Career Shift

Posted by Joel Wed, 15 Aug 2007 11:04:23 GMT

Time for a late night post now that a long site maintenance downtime is done with.

I've really been having a tough last few weeks and I don't think the coming ones are going to be much easier. Somewhere along the line I decided, it having been a year at LuckyOliver, that I would look around and see what was out there in terms of job opportunities.

This is hard for me, because I really love LuckyOliver. It's a really clever concept which is a lot of fun to work on. The degree of responsibility I have here is very high, but so is my level of control and freedom. And I have definitely learned an awful lot. LuckyOliver has moved forward in a good way and I earnestly believe it will, at a minimum, situate itself as a popular and permanent stock site.

Most of all, it's my coworkers. My boss Bryan, fellow LuckyOliver employee Jill, accountant lady Rene, the city Zurbians Aiden, Rob, and Hunter, and the Santa Cruz Zurbians Jeremy and Ryan. All of them mean something very special to me at this point and we all have shared many great experiences, such as the scares and successes of LuckyO, the Supper Club, skydiving, Sushi Fridays, Twist, endless Starbucks runs, our awesome party at the Junkyard, having drinks at Katie Blooms, or partying up in the city. And just too many good times in the office to mention.

However, for me, an opportunity has come across that I feel I would be foolish not to take. I've been offered a position at Affinity Labs and I'm going to start there in September. I'll be moving back up to the city, most likely the Mission district or somewhere else kind of cool. I think their idea is a brilliant one with some considerable weight behind it.

I know it doesn't have the same cozy or fun feel as LuckyOliver, but at the end of the day I've kind of reevaluated how I want to spend this time, and I need to choose the path that I feel is most likely to serve me best in the end. So I'm headed to the Financial District. I'm a young guy and will likely work at many more companies before my time is through, and it's time for me to get a new perspective. Affinity also has some really bright people under its wing which I will be able to learn a lot from. I can't worry or wonder anymore if it's a mistake because I'm committed, and I'm going to do the best with it that I can. I can't be entirely sure what to expect, of course, but for now I'll just suck it up, buckle down and get work done, just like every other day. But I see good things on the horizon.

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Skydiving, parties

Posted by Joel Mon, 06 Aug 2007 06:06:28 GMT

It's been a pretty eventful month but I will try to keep this concise. The LuckyOliver party was a lot of fun and we all had a great time.

I went skydiving. Ryan, Jill, and Jill's husband also came. It was a pretty incredible experience, which I'd recommend, but I don't really see myself doing it again. The moment of jumping out of the plane goes much faster than you would expect. I didn't think the freefall was over in a blink; in fact it felt surprisingly long for me. And cold and windy.

I went to a couple web events, namely the SF Beta mixer at the Minna gallery, which LuckyOliver was sponsoring. I saw Thor there and had a good discussion with him. A week or so later was the Laughing Squid party. I rode a nifty Cycle-cide contraption. It was a beautiful venue. I saw David and Katie there and we hung out for a while and got tacos and in general I feel better about my relationship with them.

Afterwards we went to the Minna gallery again for an Anticon show. One guy was playing some interesting touch pad, which Aiden helped explain to me. Boom Bip was scheduled to be playing but we decided to get out of there because the current music sucked and Aiden wanted to visit the 2 to see Moe because it was his birthday the day before. Got some street food (hot dog wrapped in bacon).

Anyway, went to the 2, had a good time as usual, came home, and I just remember feeling something like bliss on the way back. A real moment where I appreciated the "now".

Work has been incredibly stressful lately, since there's just been loads of bugs which came up due to splitting our app up amongst extra servers and doing a long overdue software upgrade. We're basically trying to kill them all as they pop up, but it's a difficult process.

Interviewed someone for Zurb, he's a cool guy.

I joined a 5v5 arena team in WoW with my friends in-game. That's been a lot of fun and we're doing pretty well!

Some big stuff on my mind which I can't really touch on here but will when I get the chance.

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