The Pez Museum

True to my word, last Friday I visited the Pez Museum, pinnacle of all that is Burlingame. The facade of the building was small and unassuming, and I wondered at first if I'd reached the right place. As I walked through the door I quickly found myself surrounded by a firing squad of pastel candies and oversized plastic heads. I had little chance to plan an escape before the door jingled traitorously, signaling a tall middle-aged man from the shadows. I would later come to wonder if he'd been lying in wait, like a child staking out the fireplace on Christmas Eve night with a nerf gun and toy cuffs in hand, giddy with anticipation, mind swimming with dreams of an everlasting fount of toys.

Before I could think better of it I found myself pressing several creased bills into the man's dry, faintly sugar dusted hand. He then motioned me to follow him to the back room. For some reason a part of my mind flashed to a special report I watched years ago on the 'trade' in Thailand, and I found myself eager to turn around -- but the frugal part of me won out. I had paid my way into this, and I was going to get my money's worth, even if that came in the form of a wrinkled, toothless old asian woman crowing sweet nothings into my ear.

The room ended up being uncomfortably small, but comfortably vacant. Rows and columns of disembodied heads perched on their plastic pedestals, their coarsely painted eyes staring knowingly into me from all directions. I felt for a moment on trial, brought before the accusing glares of a plastic jury for my crimes against candy. And instead of dispensing sugary treats, the necks of this jury would open up to spit out the ultimate judgement of my very soul.

The curator began his speech, a tale of Pez from its humble Austrian beginnings to its rise to confectionary empire. There were heads of all kinds. Cartoon heads, Star Wars heads, famous people heads.. it was all there, laid out in painstakingly organized detail. Several minutes of this passed, and then - as quick as it had begun - it was over. The man ushered me out of his sacred chamber and left me to ponder the pinnacle of Burlingame, California on my own.

Interesting day

This week I introduced a little bit of east coast humor to the office, which resulted in the entire staff having to sign a new an improved Storm8 Harassment and Discrimination policy, or as I like to call it, the Jesse Rule. Now everyone goes around accusing each other of harassment and enforcing company policy at the barrel of nerf guns.

I also left my iPhone on the Caltrain and had to buy a new one. I'd talk more about my feelings on that, but I'm still at work and I don't want to violate company policy.

Work is still great. We're getting a lot done, although it's frustrating slow sometimes. Once a decision has been made it gets executed with great speed, but getting out of the gate requires much more planning than doing it solo. That said, I prefer teamwork. These guys are very smart and make a lot more possible.

That said, I'm not sure what's going to happen with this job. They're now talking down the idea of raising my salary from what even the recruiter admitted was pretty low for the area, and are asking me not to do outside work. Coming up here was contingent upon getting that raise, and not taking work from my customers means losing a valuable foundation. Luckily I've met a couple people with lots of connections in the industry who are offering to find me another job. I'd hate to leave the Storm8 guys, but I gotta do what I gotta do.

Anyway, I found a place to stay that is much closer to work: only 10-15 minutes. That should give me an extra two and a half hours a day of free time! I move in sometime this week, so I'll let you know how that goes.

Hope all is well

Toby

This morning Toby had to have $urgery to get a three foot length of yarn out of her. $he'll be on kitty drug$ for the next week or so while healing up. Curiously, I kept a whole roll of yarn on the floor for her and Rambo to play with back at my apartment, so the fact that it happened in someone else's place, someone kind enough to take her while I had to go across the country, is an unfortunate coincidence. My lovely friend Anna should not feel badly because she's precisely the person I'd want to have taking care of my stupid cat after she tried to knit her new caretaker a "best cat mom ever" sweater with her small intestine.

I've been working way too much the last few days. It's eight or more hours at the office and 2 hours of commuting and then nights doing contract work. It's stressful, but certainly manageable. It's not like I'm going to lose it and start opening fire on my coworkers.

I'm beginning to think, despite the admonitions of several Californians, that I will look for a place closer to my job. I like the sun, I like getting to the office earlier, and I don't mind driving up to the city once or twice a week instead of doing it every day. Plus, it has come to my attention that summer in San Francisco is the coldest part of the year, and.. well, screw that.

Speaking of cold, tonight I was shivering without a jacket. It was 57 degrees out. I think I'm officially spoiled rotten. Anyway, tonight will be more work, followed by contract work, and then a side of sleep. I will write again soon!

Guns & Moses

I can't believe it's been a week since I've last written. Where does the time go?

It's been raining steadily the past few days. Outside of the office it has been the watery stuff, and inside it has been these:

Each of us came to work on Monday with our choice of weapon and a surplus of military grade foam ammo with which we could darken (orangify?) the sky with volleys of squishy death -- an attempt, I think, at team building. If 'team building' is supposed to involve wailing on the network guy for fifteen minutes straight - including shots which clearly violated the Geneva Conventions - then mission happily accomplished.

Despite the rain (the wet kind) I've been enjoying San Francisco a bit more. I went salsa dancing on Friday, at two venues actually, and it was pretty fun. There are tons of people, beginner and advanced, so I don't think I'll be getting bored anytime soon. And on the home front, I've also been able to Skype with Jon and Eric, and it was nice to see their friendly faces. Really nice.

Toby has taken it upon herself to go on a yarn diet, which has landed her in the kitty hospital with a GI obstruction. The word on the street is that she is currently stumbling around in a drug induced delirium on her darling caretaker's bedroom floor. Tomorrow they will do more tests and see if she's passing the mass. Cross your fingers for her.

I'd write more but I have a bunch of contract work to do after I leave the office. I hope you are all well!

A week in

Yesterday my roommate's house started leaking rain, the office was infested with ants and my morning train was infiltrated by pigeons -- as brazen an assault across the line between the wild and civilization as I've seen. I suspect the Bay Area has unwittingly become the first front in Nature's war against mankind, and that this first salvo was but a warning shot across our collective bow.

I tried going Salsa dancing last night but the venue was inexplicably closed, and on its most popular night. As I stood in the rain pondering the half hour I'd gone out of my way - through seedy neighborhoods and dark alleyways - to get there, I made myself feel better by imagining that this closure, clearly unplanned if their web site was to be believed, was due to the weather. Why did this make me feel better? Because as I stood in the rain in my t-shirt and jeans I remembered walking - not so long ago - to the Iron Horse. In a blizzard. And finding it packed to the brim with people. People, like me, who were not pansies that closed their club because of a little warm rain. People, like me, who didn't thrust their quivering thumbs into their mouths and curl up into a ball smelling faintly of urine when confronted with a child's rendering of a snowflake.

On many streets in San Francisco there are signs demanding that all cars park perpendicular to the sidewalk.

Once, in my youth, I was driving down a suburban road when a car backed out of its driveway right in front of me.. and then rolled into its neighbor's driveway, then back to its driveway, and so on, like some wildly expensive version of a newton's cradle. I finally realized that this wasn't some person who'd forgotten which house they lived in, but a person who'd forgotten to set their emergency break. This probably happened in San Francisco, once.

As I stepped off the train today I came up with the idea to document my commute by way of stop motion photography. I spent most of the walk to the office taking ten steps, stopping, snapping a picture, and walking ten more steps before taking another. I'd really like to have been a fly on the wall in some of those cars that had to stop for me on the freeway intersection. I've determined that 10 steps is too far for a nice movie, but that 3 works just great. I'll have to leave for work early tomorrow morning.

Work is good, if all encompassing. I have two contracts outside of Storm8 that I'm completing, so it's many hours of work and no play (unless you count a failed attempt at salsa dancing). Soon those should be done, however, and I'll have a chance to spread my wings in California.

That is, of course, if Nature's war against civilization allows it.

Storm8

I've been busy, to say the least.

My first few days of work have gone more smoothly than I had expected. The people at this startup are smart, easy to work with, and pretty relaxed about everything. The clashing egos, preemptive criticism, cutting down of ideas, and overindulgence in minor details I encountered during my brief stint with academia have not materialized with this group. I like them.

I also like working in a team. This one, anyway. However, I'm sure that staying in an office 8-10 hours a day, 5 days a week, 330 odd days a year is untenable. I wake up, spend an hour on the train commuting from San Francisco to Redwood Shores, jog a mile to the office, do a day's work, jog back a mile, take the train back, and have 3 or so hours to decompress before going to bed and doing the same thing when morning comes.

This is not living.

Yet I really enjoy this company. And they're open to the idea of me telecommuting a couple days out of the week. I could be quite happy with that.

Anyway,

You can't throw a stone in Silicon Valley without hitting an executive, entrepreneur, or someone who's worked high up for a major corporation. I've already been offered a job, met the CEO of a PR firm, and the founder of a tech trade show, and that's in just 2 days. I keep a little bag of stones in my pocket at all times, now.

Tomorrow will be my first day off in San Francisco. Perhaps my opinion of this city will improve with the tour my lovely hostess has promised me. So far the people are very nice, but the city itself - aside from some breathtaking views - is, well, a city: rusted, washed out, and cluttered with towers of dirty brick, metal, and glass choked with blaring cars and throngs of people going out of their way to ignore each other.

Day 2

I skipped the free breakfast this morning in favor of sleep. This meant, of course, that I'd have to venture out for food. From the time I left my room to the time I finished eating at a Subway, the weather had gone from this:

To this:

Which is why I went from wanting to stay in here all day:

To buying a pair of these:

I spent the next five or six hours testing these babies out up and down San Bruno's main shopping artery, El Camino Real. If you took a mix between Salisbury beach and West Providence, added some Spanish architecture, and turned up the thermostat a good twenty degrees, I'd say you were playing Sim City. If not, I'd say you were a God, and then carefully, and with the appropriate degree of deference, point a quivering finger to a map of San Bruno and mention that someone had beaten you to the punch.

I stopped by the mall again, only to find it overtaken by an angry mob of alarmingly stunted people crawling over and defacing private property in what I assume was some kind of revolt against their taller overlords.

I quickly bought some items I'd been looking for and got the hell out of there. On my way back home I stumbled across this:

Notice the blue Volkswagen Beetle inside the blue Volkswagen Beetle. I couldn't get close enough to see if there was, in fact, another such Beetle on the dashboard of the Beetle on the dashboard of the Beetle, but that way led to madness anyhow.

When I finally returned to El Rancho Inn, I found a peculiar message awaiting me:

I'm pretty sure that most of the people who read that sign have never seen a real snowman, nor attempted to assemble one out of its confusing constellation of parts. Even so, this would have probably made more sense in front of an Ikea outlet.

Those of you who were paying attention yesterday will realize that I haven't talked about my apartment search. That's because I skipped out. It's probably better to get an idea of what the Bay area has to offer before narrowing down on a spot, otherwise I'd probably end up in the California equivalent of Worcester. I should be checking out of El Rancho soon to stay with a friend in San Francisco, and I'm sure they'll fill me in on the best spots to live.

Anyway, that's that. Tomorrow ushers in a new era for me: my first day at a 9-5 job in this country. Wish me luck! Actually, wish them luck. Poor bastards don't know what they've got themselves into.

I miss you all!