Estimated read time: 2 minutes
The GSoC student list is not public, and to be honest, usually it's boring. In most cases you just want to read the mails matching ^From:.*google.com, and just delete the remaining junk. However, there was a funny thread there, about how others deal with the usual problem: if you want to describe others (read: who is not a geek) what do you do (hack PaX, rewrite git-merge, etc.) you probably need a half an hour. Or maybe it's better not describing your job at all. Let's see some funny quotes:
The "I gave up" one:
After the first 10 fails, I decided to say the following as fast as I can: Me: "I am doing "something" and Google is paying me to do it. I don't know why they are, but I assume its' because they aren't evil and stuff. End of story". Other: Oh. (Coding resumes)
BTW, the guy adds vim support to anjuta. :)
If you have nice friends, you'll get:
People who don't understand usually state as much, followed by, "...but if Google is paying you, that's pretty neat."
The "involved" one:
Unfortunately, I end up rambling for twenty-plus minutes and they are sorry they ever asked...
The "practical" one:
In my case, everyone in my university thinks it is an intern program so they ask me when I am going to travel. I have memorized the response.
The "religious":
I spent about twenty minutes explaining to a reporter from business week the finer points of open source vs free software.
And the typo kign:
> thanks very much gays ...... > GUYS .... really, I was miss typed ... now, again. Thanks very much GUYS
(I hope this post does not count as a leak, though. :P)