Six months later
Heh, well, I guess I promised to follow up on my last post, and never did. There are a number of reasons for this, some better than others, but suffice to say that six months later, things have changed a lot. But, since I've got another two hours on this plane, I'll try to not leave any dangling threads this time.
As a madcap recap, I'm still working at Newfield Wireless in Berkeley. Actually, today marks the end of six months, and I'm on my way back from the CTIA wireless conference. My coworker Chris is asleep next to me (lucky, I can't sleep), and the other developers who went to CTIA are in the seats in front of us. I'm still enjoying my job, though the last two months have been very stressful getting ready for this show. As it was, I didn't really deliver what I needed to. I finished enough today at the show to have a demo, but a lot of the output values are wrong or worse. A number of my coworkers have assured me that, while it's obviously not the outcome that we all would have liked, they anticipated me making mistakes like this and being behind from time to time. Normally these sentiments woudn't make me feel better (I'm too hard on myself when I let myself think about it), but I'm too tired and done with being stressed out, so I'm taking some comfort in their words.
I hinted at having found a new girlfriend shortly after getting down to California, and so it was true. Christina is a beautiful young woman, a ballerina, smart, creative, funny, and wonderful family. We met at a house party where neither of us really knew anyone else (we'd both just moved to the city, really). We dated for a little under three months (if memory serves), and had a pretty good time of cooking for each other and enjoying each other's company when we could. We had a number of differences, probably the least enjoyable of which was my active interest in poly, or polyamoury. Eventually, we both realized that, while we did like each other and had a good time together, that we weren't right for each other. In one of the most enjoyable breakups I've ever heard of, we agreed to this, ordered out for pizza, and watched the latest episode of Heroes, after which she headed home. Unfortunately, we haven't see each other since, but we keep in touch by phone and IM, and keep intending on hanging out sometime.
Cynthia graduated from Cal and moved to Woodland, where she quickly realized that, no, she really did want to live in the bay area. After complaining about this for a few weeks, she decided to throw a party at my apartment (which was a fantastic excuse to clean the place and make some lasagna for freezing). She came down a day early to help with the cleanup, and never really left. We started out being together again by doing what I was calling "not taking the relationship seriously, " and we worked out better as a couple when we weren't officially a couple than we ever had been while together. A couple weeks ago, we decided that we really did want to give this yet another whirl. The timing was good as well, because she was offered a job in Berkeley and was literally moving in to my apartment at that point. As of now, we're a couple, living together, with all the fights and confusion and love that goes with it, and I'm hoping things continue on as well as they have been (or heck, better :)
Over the last month or so I've realized that not only Daren, but Austin and Brian (all childhood friends of mine from Southern California) all live in the San Fancisco Bay area. I haven't had time to visit any of them recently (CTIA looming), but now that that's past, I intend on calling up old friends and reconnecting after nearly a decade (should be interesting at the very least). As for the friend front, I really haven't done a particularly good job of putting myself out there and meeting new people outside of the office (heck, I haven't done a particularly good job at the office either). Which is to say, I intend to start soon enough, but right now I'm still getting the lay of the land. Looking back, both of the previous times I've moved (first to WA, then to UW), it took me about a year to get really comfortable and really start establishing a network of people I could trust and have trust me. As a result, I'm making sure I get comfortable with myself, living on my own, and then I'll worry about finding people to relax with.
Of course, this doesn't mean I'm not getting any form of socialization. Thanks to my brother and some of our mutual friends at the UW, I'm on my third tour of duty within the World of Warcraft, this time on a Troll Shaman. We've managed to put together a remarkably together group of players, we're now at eight regular players all within 6 levels of each other, up from 5 when we started (some people played really hard over the recent spring break to catch up). Even Cynthia is playing (she actually seems to be really enjoying it; she played while I was away at CTIA, and keeps telling me she wants to be fully caught up (she's 36 and I'm 38 at the moment). There's been a bit of guild drama, mostly revolving around our de facto guild leader, Mitch, but for the most part we just have a good time (provided he heals me :-p). I've been showing signs of addiction to WoW again, but they might have been tied to stress about CTIA, so we'll have to keep that under pretty close supervision in the next few weeks.
I started singing in two choirs, one in Berkeley called BCCO and one in San Francisco called the SF Choral Society. Both are community choirs that encourage group support to keep running, helping out the whole in whatever way you can, which seems like a pretty cool arrangement for the choirs. Actually, if I've been meeting anyone, it has been through these choirs. I unfortunately had to stop going to BCCO, and for a reason that I'm somewhat embarassed about. I felt very strongly that the director treated us as inexperienced and incapable singers, and didn't want to be stuck in an environment where I spent 90% of my time listening to explanations about how various major and minor and whole tone scales work. Especially when the explanations were woefully incomplete and therefore a waste of all but the completely inexperienced singer's time. SFCS, on the other hand, is very professional while still being relaxed, and our Summer Season concert will be at Davies Hall (the major concert hall in San Francisco, think Benaroya but better for those of you still in Seattle). So, I'm down to one choir, but that works much better with my limited free time anyway.
Ah yes, I'm doing more and more cooking as time goes on. Cynthia and I have begun even planning our meals out a week in advance (we need to start planning leftover nights, actually). We've had delicious meals using all normal varieties of protein (I've even got Cynthia eating Pork, which she wouldn't go near with a ten foot pole previously), and enjoy vegetarian meals pretty frequently as well.
Oh, well, writing this thankfully killed most of the rest of the flight. We're running a half hour behind schedule due to some storm system over the rockies, and I've been up since 4:30am local time. And as much as I'd like to be late to work tomorrow, I probably have to wake up early to support those who are still at the last day of CTIA. Ayup, that's the all call to kill Electronic doodads, so I'm going to call it a night. Thanks for your patience in getting a new post, and leave me a comment so I know to call you and catch up personally :)
G'night.
As a madcap recap, I'm still working at Newfield Wireless in Berkeley. Actually, today marks the end of six months, and I'm on my way back from the CTIA wireless conference. My coworker Chris is asleep next to me (lucky, I can't sleep), and the other developers who went to CTIA are in the seats in front of us. I'm still enjoying my job, though the last two months have been very stressful getting ready for this show. As it was, I didn't really deliver what I needed to. I finished enough today at the show to have a demo, but a lot of the output values are wrong or worse. A number of my coworkers have assured me that, while it's obviously not the outcome that we all would have liked, they anticipated me making mistakes like this and being behind from time to time. Normally these sentiments woudn't make me feel better (I'm too hard on myself when I let myself think about it), but I'm too tired and done with being stressed out, so I'm taking some comfort in their words.
I hinted at having found a new girlfriend shortly after getting down to California, and so it was true. Christina is a beautiful young woman, a ballerina, smart, creative, funny, and wonderful family. We met at a house party where neither of us really knew anyone else (we'd both just moved to the city, really). We dated for a little under three months (if memory serves), and had a pretty good time of cooking for each other and enjoying each other's company when we could. We had a number of differences, probably the least enjoyable of which was my active interest in poly, or polyamoury. Eventually, we both realized that, while we did like each other and had a good time together, that we weren't right for each other. In one of the most enjoyable breakups I've ever heard of, we agreed to this, ordered out for pizza, and watched the latest episode of Heroes, after which she headed home. Unfortunately, we haven't see each other since, but we keep in touch by phone and IM, and keep intending on hanging out sometime.
Cynthia graduated from Cal and moved to Woodland, where she quickly realized that, no, she really did want to live in the bay area. After complaining about this for a few weeks, she decided to throw a party at my apartment (which was a fantastic excuse to clean the place and make some lasagna for freezing). She came down a day early to help with the cleanup, and never really left. We started out being together again by doing what I was calling "not taking the relationship seriously, " and we worked out better as a couple when we weren't officially a couple than we ever had been while together. A couple weeks ago, we decided that we really did want to give this yet another whirl. The timing was good as well, because she was offered a job in Berkeley and was literally moving in to my apartment at that point. As of now, we're a couple, living together, with all the fights and confusion and love that goes with it, and I'm hoping things continue on as well as they have been (or heck, better :)
Over the last month or so I've realized that not only Daren, but Austin and Brian (all childhood friends of mine from Southern California) all live in the San Fancisco Bay area. I haven't had time to visit any of them recently (CTIA looming), but now that that's past, I intend on calling up old friends and reconnecting after nearly a decade (should be interesting at the very least). As for the friend front, I really haven't done a particularly good job of putting myself out there and meeting new people outside of the office (heck, I haven't done a particularly good job at the office either). Which is to say, I intend to start soon enough, but right now I'm still getting the lay of the land. Looking back, both of the previous times I've moved (first to WA, then to UW), it took me about a year to get really comfortable and really start establishing a network of people I could trust and have trust me. As a result, I'm making sure I get comfortable with myself, living on my own, and then I'll worry about finding people to relax with.
Of course, this doesn't mean I'm not getting any form of socialization. Thanks to my brother and some of our mutual friends at the UW, I'm on my third tour of duty within the World of Warcraft, this time on a Troll Shaman. We've managed to put together a remarkably together group of players, we're now at eight regular players all within 6 levels of each other, up from 5 when we started (some people played really hard over the recent spring break to catch up). Even Cynthia is playing (she actually seems to be really enjoying it; she played while I was away at CTIA, and keeps telling me she wants to be fully caught up (she's 36 and I'm 38 at the moment). There's been a bit of guild drama, mostly revolving around our de facto guild leader, Mitch, but for the most part we just have a good time (provided he heals me :-p). I've been showing signs of addiction to WoW again, but they might have been tied to stress about CTIA, so we'll have to keep that under pretty close supervision in the next few weeks.
I started singing in two choirs, one in Berkeley called BCCO and one in San Francisco called the SF Choral Society. Both are community choirs that encourage group support to keep running, helping out the whole in whatever way you can, which seems like a pretty cool arrangement for the choirs. Actually, if I've been meeting anyone, it has been through these choirs. I unfortunately had to stop going to BCCO, and for a reason that I'm somewhat embarassed about. I felt very strongly that the director treated us as inexperienced and incapable singers, and didn't want to be stuck in an environment where I spent 90% of my time listening to explanations about how various major and minor and whole tone scales work. Especially when the explanations were woefully incomplete and therefore a waste of all but the completely inexperienced singer's time. SFCS, on the other hand, is very professional while still being relaxed, and our Summer Season concert will be at Davies Hall (the major concert hall in San Francisco, think Benaroya but better for those of you still in Seattle). So, I'm down to one choir, but that works much better with my limited free time anyway.
Ah yes, I'm doing more and more cooking as time goes on. Cynthia and I have begun even planning our meals out a week in advance (we need to start planning leftover nights, actually). We've had delicious meals using all normal varieties of protein (I've even got Cynthia eating Pork, which she wouldn't go near with a ten foot pole previously), and enjoy vegetarian meals pretty frequently as well.
Oh, well, writing this thankfully killed most of the rest of the flight. We're running a half hour behind schedule due to some storm system over the rockies, and I've been up since 4:30am local time. And as much as I'd like to be late to work tomorrow, I probably have to wake up early to support those who are still at the last day of CTIA. Ayup, that's the all call to kill Electronic doodads, so I'm going to call it a night. Thanks for your patience in getting a new post, and leave me a comment so I know to call you and catch up personally :)
G'night.