He's also occasionally on Hacker News:

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lisper

Is he that Ron, the xoogler, who was forced to use Java on AdWords?

Edit: Yup.

http://www.flownet.com/ron/xooglers.html

    So I was a little disappointed when I found out
    on day 1 that I had been assigned to the ads group.
    But that disappointment turned to dismay when I learned
    what my assignment was to be: I was the lead engineer
    on a new advertising system code named "adstoo", what
    eventually became AdWords. That part wasn't so bad.
    The bad part was, this was going to be the inaugural
    Java project at Google. Google, which had until now
    been a Java-free zone (which was one of the reasons I
    took the job) was going for Java in a big way, and I,
    the consummate Java hater, was supposed to be its
    chief evangelist.

    Just peachy.