February 28: Cali-freakin'-fornia

OK, I'm here and vaguely settled — day one is done. California is awesome — it was a brisk 20 degrees today. I still can't believe I'm here — after vaguely wishing to be in Silicon Valley since I was 15 or so, it's taking a while to set in. Cali-freakin'-fornia. Man.

The PBwiki folks are awesome and are doing their best to help me get settled and comfortable. From the category of “oddest first day ever”, I ended up going to Stanford's career fair with Brian, Joël, and Nathan. Stanford's campus is beautiful and gigantic and makes Dal look like a bus stop.

Anyway, I'm sleepy and jet-lagged, so I'm keeping this short. Halifax people, I miss you all.

February 27: Two thumbs and a visa

Quick, what's got two thumbs, an incredibly heavy backpack, and a US visa?

This guy right here does! *points at myself* Yep, yep, I've successfully traversed Obstacle Course 'A' of my entry to the US. Next up? Getting to Chicago for my connecting flight. My flight from here to there is late, which means I'm probably going to miss my connecting flight to San Francisco. Based on a few conversations with various airport/airline folks, Chicago's weather is notoriously awful (a piece of information that would've been useful a few days ago). There's always the chance that my connecting flight will be correspondingly late, but I'm not holding my breath.

The funny part of all of this is that I still love flying! It's such an adventure, and this is the most exciting trip yet. I'm really going to miss Halifax and the people there, but I'm ready for this. San Francisco, here I come. Eventually.

February 22: Chopsticks for everything

All of my stuff is gone. The apartment is empty, and I'm sitting on an air mattress eating a fruit salad using chopsticks.

Ah, moving. What a joy. Somewhere in a chilly warehouse sits the contents of my apartment, from my bubble-wrapped TV to my saran-wrapped couch to my, er...box-wrapped everything else. The moving guy said it could take up a month for everything to arrive in California, which suits me just fine. I don't have an apartment on that end yet. I'll be Craigslisting it up hardcore once I set down, which, incidentally, won't be until next week.

It turns out that overnight document delivery doesn't reach as far as Halifax, so my legal documents for my visa petition couldn't get to me in time for my Sunday flight (the world stops revolving on weekends, you know). So, they'll be here Monday, but just in case of disaster, they suggested I leave Tuesday. Since my mom is super busy with work that day, and motherly airport escorts are absolutely required when moving across the continent, I've booked a flight on Wednesday. So, I have a bit more breathing room to finish stuff up here. Huzzah.

Oh, and Simon is up from Australia, same as he always is. I'll never understand why his incessant jetsets around the world always include a stop to our neck of the woods, in winter no less, but I'm glad they do. But seriously, though, who leaves summer to come to Canadian winter? It's madness, I tell you, madness! Anyway, I have several boxes of those crazy toxic bubbles he brought up last time, and I'm ripping through them fast. If you stay in my kitchen long enough, you can get high off of the fumes.

PS: You'd think watermelon would be really easy with chopsticks — it's not. Honeydew is. Go figure.

February 20: Sean = awesome


Oh yeah. Big time.

February 16: Birthday

Happy birthday to Steve, LeVar Burton, Geordi LaForge, Phoebe Buffay, and me (25, 51, -327, 41, and 25, respectively).

Another of year of not dying — go us!

February 12: Intergalatic

Oh, man, is there ever a lot to do in preparation for moving. I put up a Kijiji ad to try to find a subletter for my apartment (which I'll miss), and before the day was up, I had eight viewings set up. About a third of them ended up bailing, but eventually, I found someone who I quite like and will hopefully like the apartment as much as I do. While I'm trying to sort that out, I'm also filling out paperwork left-and-right for my visa application and trying to find a moving company to move all of my stuff the 5.285x10-10 lightyears from here to San Francisco — eep! I'm a big ball of excitement and stress, but don't worry — the excitement is winning.

Steve turned me on to an awesome Japanese band called Boom Boom Satellites. Just seeing their name should give you an idea of how awesome they are. They're supposed to be an electronic band, but they use electric guitars heavily, so they feel more rock-ish than anything else. I really like them, and in case you need more convincing, they have an album called Full of Elevating Pleasures, which is just delightful. Check out Intergalactic, Easy Action, and Pill (watch the drummer in that one...he's got awesome hair).

Anyway, I've got to get back to work — this is my last week here at v.1 Labs. I'm trying to finish up new code while at the same time trying to leave everything in a state that won't psychically embarrass me in the future. It's hard to leave behind a code base (actually, four or five codebases, really) and know that other people are going to be maintaining it indefinitely — especially when you're the sole developer for large swathes of it. Hopefully, nothing I wrote will ever end up on The Daily WTF, but I guess you never know.

Context-free quote of the day
Sean: if there wasn't a wall inthe way, I could throw a squish pig at Katie
Sean: granted, I would also need a squish pig for that

February 06: Clouds in my coffee

So...I'm moving to San Francisco — stat. I got the crazy idea in my head in early January, and lo and behold, found a company I really like (PBwiki) that wants me down there. My trip last week was mostly about seeing whether Janet and I would like San Francisco enough to live there. I've officially been offered (and accepted) the job, so in about two and a half weeks, I'll be desperately running around the Bay Area, trying to find a place to live.

I'm scared and excited, but I think it'll mostly be fun. I've wanted to work in Silicon Valley ever since I was 14 and first starting to program, so this is a pretty amazing opportunity for me. I'll be making frequent trips home, so hopefully I won't be losing touch with anyone.

Anyway, current concerns are mostly centered on getting a moving company to move my stuff and finding a subletter for my apartment. That being said, anyone who wants to hang out randomly before I go, feel free to call me and keep me company while I freak out. It'll be a blast!