The Dedication of Google SecOps

It's been said over and over here, and everyone agrees: we're all proud and profoundly thankful for the dedicated security team, who've been working for weeks - without vacation and straight through the Christmas holiday season - to determine the nature of attacks on the Google internal network.

For me, what impresses me most is that while other companies I've worked for might have been able to stop the attack, Google SecOps (Security Operations) was able to analyze it, determine what it was trying to do, determine where it came from, and determine who else it was trying to attack.

For others, what impresses them is the dedication - the fact that they have been working day and night through holidays - the fact that some have cancelled their vacation plans... at a recent company meeting, someone in the crowd suggested a Hawaiian vacation for them, and Sergey's response was "that's not enough".

Me, though, I can't help but ask, "Is it really so bad?" My co-worker responds, "Jorg, they had to cancel their Christmas plans!"

So I think about my Christmas. The time spent with my in-laws. The 50 minutes in line waiting among crying children so we could talk with, and get pictures with, an elderly gentleman pretending to be Santa Claus. The 7-hour drive to see my mom in L.A. I ponder, would I really want to give that up... to spend day and night among some of the smartest people in the world, defending the world's #1 brand against attacks by a communist nation, and preserve the privacy of Chinese dissidents? That would be....

Best... Christmas... Ever.

The F-Word, revisited

So today, I'm taking Arielle to school, and, out of the blue, she mentions that one of the boys at her school thought that the F-Word was "fire truck". And she laughed.

After a pause, curiosity got to me: "Do you know what the real F-Word is?"

"Yeah. Fucker."

"How do you know?"

"I heard the boys using it."

An awkward silence followed. Well, awkward to me; I doubt she understands what an awkward silence is... But once again curiosity got the best of me.

"Do you know what it means?"

"Well, it's a fucker plane. They keep saying 'Fucker plane'. "

My mind raced, but to no end. I couldn't imagine that the boys in her class would really be talking about the "mile-high club"... So I pressed further.

"Well, that's how they use it, but do you know what it *means*?"

"Yeah. It's an airplane with 3 wings on it."

Which resulted in an unexpected teachable moment, where I explained what triplanes were, and the correct pronunciation of Anthony Fokker's last name.