The Bull Og

There was a point today, sometime in-between the deluge of new-hire paperwork, getting to know a new office-space, having to configure a new Microsoft system because my Macbook Pro hasn’t yet arrived, the multitude of new names, and a code overview for (just one) part (of many) of an intricate Rails system, when I thought: “this is exactly what I was looking for.”

Today ranks as one of the best first days I’ve had since starting as a software engineer. I like the people I’ll be working with, I like the company, I like the product, and I like the numerous challenges before me.

Although, I’ll admit that I didn’t sleep very well last night. It was mostly due to the heat in San Francisco but partially due to one nightmare I had about showing up unprepared. I don’t exactly remember what happened in the dream; I either wore shorts or didn’t have any pants on when walking into the office. One is certainly worse than the other, but considering the magnitude of change from my previous position, only one (fairly harmless) nightmare is doing pretty well for the night before a new job.

There was, however, a funny moment at lunch today. The question came up: “so how did someone from Yahoo! get a job at a rails shop?” (alluding to the fact that Yahoo! is primarily a PHP shop.) It reminded me of the time just over three years ago when I caught the Yahoo! shuttle bus back into San Francisco after a day of interviewing in Sunnyvale (which ultimately resulted in my first job at Yahoo!.)

On the shuttle, I started chit-chatting with the guy next to me. He asked if I had snagged the interview through a friend or relative and when I responded that I had landed it after an application through HotJobs, he jolted a bit and responded, rather surprised: “you must have some pretty special skills, then…”

Special enough, I guess…

Yesterday was my final day after just over three years with Yahoo! and while I was sad to say goodbye to the many talented professionals I met there, I’m excited to embark on a new adventure. I’ll be fulfilling the other half of a dream to live *AND* work in San Francisco at a startup whose service you’re sure to hear about if you haven’t already.

I’ve been looking for a good fit at a small(-ish) Rails shop where I would be able to concentrate on the frontend (read: tons of JavaScript/HTML/CSS) for a customer-facing site; a place with growth potential where I could make a substantial impact, a place where they would value my years of experience in the backend in addition to my UI chops, a place where I could utilize my soft skills, a place where I could teach and learn, a place where I could potentially contribute back to the Rails community.

As of next week, I’ll be joining the company making personalized shopping effortless - Shop It To Me - as Senior Web Developer. If I have your contact info, get ready for an invite to join!

You weren’t at Modulations? You missed out… on things like these… (all thanks to CCRMA):

Gettin’ down with Visda Goudarzi and Ge Wang on Michael Zeligs’ “Rhythm for Squares”

Groovin’ with Megan Miller and Michael Berger on Terry Berlier’s Pan Lid Gamelan I

About a month ago, it was announced that Ignite would be coming to Chirp.

I decided to submit an abstract for a talk, but on what? My wife told me that I should probably make it something Twitter-related but I decided to go in a different direction, given what I saw here.

If you haven’t deduced from this post’s title, I guess I should listen to her more often in the future.

Anyway, I found myself gravitating towards two particular topics from which I could draw a great deal of personal experience: fitness and nutrition (geeks’ favorite topics, right?)

I thought about how to frame a talk for the 5 min/20 slides format. As part of the exercise, I captured a few of the most meaningful moments in my life so far regarding my physical fitness. Based on those events, I focused on distilling the lessons I’ve learned over the last two decades into 15 second chunks.

Perhaps I’ll get to sharing those lessons in the future at a different Ignite session but as my talk wasn’t accepted for this round, I thought I would at least blog about each of the moments as they’ve had an impact on me. I’ll save the details for another day, but here are each of the events in a nutshell, reverse-chronological order:

1. Bootcamp with Maurice Rodriguez
2. Masters’ swimming with Markus Lombardini
3. Kieser Fitness
4. Body for Life
5. Kursalon Fitness/John Harris/Club Danube
6. Health Dynamics with John Patnott
7. The Strength Shoe
8. High School Football & Basketball Coach
9. HFCS

Over the coming months, I’ll look to flesh out each as vignettes as time allows.

(BTW, the speakers who were selected for the evening were great. You can check them out here.)

In February 2010, I hit the GDC when I came to SF with the hopes of finding a job. I thought, “surely, with my web skills… I’ll be in-demand” but oh how sobering of an experience it was.

A few months later in July 2010, Zynga was formed.

Fast forward three years and I just caught the other day that Zynga’s been reportedly valued at $5B. A $5B business in three years?!? Amazing.