Last week we all traveled to Terracotta headquarters in San Francisco for our quarterly get-together. This was my first trip since I was hired. Alex and I flew out together on Wednesday morning.

Overall it was a fantastic trip. I got to finally meet in person most everyone else in the company, including the rest of my teammates, who I’ve so far only talked to on the phone or over IM. We all went skiing on Thursday. We ate some delicious food. And we even got a little work done.

Here are some highlights:

Wednesday - nonstop flight out was slightly delayed due to fog in San Fran that morning, but we got to the office by early afternoon. We introduced ourselves around - I met Abhishek (a teammate on the Transparency team), Nabib, Raghu, Himanshu, Kunal, Iyer, Dwayne, Jason, Tim M, Taylor, Jeff, Peter, and Christine.

Alex and I grabbed some lunch, then we had a code review of the new “lock leasing” feature which my teammate Antonio worked on. Very interesting stuff, I’d like to blog about it separately. Tim and Saravanan were in that code review also.

After work Alex and Jason and I went to a wine bar, then to a great Thai food restaurant, where we met Juris.

Thursday - we (all of Engineering) got up early and drove in three cars to Northstar in Lake Tahoe, arriving about 9:00. Madcap Hijinx ensued.

Specifically, many of us took lessons. I’ve been skiing since I was six, but I decided to give snowboarding a try. I had previously snowboarded for about 30 minutes and it didn’t go so well, so I decided to take a lesson. Antonio and Himanshu were also in my class. Meanwhile Alex, Nabib, Jason and Abhishek took skiing lessons right next to us. All of us first timers did surprisingly well. The only injury was a nosebleed - Nabib’s face hit someone’s elbow after someone else ran into him.

The rest of the guys made sure to come heckle us near the end of our lessons. It was during this time that I got to witness EY on skis. I’d characterize his style of skiing as: gutsy, fearless and fast. He is very good at skiing. But, he is not so good at stopping. From what I could tell he usually stopped himself by throwing himself to the ground, usually losing one or both skis in the process. One fearless teammate who was brave enough to get in EY’s path in an attempt to snap some action photos had to throw himself clear as EY barreled past the lift line at the bottom of the hill. This gave rise to a number of jokes such as “stopping is for wimps!” and something about EY skiing all the way back to San Francisco.

I met Geert this morning, who was in from Belgium along with his girlfriend Nathalie. He didn’t want to ski due to his back.

At 1:00 we all met for lunch and spent the hour wondering if Manoj was still sliding face first down the mountain. Apparently they took him onto a steep blue, assuring him “aww, blues are basically just like bunny slopes”. Manoj thought it more prudent to slide on his belly then attempt to snowboard - I don’t blame him, he hasn’t been boarding for very long. Unfortunately for him, his teammates took some incriminating photos (which will hopefully be available soon).

That afternoon I left the bunny slopes and attempted the green slopes with everyone else. I was quickly left in the dust, but I was able to get to the bottom in one piece, and without falling too many times. Taking a lesson was definitely helpful - snowboarding is so different from skiing. I was a beginner all over again, having to think about each turn I was about to make. Raghu and I closed out the afternoon by taking some runs together, including my first blue slope. By then I was exhausted, and it was time to go.

That night I walked with Manoj, Raghu and Himanshu to their favorite nearby Indian food restaurant, Tandoori Mahal. Everything was delicious. We were all nearly exhausted but also hungry. It was great hanging out with those guys and getting to know them a little better.

Friday - I think the whole company slept in. Eventually, Alex, Geert, Nathalie and I took the shuttle over to the office. This was the day I actually got some work done. First, Tim walked Alex and I through the TC system test architecture, which are test classes built on JUnit which can run L1’s and L2’s in-process. Using this newfound knowledge, I wrote a test which proved that String interning was sometimes broken when the String was compressed - the fix was simple and the failing test then passed. Ahhhh.

Also Friday morning, my hacking String blog entry reached #1 on dzone, and my teammates gave me a sticker as a prize! I had my choice of stickers, so I selected the one which read “My Team Sucks!”

Friday night we hit that same Thai food place one more time: Alex, Jason, Hung, Juris and I. We reminisced about the good ol’ days of the first season of South Park. And Saturday Alex and I flew home.

And now I’m back in my basement office/hole, trying to get back in the flow of actual work. Sounds like we may do another trip in May during JavaOne, since half of my team will already be there anyway (Alex and Geert are both presenters).