Another photo blog:

Loose transcript of a phone call between Riani and myself around 5:15 Friday afternoon:

me: hello
Riani: what's up
m: nothing much...
r: want to go camping tomorrow
m: sure

Apparently Tashi (Riani’s roomate) had bought a huge (and nice) tent at a yard sale and wanted to try it out. So we headed up north to a campground 15 or so north of Index, WA. The pictures tell the rest of the story.

In order to save you from yet another of my meeting minutes style blog post about the most innane details of something I did recently I’ve decided instead to do a photo-blog post. I can’t say that I’ll do them that often, but I’d have to imagine I could manage it more often than I’m apparently doing blog posts. (wow that’s a lot of personal pronouns in a single bound) Click the image to follow the story…

So as I write this I’m sitting in Monterey, CA for probably the 6 time, I don’t really feel like counting them all up. I’m in CA for a conference, MySQLUC, that starts Monday in Monterey b/c I have a friend who lives there and the plane ticket to fly down Saturday morning was $50 cheaper than Sunday afternoon, even though I’m not paying for it, heh. One thing different about this trip is I have a rental car all to myself. It was kind of weird driving down from San Jose yesterday, a trip I’ve made several times, but never driving. Got a chance to eat at Gianni’s last night which was cool, it’s good pizza. I got to meet a new crew of vistas. The seem pretty much the same as the previous groups. I decided I need to be come a mry vista historian or something as I now know at least some part of 4 generations of them.

Otherwise I’m looking forward to the conference, not so much the being in San Jose/Santa Clara. I think of all the big cities I’ve been to (which isn’t all that many I suppose) San Jose is the least interesting. I can’t exactly put my finger on what is that bad about it, but there’s lots of little things which can be summed up with it just seems to have no personality, so I guess might be able to put my finger on it after all. The one cool thing I’ve managed to find and do there was the The Tech Science & Technology Museum. I’d always felt this way about San Jose and it was only confirmed when I asked around work for suggtions the best of which consisted of things not to bother doing and “go to San Francisco.”

At any rate, I’ll probably blog a bit more as the week goes on, until then…

Well not all that much, but I’m busy doing lots of nothing worth mentioning if that’s any consolation, it is to me anyway. We launched the first installment of the project I’m working on YourDigitalLocker. I mostly worked on the back-end service that’s behind the scenes. The only part of the webapp (parts that users see) is the download redirect and url generation code which I’m sure means a whole lot of nothing to most people.

In another piece of work related news my friend Matt is leaving Amazon (hopefully if you know him you’ve heard it from him before you’re hearing it here.) Luckily he’s plans to stick around the Seattle area so he’ll still be around and work with a couple of friends on a start-up so good luck to him with that.

Outside of work I’m getting ready to travel like hell. I’ll have three trips in just over a month, starting in the middle of next month. The first one coming up i’m looking forward to. I’m heading down to Santa Clara, CA for the MySQL Users Conference. I’m looking forward to it, I’ve not been to a professional conference before and i know the area pretty well, but haven’t had occasion to do too much free exploring. It’s a work trip so that’s cool too. We’re looking at using MySQL on a couple of inprogress and upcoming projects, mainly b/c I’m serving as a proponent for it.

Imediately after getting back from that trip, probably without even leaving the airport, I’ll be heading to Lexington, KY for my friend Shawn’s wedding and to visit. It should be a chance to set some of my family as well if they manage to make it up there for lunch/dinner. A few weeks folloinw that I’ll be heading back home for my brother Todd’s wedding. I haven’t figured out how long I’ll be able to stay for that trip yet, but hopefully it will be a bit of time. We’ll that’s (more than) enough for a single post. Wow, I’ve managed to strech not that much out in to a lot of words.

So on the way out to visit Yosemite (Yo-sim-ite, also known as Yellowstone) I came up with the idea of doing a musical diary. My initial plan is to do it monthly, pick some music that sums up my life or just stuff i’m listening to and like and create a Mix-Tape like journal entry. I’ll probably post it up here for all the world to see.

I’m not exactly sure what it will end up looking like when i get to doing it, but i think it will be cool. Apparently i’m not the only person on earth to come up with roughly the same idea , though i couldn’t find too many relivant results. My implementation should be quite different than those…

stay tuned

OK, this is getting hilarious there’s a Tristan Prettyman song playing in the background on some WB show I taped by accident (see previous posts)

So I’ve had a really long week (and a half) and I’m glad to be back at my place lounging with nothing to do all weekend. It started with a visit from Misty. Her friends Annie and Abe (would have pictures if I’d remember to take my camera out with us) came up for part of the weekend. We hung out, went to IKEA, and headed down to Pike Place market. After they headed back to portland Misty and I took a roadtrip to the north, more specifically Vancouver. Cool place, you should go some time. I have to say it’s a much more enjoyable experience going up and through the border on Sunday morning/Monday afternoon.

We basically came staright back from Vancouver and headed to the airport. Misty back to Santa Cruz and me, I was off for my first trip back home since I’d left. I messed up and wore jeans on the plan and was hot and uncomfortable the whole trip home, might of managed to sleep an hour the whole (overnight) trip. Chris, who was in from Iraq and my primary reason for going home now, picked me up from the airport in Nashville. We headed back towards W.C. and had decent conversation on the way. I took a short nap to catch up on some of the sleep I missed and started out two straight days of nearly solid visiting family. It was nice to get to see people, but to be honest going home doesn’t really feel the same as it used to. I’m not sure what’s changed, I suppose both my family and I have in a million little ways. I can’t put my finger on all, or even enough, of them to explain it, but it seems to be the case.

Then it was time for a trip back to Nashville to catch planes back this way… and here I am, 25+ hours of travel in 5 days is way more than enough for me.

Oh and I bought a tripod so you can expect to see some new/cool pictures up in the near future, panoramic, long exposure, etc.

So I haven’t made a post to this blog in quite some time now, I suppose most people who were reading it would have given up by this point, but I’m back. I don’t have anything in particular to talk about, but here goes…

Sitting here just now with One Tree Hill on in the background, not a fan, man there’s nothing on TV on wednesday nights this season. There was a song one just a second ago by Tristan Pretty man who did a fishbowl a while back (blogged about it) not 30 seconds after that in another scene there’s a song by Augustanna (the song plays as you enter the site.)

So Seattle, I’m officially here now, or at least a little more than i was yesterday. I transfered my vehicle registration today, since it ran out in September. I was planning on getting my drivers license switched as well, but it appears the place i went to doesn’t do that part of things, another day. I’ve almost finished getting the house in order, I’ve not been that motivated lately so it’s taking me quite a while. I also almost completed the whole 401k rollover thing which has taken forever, but been decently simple.

Amazon is going really well, been really busy. I’m enjoying what i’m doing, it’s all quite new, but I seem to be spending more time and effort in design with coding coming in second. That’s ok, so long as I stay on this side of the things, I’m not interested in people managment and project planning.

I got reconnected with an old school friend, through my brother Todd, recently. Leah Newman, that’s been kinda interesting, especially since i haven’t talked to her in around 8 or 9 years, whoa that’s while, I’m getting pretty freaking old. Good thing i don’t really care.

So I’m heading back home in a couple weeks. Chris will be home, which is the primary reason I’m heading that way at that specific time. Before that Misty is coming up to visit, looking forward to that, I think I’ll come up with something special for the occasion, don’t know what just yet, we shall see.

So movers suck, or at least the movers that were contracted to do my move. It has now been 13 days since the date that I originally requested that my stuff be delivered. The date range they came back with was the 15th – 20th, I had requested the 14th or 15th, and I being reasonable accepted that. At several points during the process between then and now they have gone in and out of being sure that my stuff would be delivered at a given date and time. Starting the 21st they startd compensating me and a very reasonable rate for the delay so at this point I’m ok with the fact that it’s going to be late, but they’re still pissing me off with their inability to give me a date or even simply return a phone call. I had almost as many problem with the original packing and loading as they couldn’t set a date before I had to leave so I had to find a friend who could do it and then they weren’t able to pick up the stuff at the scheduled time so I had to scramble from 2500 miles away to find someone who could let them in to do their work. At any rate they’re now 7 days late and I’ll be gettinng a sizable chunk of money assuming they brought my stuff tomorrow, which they won’t. Just in case you are moving and are looking for a company to take care of it for you stay the hell away from Mills Van Lines.

We’ll I’m in Seattle now and I’ve been extremely busy. Yesterday and today were the first days that I had any free time to lounge around. So far I’m liking Seattle quite a bit, there’s lots to do and all of it is pretty much new to me. I’m in temporary housing at Harbor Steps, which is really cool and I have an amazing view. I started work at Amazon.com on Monday and things there have been pretty busy, lots and lots of reading, it’s like drinking from a fire hydrant. I’m starting to figure out what I’m going to be doing and I’m liking what I’m seeing. I’ve also been very impressed with the processes and environment they have in place.

Misty came up the Thursday after I arrived and we hung out and drove all around creation looking at places. I had a really nice time hanging out with Misty over the weekend, which was capped off with an amazing view of Mt. Ranier. On our way to the airport I was on the phone with my real estate agent (I have a contract on my house) we rounded a corner on I-5 and there it sat in the middle of the interstate. 30 miles away, it was the first day visibility had been good enough to see that far (when I had been in a place where you could.) It dominated the horizon, 30 miles away and still enormous. Damn it was cool.

Anyway, I ended up picking a place to live near work. It’s a 2 bedroom house with lots of room and a finished basement. It will have storage etc. so that I can keep all of the house stuff that I’ve accumulated, which I wouldn’t of been able to keep in most of the places I’ve looked. I’ll put pictures of the place up as soon as I get a chance to take them. The view off of the back porch is pretty amazing. The only thing I don’t like about it is the kitchen is pretty small / cramped. I’m not sure what I’ll end up doing when I go to make pizza. Busy, busy, busy…

So things are, hopefully/finally, set. I’ll be leaving this coming wednesday, but unfortunatly my stuff won’t be leaving until the next morning. The relocation company was unable to find movers who could move me out on monday and tuesday as orignally scheduled. I hate the idea that my stuff will be packed up and loaded after i’m gone, but luckily i was able to find someone, Tasha who can be around. Hopefully the movers where be here when they’re supposed to be and that will all go well.

I found out a couple of days ago where i’d be staying until i find a place. It looks good, i was hoping to get placed in one of the locations closer to Pike Place Market but i’ll cope. Everything seems to be in order, the only things i’m worried about at this point, to amount to anything, are my pack and load and finding a place that i like once i get out there. I’ve done some searching and even contacted a few places to start the process. Hopefully that will work out.

So if you’ve never done it getting ready for a move when you’re not supposed to pack your stuff is really werid. I have piles and collection boxes of stuff all over my house. I’ve gone through and gotten rid of enormous amounts of junk i’ve collected over the past 10 or so years. I’m actually not taking that much stuff now, which i’m pretty proud of. It’s hard to go through things to get rid of junk when you kinda have to leave it where it lays.

So that’s that, I’m going to sit down now and make a todo list out for the next couple of days. There’s quite a bit of stuff that kinda has to happen at particular times. It will be some relief to get the pack and load stuff behind me, but i’m sure the apartment search will still be somewhat stressful.