I have been accepted into Google’s Summer of Code program this year to work for the MacPorts project. In a nutshell, I will be writing an equivalent to Gentoo’s revdep-rebuild – if you’re interested in the details, check out my proposal.

At the beginning of GSoC, every student receives a welcome package from Google, with a few goodies and a prepaid Visa card through which they will be paid. I have received this package yesterday and want to share my unboxing experience ;)

This is what the package looked like from the outside. Welcome packages are shipped by FedEx; in my case they left it with a neighbour, since I wasn’t at home when it arrived.

The package contains a pen, a notebook, a GSoC sticker that presumably glows in the dark (I’ve only read that, not tested it on my own), a welcome letter from Google (on US Letter paper, which feels weird to me being in Europe) and the payment card along with some notes and ToS for it.

I particulary like the payment card itself, because it just feels awesome to have a Visa card with Google’s colors and the Google “g” on it: