|
|
Wednesday, January 8th, 2003
| |
12:01 am - 31st Birthday
|
Happy birthday to me! January 8th is also the birthday of several celebreties: Elvis, David Bowie, and two baseball players, Mike Cameron and Jason Giambi. Happy Birthday guys!
I don't feel any older... actually, I'm feeling pretty young compared to yesterday and most of today. This past weekend I played in an ultimate frisbee tournament with my team, Hellfish. It was a lot of fun, but it involved a heck of a lot of running. We won all 5 of our games on Saturday and our first 2 games on Sunday, but we lost in the finals 15-12. The tournament was appropriately named the "Hangover Tournament" since it's the first time most people play after their New Year's Eve festivities. While I don't drink, I'm a little out of shape after eating lots of food and loafing around from about Thanksgiving til the holidays were over. Anyway, my legs are still a bit sore, but it no longer hurts to stand up or walk around. =)
Birthday Plans:
Lunch with friends at work downtown... not sure where yet.
Dinner with the family at The Cheesecake Factory. (My family is really into dessert, yum!)
This Saturday I have a Winter league frisbee game at noon with Hellfish. Shortly thereafter folks will meet up to go see "The Two Towers" at Cinerama with me. Following that, there'll be a pot-luck BBQ at my place for whoever wants to show up. I'm not sure of the exact plan because I'm not technically organizing the thing. Allegedly, email invites were sent out, but I don't think it actually happened yet. I hope people find out in time to actually make plans to show up. =)
I need to refill the propane tank on my BBQ and clean up the house a bit. Hmph. I'll probably procrastinate til Friday to do that. ;)
-Aaron
current mood:  sleepy
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, January 2nd, 2003
| |
5:01 pm - New Year(s)
|
Well, it's a brand new year so I thought I'd jot something down. Of course I completely skipped all of last year, so I suppose I should attempt a quick update:
I still live in Seattle and work at Ubermind, Inc. My non-work activities are mostly the same: ultimate frisbee, French horn, computer games, board games, reading, watching movies. I still mostly hang out with the same group(s) of friends.
New stuff:
I have a girlfriend (Katy)! We met over a year ago at a birthday party for a mutual friend who works at Fred Hutch. This summer she started playing frisbee with the team that Wolfe and I organize each year. We started dating in August and things have gone really well. She is really nice, cute, smart, and easy-going. We have a few overlapping interests, but mostly we just seem to "fit". Like most of my former girlfriends, her name starts with a "K". I spent 6 days down in Portland with her and her family over the X-mas holiday, and I actually had a really nice, relaxing time. We're planning to take a vacation to Hawaii together. Yikes, it sounds serious! =)
My grandfather died. He became suddenly ill with some sort of rare blood-bourne virus that made his blood cells want to attack the cells in his lungs and kidneys. He got flown from Yakima out to Seattle to the UW Med Center where he received excellent care for the month he was there. They managed to eradicate the virus, but too much damage had been done to his system for him to live without artificial breathing support. He had a living will which clearly stated that he did not want to be kept alive artificially, so my grandmother and the family decided to un-plug him. The positive side of all of this is that I got to know my family better and meet several relatives I didn't know. I feel much closer and more comfortable with my family now. The down-side besides the obvious sadness was the rather traumatic experience of standing with close family around his hospital bed while he slowly stopped breathing. I'd never been near a dead person before, nor watched anyone die. I mention all of this because I suspect it had a failry major impact on me and it helps to think about it and just write it down. I feel more in touch with my emotions now. I feel occaisional twinges of sadness that weren't there before. I miss my grandpa, and I feel sad for my grandma who is dealing with her grief and coming to grips with her new life without him. My grandfather was a very caring, hard-working, dedicated, and compassionate man. He worked to help a lot of people and a lot of people will miss him. He lived to be 81 years old being active and lucid for all but the last few weeks. I suspect we'd all be happy to have such good fortune.
I have met some new friends who may get mentioned if I start writing in here again regularly.
Ubermind is a lot smaller than it was at its peak. We've got about 18 people now instead of 30-ish. We'll probably be shrinking again soon unless we get some more work. I'm on a project right now, so my job seems secure for the next 4-6 months. We also moved the office from Fremont to Belltown (north end of downtown Seattle, on 3rd and Wall). The new office is pretty nice actually, has mroe space, and costs less than the old waterfront Fremont office.
Not-so-new, but not mentioned here before:
I moved shortly after my previous post. I live in a house on Phinney Ridge which is about 10 blocks away from my Fremont apartment. I have two roommates, Aaron and Billy. We're all ultmate frisbee types. I couldn't get the phone company to let me keep my old phone number, so I no longer have a land line. I just use a cell phone for everything now. Email me if you need my new phone number. I got a pretty good calling plan, and everything costs about half of what my old land-line/cell phone plan combo was. I did splurge and buy a fancy new phone a while back after my old one died. I'm glad I never ended up buying a spendy cordless phone though! Oh, so the roomates are great. The house is a little decrepit, but the rent is really cheap. We share one bathroom, but for the most part our schedules don't really overlap much so we rarely have to fight for who gets to use the shower first. The roof leaks sometimes into my bedroom, so that's an annoyance. Good thing it never rains here... =P
I'm currently reading "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson, "Take on the Street" (great investing book) by Arthur Levitt, and a few others. Usually I just read one book at a time, but somehow I got started on about 5 books at once.
-Aaron
current mood:  contemplative
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, August 8th, 2001
| |
1:35 am - The Good, the Bad, and the Good Again
|
First, the good news. I'm enjoying my job, I love the new office, and I'm learning lots of stuff. I got to work from home for a week (my first full week on the job) which was a pretty relaxing way to get back into "work-mode". Then Ubermind moved on Aug 1st to "UberWest" - our new office here in Fremont. It is right on the water and near the heart of all the cool restaraunts and shops. My commute couldn't be much better. I'm still mostly doing "Internal Projects" and no Java coding yet.
I learned today that installing stuff with .rpm files is much easier than downloading normal .tar archives and doing a manual configure/make/install. I did get Bugzilla installed fairly easily, but I'm having more trouble with Open LDAP. (boring details omitted)
I do know what project I'm going to be working on and basically what it entails, but I'll save that for another entry. For now, I'll just mention that it's called NCB and it should be a good initial learning project. (yay!)
Now on to the bad news: For reasons of her own, my roommate wants to get her own place. She assures me I'm a great roommate, but she has decided that she needs to do this. I can understand her wanting her own space, and I think I am ready to have my own place too. However, I like where I live, and I am just getting used to having my easy commute to work. So, now I need to figure out what I want to do. I could stay here, but she's gonna be taking most of the furniture with her. I can buy furniture, but I'd like to wait until I've moved into a new place (if that's what I end up doing). I could find a new roommate (perhaps another one with tables and couches?) to pull in. Maybe I should buy a house? Scary thought... I'll probably stay here through Sep 30 while I look for a new place.
And finally, the "Good Again" news. It looks very likely that GreaterGood will emerge from the ashes of bankruptcy this week. How often do you see a failed dot-com actually re-open? (Answer: never) I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. The principal guy doing the deal is really cool, and he has some good ideas about how to make it work out better this time around. More details later if it actually happens.
Ack, it's past my bedtime!
-Aaron
current mood: sleepy
|
|
(3 comments | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, July 19th, 2001
| |
2:56 pm - Getting up to speed
|
I'm making steady progress today at work. I'm almost used to using Linux again, and I've just about got the hang of what I'm supposed to be doing. Soon, Bugzilla will be installed! (I hope!)
Yesterday I learned that "linuxconf" lets you set up networking stuff, add users/groups, and even set the time/date in Linux. Very handy. It works much better inside Xwindows than it does from normal linux mode.
Today I learned that you can install perl modules pretty easily from the command-line using something like: perl -MCPAN -e 'install "Foo"' where Foo is some perl module (like DBI) or bundle (like Bundle::Bugzilla). It's way easier than manually downloading and installing them.
It looks like I'll be getting my own laptop tomorrow morning, whee! Being a consultant has it's perks! =)
-Aaron
current mood:  determined
current music: spinning noise from multiple hard drives
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, July 18th, 2001
| |
5:09 pm - Thoughtful
|
My first day on the job is going fine. Mostly I'm just getting situated. Three of us are camped out in the basement of a house in Queen Anne. I'm using someone's laptop until my real computer is available. It's a dual-boot with Redhat and Win2kPro. I've been assigned a task, but I'm having trouble getting motivated bedcause of the news about my (our) former place of work...
GreaterGood.com is closing down. All my friends and former co-workers who were still there got axed this morning. There are about four or five other Ubermind folks who used to work at GreaterGood, so several of us went over to the Elysian Brewery Pub to get lunch with the dot-bombed tech team. While it was nice to see everyone, I can't help but feel sad about the fate of GreaterGood and the folks who work(ed) there. I had some really great times with them, and we built some really nifty stuff that actually did some good for the world. However, as one brutally honest person pointed out, we'd have done more actual good by taking all the venture capital money and just handing it over to worthy causes. I don't fully subscribe to that opinion, but it is sadly true from a strict bottom-line perspective. Perhaps with some better foresight or more careful management, GreaterGood would have not only survived but been much more efficient at channelling money to our non-profit partners.
Ah well, I was proud to have been a part of it.. And now I'm working at a potentially kick-ass job because of the connections I made while I was there. I find it very strange that Greatergood fired everyone at about the time I showed up to start my first day though. A more poetic soul would come up with some clever commentary about beginnings and endings. I'll just settle for having noticed the coincidence. Perhaps I can stop brooding at least now that I've written about it.
Now back to trying to install bugzilla! Grrr, chomp, crunch.
-Aaron
current mood:  pensive
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, July 17th, 2001
| |
11:31 am - Changes
|
After three months of slacking, I finally start my new job with Ubermind tomorrow. I don't really know yet what I'll be doing. I do know that I'll be working with some great folks on some new and challenging stuff involving Java, J2EE, databases, etc. I should probably go study my Java, but I'll probably try to finish the book I'm reading first. ("Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire")
I've had a fun vacation! I played in three ultimate frisbee tournaments: Onionfest, Gender Balance, and Potlatch. I met a bunch of new people, mainly through frisbee circles. I visited relatives in Portland. I hung out with friends, played games, watched movies, read books, and avidly followed the Mariners amazing season so far.
I plan to keep sqeezing in all my sports, music, gaming, and social activities around work, but I suspect I'll be too busy to do everything I want to do. Ah well, change is good.
current mood:  optimistic
current music: Alice in Chains
|
|
(4 comments | comment on this)
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
lordloki's journal