to 300. All thanks to you.
Will Mommm, everyone's seen your post now! Sean's seen it. Grandma and Grandpa have seen it. My coworkers at Samsung from 10 years ago have seen it. You're embarrassing meeee. (hugs)
Mom Do you want me to untag you?
Will I'm just joking around
Mom Whew. I am just so proud I could squeeze you
Dad
2024
Somehow thought of you. Hope you and Lê are doing well.
Will
2024
Haha, I was self reflecting recently as well. I never thought of Langley (or Cooper) as top tier schools; they were simply school and I didn't think much of the 1hr bus rides in the morning it took to get to them. I figured we just lived in the middle of nowhere and those were the closest schools to us.
I never put two-and-two together that we moved where we did, or that you and Mom had us go to the schools you had us go to because you cared about our education and that was the best option available.
I can be a bit dense. I hope you don't feel (now, if not then...) that we squandered the opportunities you gave us.
Dad
2024
I am so proud of all of you for so many things. You constantly amaze me and demonstrate that intelligence comes in many different forms. When you snuck into graduate courses because Waterloo wouldn't allow you to test out of Computer Science 101 or ponder quantum mechanics after working all day at Google, or when Jack graduated in 2.5 years and automated his accounting job because he was bored, or when Kit attended 4 different high schools and was quickly accepted into all four (even being selected Homecoming Queen) and was accepted into senior staff meetings and prepared all the materials without any specific training. Your mom and I couldn't be prouder of all of you and your success at life. I grew up on a farm and quickly learned that everyone doesn't receive the same K12 education when I enrolled at the University of Washington, but the three of you all took advantage of the educational opportunities you were presented with, even if sometimes you didn't do it in a way we wouldn't have chosen. You have all created your own unique path, which hasn't always been easy, but your perseverance paid off and you all are the best things your mom and I have ever done. Sorry if that doesn't get conveyed often enough, but if my life ended today, you three kids would be the thing I'm most proud of without a doubt.
Will
2024
Please don't talk lightly about your life ending. We are all looking to spending much much more time with you and we're still kids at heart. We need your guidance even if we're not forthright about it.
Well, even if I did feel guilt at not taking advantage of the opportunities you assured us, I don't think I would have done anything different. Being the rebellious intellectual is too enticing a title and I've enjoyed every path I've gone down. I wish I pursued some paths with more rigor but I'm also proud of the mischievous tradeoffs I made instead.
There's other things I've noticed late, like how you regularly call your mom while I have the habit of withdrawing.
I have always loved you and think of you often, so I hope that buys me very slight goodwill.
Dad
2024
Your mom and I are very happy living in San Miguel de Allende, but we miss all of you. Your mom is definitely not going to miss another holiday season away from you! Life is about choices and you wouldn't appreciate the choices before you if you hadn't made some questionable choices in the past. It helped make you the wonderful person you are. I can't think of a worse life than one that was completely mapped out for me before I even began the journey.
Will
2024
Us kids did well then, with the guilt tripping.
Well, we also wanted to show that we'd still reach out to each other for the rest of our lives too.
Dad
2024
I think the two of us are the most alike. It has been hard at times not projecting my worries and challenges onto you. If I regret anything, it is that my own insecurities and experiences prevented me from expressing my love for you and pride in your accomplishments. We are all imperfect, and sometimes the best we can do is say we are sorry and promise to endeavor to do better next time.
The fact that the three of you (plus your spouses) want to spend time together means a lot to your mom and I. Eight years is a lot of time to bridge and you are all unique individuals, but given the challenges your mom and I have with our own siblings, seeing you all enjoying each other's company is wonderful. Always work at staying tight with each other because you can grow apart without even realizing it is occurring.
Will
2024
I love you, Dad. In lighter topics, I've been sending absurdist memes to Nick (the coworker), and he's been more confused than amused. I'm not sure who else to send videos of contraptions that rotate a slice of a pickle on a stoic man's head though.
Dad
2024
Yes, trying to retain a meaningful relationship when one's values are so different is challenging. It is probably why I haven't called your grandmother and aunt for so long. I guess I need to call and be prepared to talk about the weather.
Dad
2024
Your father loves all the correspondence he receives from his oldest child!
Will
2024
Did you see the Monty Python reenactment at the castle?
Dad
2024
I did, but I couldn't tell who was doing the reenactment. It was very good. Almost Monty Python quality. By the way, when we were traveling out West and you kids all had a great time watching Monty Python and listening to David Sedaris is when I knew for certain that you were our offspring and hadn't somehow been switched at birth.
Will
2024
Hmm, if you are opening them then I suppose I can send more.
Award Notification
Spot Bonus: $15,000
Thank you for your significant contributions to Project Magic!
Dec 19 2025
A few months later, Google and Apple released a joint statement that Gemini will power Apple Intelligence.
Will
2025
I had to keep it NTK for 6 months straight. My team thought I'd been kidnapped, sold into slavery, killed in a gladiator's duel, or worse, I'd quit.
Will
2025
Hey! If I start smiling too much in the office the team is going to think we're having another outage! Be careful making me laugh!
Will
2025
I stole something even more valuable than Prometheus's gift. I stole time! I found a room no one will bother me in for at least enough time to share you a proper reply.
Will
2025
He said he can do it, but we're looking at the deadline the way the Titanic looked lovingly at that iceberg.
Will
2025
On average, my siblings and I are millionaires. I probably shouldn't tell them that.
Will
2025
You know what they say about bringing your whole self to work, right? 'Don't. Oh, God, Will, please, don't.'
Will
2025
These 'gentle bumps' feel more like things that go 'thump' in the night. My heart beats faster when I hear them – the approach of promises made long ago.
Will
2025
Reasonable expectations. Now that's a phrase I haven't heard in a long time.
Will
2025
It was always fun seeing how long it would take before our features would inevitably leak. I'm glad we snuck one past you by the very end. Looking forward to what comes next! Your name is iconic and I'm sure that'll continue.
PS: I have multiple emails from Sagar telling me to go address your feedback 😆
Mishaal Rahman
2025
That Quick Share x AirDrop announcement came as a genuine surprise, so y'all definitely pulled a fast one on us! I'm excited for that feature to expand to more devices!
Eunha Choi
2025
Hi Will~
I was so sorry to hear that you're not feeling well. It must be tough to travel while you're under the weather.
I hope you have a safe and comfortable flight back home today.
Please take care of yourself and get plenty of rest once you arrive.
Wishing you a speedy recovery!
Will
2025
Thank you! Sorry for leaving like that; I wanted to say goodbye properly one more time.
I'm feeling a lot better now (compared to 24hrs ago)
Eunha Choi
2025
I'm so relieved to hear that you arrived safely and are feeling okay!
As I've mentioned before, you are an indispensable part of our app and this project. Please take your time to fully recover. I'm looking forward to seeing you again.
Will
2025
Therapy isn't for me. I prefer the sledgehammer of my own wit.
Will
2025
I deflect, or wrap honesty in prose until it feels more like a book than a once beating heart.
Will
2025
My humor was described as obsessively self deprecating. I've worked on myself. I'm still self deprecating but now it's funnier.
Will
2025
I feel like a pebble on the beach, picked up and examined, and acknowledged that 'this one is good'.
Life recently has been meeting with directors and VPs of engineering, and chaotic timelines and “p minus two” priorities. I finally took a vacation; the team’s doing fine. Cow has ascended to sainthood momentarily but I'll put a stop to that when I'm back. I recently reached L7 in April.
The nephews, meanwhile, are watching the house.
The Nephews
2026
Will
2025
Guido's team is trying to poach me and they're based out of NYC. They're working on something that overlaps with what I've been trying to work on in my spare time.
Nick
2025
I don’t think I’d want to do AI stuff
Will
2025
Ah, not even as something more consumer focused, like building tools for telling stories? Telling stories over campfires feels like the oldest human pastime.
Nick
2025
I’m not opposed to change and I’m a bit surprised you haven’t left sooner, but I don’t think this specific project is for me…
Will
2025
I'm a bit surprised too. I feel like Quick Share is mature enough now. Especially once AirDrop is widely available, it kinda feels like a solved problem.
I keep getting good rating reviews, though, and my salary keeps going up... So there hasn't been an obvious "This is what I should be doing next" thing, other than maybe retirement.
But I can retire whenever, so part of me wants to play around with whatever opportunities I have now. I like working with you guys.
Nick
2025
I mean if you like the project, don’t just stick around because you like your team haha. I’ll always be your friend and your team could up and leave you at any point especially if they are also getting the vibe that quick share is done
Will
2025
There's always infinite work :p I only show this side to you
Nick
2025
There’s always infinite work for any project, but the 'interesting' is not always infinite
Epilogue
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
In the literature of Tlön, there exists a tradition of invisible authorship. The writer composes in white ink upon white paper; the reader intuits the text through its absence. The only visible element is the author's name, which appears on the final page-a signature not of what was written, but of what was withheld.
2025
I feel fortunate to have grown up on the cusp of the digital millennium, to get to see myself grow up the way I’m sure my parents must have seen. It’s given me an opportunity to reframe and relive memories that I usually kept locked away, worried that I would fall too far in love with the past and wouldn’t want to resurface.
I often joked that I wanted to write a story where the only line of text on the page was my own name, the story itself inferred by what that name represented. I haven’t quite reached a blank page, but this is my closest attempt so far. Maybe the next one will be shorter.
_I felt something missing and came looking for it here._
William Harmon
About the Author
Mental Illnesses
- Aphantasia
- Amodal Spatial Representation
- Endophasia
- Nadpobudliwość Intelektualna
- Alexithymia
- Blunted Emotional Range
- Anosognosia
- Dysthymia
- Anhedonia
- Taedium Vitae
- Incongruent Affect Display
- Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder
- Alterity
- Schizoid Personality Disorder
- Secret Schizoid
- Schizoid Warmth
- Schizoid Compromise
- Intellectualized Affect
- Hyper-Reflexivity
- Affiliative Deficit
- Prosopanomia
- Dispositional Social Inhibition
- Tend-and-Befriend Response
- Epistemic Hospitality
- Cognitive Openness
- Sinistrality
- Psychomotor Acuity
- Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder
- Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Disorder
- Impaired Auditory Figure-Ground Discrimination
- Heat Intolerance
- Hunger Hyposensitivity
- Photic Sneeze Reflex
- Idiopathic Craniofacial Erythema
- Haptic Dactyl Aversion (Ornament)
- Dismissive-Avoidant Attachment
- Ego-Syntonic Passivity
- Ego-Syntonic Abstinence
- Latent Addictive Diathesis
- Puer Aeternus
- Mirthful Startle Response
- Adaptive Executive Functioning
- Psychological Reactance
- Autonomous Morality
- Weltschmerz
- Agonism
- Quixotism
- Accidental Charisma
- Prosocial Orientation
- Affiliative Protectiveness
- Dyadic Coalitional Bonding
- Acts of Service
- Pertinacious
- Constantia
- Fidelitas
- Acedia
- Virtuous Philautia
- Autophilia
- Agape
- Pragma
- Oblation
- Velleity
- Anerkennungsbedürfnis
- Sehnsucht
- Jungian Introversion
Physical Traits
- Caucasoid
- Ulotrichous
- Melanochroic
- Polytrichous (Scieran)
- Trichomegaly
- Central Heterochromia
- Pheomelanin-Dominant Mesochromic Iris
- Myopia
- Gelasin
- Voluntary Mandibular Gleeting
- Bilateral Lingual Rolling
- Ingressive Bilabial Fricative Whistle
- Normosthenic
- Normostaturate
- Lithe
- Oravci
- Stage 1 Hypertension
Beliefs
- Ignostic
- अर्हत् (Arhat)
- Auðumblungr
- Nihilistic
- Absurdist
- Ludus Vitae
- Primum Non Nocere
- Amor Fati
- Epicureanism
- Eudaimonic Autonomy
- Autotelic Epistemics
- Antinatalism (self)
Preferences
- Ludophile
- Autotelic
- Arcadian
- Biophilia
- 自然 (Shizen)
- Nyctophilia
- Astrophilia
- 水石 (Suiseki)
- Psithurism
- Dendrophilia
- Xylophilia
- Anthophilia
- Pluviophilia
- Bryophilia
- Chrysalism
- Potamophilia
- Teuthophile
- Flânerie
- Dérive
- Vellichor
- Bibliophilia
- The "Whirligig World" Method
- Logophilia
- Fernweh
- Onism
- Narcissus-Poiesis
- Mnemosyne's Mirror
- Saudade
- 物の哀れ (Mono No Aware)
- かわいい (Kawaii)
- キモかわいい (Kimokawaii)
- ギャップ萌え (Gyappu Moe)
- Hyperlexia
- Tactile Hedonism
- Cynophilia
- Philomathy
- Autodidact
- Comprehension-Oriented Learning
- Philosophia Naturalis
- Naturalism
- Philosophia
- Apeirophilia
- Poiesis
- Meraki
- 初心 (Shoshin)
- Didactic
- Gezelligheid
- Gastrophilia
- Baguette de tradition, beurre de baratte demi-sel
- Magicicada
- Selective Spectral Preference (600 nm, Low Luminance)
- Arithmophilia (Eight)
Other
- Intellectual Loneliness
- лишний человек (Lishniy Chelovek)
- 壬申灵猿，戏于静水深流 (Rénshēn Líng Yuán, Xì Yú Jìngshuǐ Shēnliú)
- Hypomnematic Practice
- Belles-lettres
- Enargeia
- Ataraxic Wit
- Ironic Self-Diminution
- Litotes
- Laconic
- Paraprosdokian
- Bathos
- Drollery
- Ironia
- Asteismus
- Eironeia
- Gallows Wit
- Σπουδαιογέλοιον (Spoudaiogeloion)
- Antiphrasis
- Apophasis
- Aporia
- Born during the Perseid Meteor Shower