Today, after two weeks of being in the two weeks’ notice netherworld that included a code sprint to try to get everything tidied up for my previous employer and jury duty, I finally got to show up at Carbon Five.
It was great taking the short walk from my house to the office. Upon arriving about a half dozen others were already there, recapping weekend fun and bike shopping in the lounge area. The espresso machine was hissing in the kitchen and everyone seemed pretty excited to get to work.
Austin Rubyist, now in SF like many of us, Mike has been designated my project lead for my first project. The project is something that’s in a domain really familiar to me: hardware configuration and permutation management. The project is really young so I was able to dive in without requiring too much catch-up time before being able to help debug and work through issues.
Mike and I “paired” the whole day: where you have to keyboards and mice, but one monitor and computer. By doing so we can work through ideas and spot errors faster. That was really a neat experience.
Additionally I was put into the thick of HTML5, something I’ve not done a lot of work with. Thankfully, my Coffeescript research lately paid off as Mike and I were able to get some Javascript functionality implemented.
I suppose, in all honesty, it felt a bit like baby-steps, but still they were steps that got me in the right direction.
I’m also going to try to embrace some new habits:
- Keep a daily journal
- What did you do, for client accountability
- What opportunities exist?
- What sorts of automation / tooling would make this work easier
- Not overeat at lunch
I also conquered my fear of the espresso maker thanks to the example of my teammates Courtney and my lead Mike. Now all that remains is to perfect my technique so that I don’t scorch the milk.
Other than that, everyone has been very nice and welcoming and really tried to make me comfortable. I really appreciated it. I knew they were really keen before I came here, but people here have proven to be really kind.
It was a really beautiful day in SF today and we had my first lunch with the team out in the beautiful Yerba Buena gardens — what a great city to live and work in!
Often times I’m out in my neighborhood and am curious about food / coffee or a beer. livesoma.com has some great maps of these three spots.
Getting off of the evening workday train commute has a rich set of sensations
and experiences all its own.
At 7:00, after being crammed in with the tired, the huddled masses, you step
out into a windy tunnel or a funky-smelling stop and hurry home through the
ænemic late-winter (or permanent, in the case of SF) cold back home.
You replay the winnings and failings of the day and hope that you have enough
ingredients at home for dinner so that you don’t have to go to Safeway and
wait in that line (“I hear there’s an unemployment crisis, why can they not
staff a few more people at rush hour”). You wonder why that woman gave
you the stink eye, what, did she think she could stand in the entry doorway
and not get jostled in a packed train?
Some times you wonder if you can bear it again.1
The other day I suggested to meet Lauren at the Chuch street stop. I waited
for her on the bridge that spans over the two train tracks. The rumble of the
trains thrummed beneath my feet, the 70’s vintage orange tile rested aginst my
leg and I watched the trains dart under the visual horizon of the tunnels’
edges and on to places like West Portal and the Embarcadero.
But one of those trains was different, it was carrying my sweetheart. If you’ve
never waiting a sweetheart on a train, it’s a unique thing. It makes you feel
rather Edwardian, even if the present generation are a good deal less sooty.
When she stepped out I saw her and made a great-big side to side wave.
And so you wait, asking is this the one? Is she in the foremost or aftmost
car? And then, brought from a reverie amidst these thoughts, you see her
leave the sniffling sardines behind. She’s thinking those quotidian thoughts
but this day is different: home was waiting for her here.
I threw a big side to side wave and a smile. She looked about for me on the
platform but then heard her name, and saw the wave and I saw the post-train
shuffle melt away and turn into a great big smile. Between the
souls headed smoothly up the escalator or trudging up the stairs in those
thoughts about dinner, cold wind, and Kleenex was a person who was about to be
held, greeted warmly, and told the sweetest and tend’rest of nothings.
I felt so lucky to know she was as eager for the peace we share as I was. She
walked across the catwalk and I pulled her in close to me, smelling her
shampoo and feeling her face on my shoulder.
The electronic bell chimed, and another tube of the everyone else rolled through
on to places like Glen Park and Montgomery Station. We remained.
- I’ll take that over a car commute any day, though.
“All straight guys think: ‘Some day some woman will show up and figure all this stuff out for me.’”
Keenly aperçu by a friend of mine to the question “Why the stereotypes about gays knowing so much about drapery and track lighting.”
Well, just to show that if you make anything nerdy enough, I will do it, here’s the Google SketchUp of my future residence. Yes, it’s to scale. I don’t think it’s too bad for a first stab at the tool.
As our move in date approaches, as we choose flooring and carpet, we’re starting to have some panic about what happens when an Austin-sized lifestyle and set of accoutrements meets San Francisco space restriction. As a means to try to figure out what we can and cannot do, I’ve set up this drawing.
“Hm, that LazyBoy just won’t fit!”
or
“Hm, maybe we can use a flop-down ironing board as a dining table?”
