In which i am sad

Andrina left for home today so I'm on my own for the next few months (with the exception of a few weekends here and there). I know this new few months is going to be insanely tough but I can always look back on gems like this:




Miss you AB.

Moons Over My Hammy

We have arrived in Redwood City and am partially moved into my new place! I have a couple of pieces of furniture which will be delivered later this week and then the move will be complete. The last couple of days have not been without trial though. The transmission in my truck did indeed take a dump about 30 miles north of Eureka, CA. General Motors had me towed to the nearest dealership, Opie's,  in McKinleyville. I still don't have a firm ETA on the completion of my truck but it won't be until next week. 

Hanging out in McKinleyville was not a Paleo dream. At the Holiday Inn Express, the eggs were expressly made from a box. Our best option was the local Denny's. Yikes.

As a result of my truck blowing up, we rented a minivan and loaded it up with stuff for the remainder of the drive. 

Sweet Minivan

It appears to be always foggy on the bridge

Arrival!

Who needs a truck?

The Ice Cream Man arrived shortly after us

Six hours later and we arrived at my new place, a little worse for wear but we're here.

A Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

Andrina's birthday breakfast in Portland started out fantastically. We went to the Gravy as recommended by the author of the MeatEats. I had the house favorite, Corned Beef Hash and Andrina had a custom scramble that was to die for. The restaurant itself is very homey feeling and I'm so pleased we came across it.

Corned Beef Blast!

The weather in Portland was rainy and gloomy (little did we know this was foreshadowing our day to come). As a result of the wet weather we hit the road early, intent on getting to Eureka, California in the evening to have a nice dinner and enjoy the remainder of Andrina's birthday.

The line-up and the rain negated us cheating on our diet this morning at Voodoo Donuts

The drive along the coast was quite beautiful as expected with the glaring exception that it would appear that people from the state of Oregon have no drivers ed. Or none of them were schooled in the art of driving. I swear that most Albertans drive better.

The license plate said fresh and it had dice in the mirror

Everything was going right according to plan. We got our requisite photos high above the Pacific coast line, we stopped in the Redwood forest, we even got to see the solar eclipse.

All was well. Until it wasn't well. Just about 33 miles (ask me about this distance later) north of Eureka, well, pictures are worth a thousand words.

It was the worst of times...

Everyone is ok but my truck is not behaving like the good truck it is. It would appear to the accountant and the computer nerd driving that the transmission broke. So, take that with a grain of salt.  Four hours later, we're settled into a hotel in McKinleyville and finally having Andrina's birthday wine (which by the way was $9...would be >$20 in Kamloops).

It was the best of times...

We should have some more details tomorrow.

Portlandia

The drive from Kamloops to Portland in the world of long drives is a short 750Km (approx) but the combination of having driven the Coquihalla about a million times, the I-5 being the least interesting highway in the western world, and half a dozen tequilas the night before made for a long day one on our drive to SF.

This amazing shot is rendered less amazing having seen it thousands of times

It was, however, successful and without incident including at the border.  We left fairly early on Saturday as in my infinite wisdom have planned on moving south on a long weekend. However, the Sumas border crossing at noonish had a mere 20 minute lineup. They always surprise me at Sumas. For all the bad press that the Department of Homeland Security and the CBP get, they have always been really pleasant to us at the Sumas crossing. This was no expection. We were in and out within an hour of arriving in line and had zero hassle getting my TN visa. I would suggest that this is in no small part to having carefully researched what they needed and had everything ready in triplicate. Andrina thinks it's because of her nerdy glasses.

TN'ed

A TN celebration on our lunch break

Nerd Travelling

Arrived in Portland in time to go out for beers and a bite at Deschuttes Brewery where we tasted the most shockingly good gluten free beer. It's not yet listed on the website as we were told it's on iteration number 47 and they are still working towards a final version. The pints we had suggested they are close. No bottles available yet; only in growlers for take home. They also have great gluten free service. They put a blue elastic band around the pints of the gluten free beer which serves to remind the wait staff to offer you gluten free options. It kinda feels like the scarlet letter a bit but the reality is we found an entire gluten free menu as a result. Kudos to Deschuttes for making cheating on our Paleo lifestyle a little less like cheating.

The delicious GF beer with the blue band the sampler that followed

I thought there was lots of girls around

If you're ever staying in Portland and you leave booking a hotel to the last minute and can't get in to the kitchy places downtown that you want then I recommend the Silver Cloud. The rooms are super clean and actually quite well appointed with a nice sittting area, little fridge, microwave, etc. It's reasonably priced and there are bus stops directly outside the hotel with regular service to downtown. For $4 we roundtripped to downtown for dinner. Andrina found the beds a little soft for her liking but I slept like a champ.

Ok, we're off to try Gravy for breakfast which appears to be a Paleo friendly favorite here in Portland. Then six or so hours of driving and we'll be into California and be celebrating Andrina's birthday tonight.

Later!

Going to California with an aching in my heart (and a pounding in my head)

Had a great time last night at Andrina's birthday party. Thanks to everyone who attended. And now we go....

All Packed Up

The past week has been pretty busy, spent packing, tying up loose ends, getting together with friends and the like.  The time is almost here for us to really kick off this great adventure of moving down to California.

We're heading out on early Saturday morning but not too early as we have Andrina's birthday dinner on Friday night. Her birthday isn't until Sunday but somehow I manage to throw a kink into things every year. But this year, I think I might be able to make up for it by celebrating her actual birthday in the "Rose City", Portland OR, best known as the inspiration for the "wonderful" IFC series, Portlandia. Rest assured we will be providing reviews of the restaurants in the Hawthorne district on Yelp.

Here's the route that we are loosely planning on following:


View Larger Map

Our plan is to drive straight through to Portland on Saturday and go for a nice dinner there and then spend the afternoon on Sunday checking out the city. That all assumes that things go well at the border. In a incredibly well thought out move, I have planned to immigrate to the US on a long weekend so plan to cross the border and get my visa on one of the busiest days of the year. S-M-R-T. On Sunday we have a short 5 hours or so to get to the wonderful Coos Bay, the largest city on the Oregon coast and the site of a current seismic upgrade!

The final day of our drive see us leaving Coos Bay at some ungodly hour so we can arrive at my new home in Redwood City. I don't yet have a cell phone in the US so I won't be live blogging every bit of minutiae but do plan on making some notes as we go and taking pictures along the way.

Next stop, USA!

In which I hunt for a house

It’s 8am on Cinco de Mayo in Calgary, AB and it’s snowing. Andrina and I are, happily, sitting in the warmth of the international gates at Calgary International Airport. We’ve now been up since 5am and are just starting to come around to the fact that we are not home in our cozy bed. We’re off to San Francisco to look for a place for me to live, temporarily, while Andrina sorts out the remainder of her business obligations. We’re told that it’s 15 degrees Celcius in San Fran with a high of 22 today. With that news, our spirits definitely lift.

It's early and it's snowing.

Given that we know that Andrina and I will be doing the long distance thing for a few months, we know that this weekend is a good dry run for getting to and from the area in which we will live. It turns out it is going to be a giant pain in the ass. As the crow flies, or the plane as may be more appropriate in this case, it takes a little over two hours to fly to San Francisco from Kamloops. Unfortunately, there are no direct flights. So, a two trip turns into 6 hours and eats up the majority of a day.

Back in the Calgary airport, Andrina relays to me that comedy ensues in the ladies restroom. It would appear that half of the ladies room is closed for cleaning. However, no one is cleaning it. The cleaning staff at YYC have decided to block that side of the bathroom off and mop the open side. Just picture 15 ladies in heels or flip flops slipping and sliding around the cleaning staff while half of the bathroom sits pristine and unused.

The weather in San Fran did not disappoint. We arrived to 20 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.

Picked up our rental car and headed to the first place on the list of apartments to check out. Never having driven in the San Fran peninsula area, we got the GPS option whom we nicknamed “Sally the robot.” Sally was great. She didn’t steer us wrong once. I definitely need a GPS for my truck when I move down. Her pronunciation was even pretty good. She correctly pronounced El Camino Real as re’al and not ree-uhl. She also got Cañada right. However, she pronounced Oregon Expwy as ex-pwee and not Express Way. Hrm.

Pronounced kaˈɲaða which means glen or mountain valley.

We fell in love with Palo Alto and Menlo Park. The number of local/organic restaurants for totally reasonable prices was awesome. Great wine selections is the norm and not the exception and greenery is surprisingly plentiful. 

Downtown Menlo Park, my office will be on this street. 

And I can finally get my shoes cobbled.

We ended up choosing the first place that we found. It fit the bill perfectly. It’s an older concrete building so it will be quiet and the price is ok. 

The new digs

The units are being renovated. This one hasn't been.

With that taken care of, we became tourists for the weekend. That rental car got a lot of miles on it (yes, miles, they are long kilometres that don’t have any real [ree-uhl], predictable correlation to other distances in the imperial system). We spent a night in San Francisco at Fisherman’s Wharf, cruised the coast on HWY-1 (not the Transcanada), toured the beautiful Stanford campus, and of course we hit the outlet mall. Tourists.

The California Coast

Software Services Announcement

It’s Monday morning on the last day of April and I’m sitting in my weekly project status update for a website redesign just like I have nearly every Monday for the past six months. However, this Monday is anything but normal. Last night, I contacted my manager (and one of my closest friends), Chris Wright, to inform him that I had accepted the position.

Chris has since repurposed a team meeting scheduled for Monday afternoon in order to provide the update to the rest of my colleagues. I’d like to tell everyone that I’m leaving BCLC at just the right time so I decide to run my morning like usual and wait for the afternoon to start that process. The reality is that I just don’t want to tell anyone. I have built such strong friendships at BCLC that the idea of telling them that I moving a few thousand kilometers makes me feel sick to my stomach. As our project team reviews documents on the projector, we debate how to resolve an issue that relates to project governance and requirements. As the lead on the project, this decision-making is my responsibility but I know full well that I won’t have this responsibility for much longer. As a result, in order to reduce the churn that will inevitably occur as a result of my departure, I suggest we defer the decision making until later today. This isn’t like me and the team doesn’t understand. Then it all becomes clear as an email pops up on everyone’s Blackberries and subsequently on the outlook window that is minimized on the project. “Software Services Announcement” is the title of the email and its content is public details of my resignation.

“Well, I guess the cat is out of the bag,” I say as everyone looks at me in what seems like a degree of surprise. We sort of nervously laugh together as I detail the changes in my life that are to come. Yes, the cat is now of the bag so I quickly end the meeting (nothing useful was going to come of it now) and rush to my desk. I want my close friends to hear it from me so I forward the announcement on with a brief personal note attached. Then the messages come flooding back.  And with the flood of congratulations, shock, awe, sadness that lies in those messages comes an intense emotional reaction on my part. I was not expecting this. It’s the type of emotional reaction that requires me to get out of the building because, in my vanity, still have a reputation to uphold. I’m able to get it together long enough to attend our team meeting and give them the face to face announcement that they deserve but I have to go home shortly after. This didn’t go nearly like I planned and the difficulty of this day is truly shocking to me.

I find it really funny how I react to needing to tell certain people. I have some trepidation with some and none with others. I don’t think that I can qualify why that is the case but it is. Monday night, I tell my sister. As the intensely family oriented person that she is, I’m pretty sure that I know what her reaction will be.  She is very supportive but clearly disappointed that Andrina and I won’t be around from the perspective that she wants us in her family’s life. Acknowledging this, I try to reassure her that we are abandoning the family and will be around for summer vacations and at Christmas, etc. The reality is that I really don’t know what that will look like.

I tell my brother on Tuesday.  He is one of the people that I’m apprehensive to tell but can’t effectively verbalize why. Maybe it’s the older brother thing. Maybe it’s because we haven’t resolved all the tricky bits of moving down south and I worry he will think that we are being impulsive. Whatever the reasons, he is also very supportive and, predictably, grills me on the details. I know that I can’t answer all of the questions but I know all the questions are coming. That imbues me with confidence.  The perception that we have at least identified all of the important questions is really important to me. I use the word perception very specifically in this context because we don’t know what we don’t know but at least no one is surprising me.

The remainder of the week has been spent telling friends and other family members. My birthday on May 2nd was spent at my favorite restaurant in Kamloops, Felix on 4th where I was able to speak to many people, face to face, for the first time since I resigned from BCLC. The turnout for my birthday was wonderful, many more than I had expected. The unfortunate aspect of having such great turnout is the inability to have time to really connect with people in a meaningful way.

Now, with that week of telling me out of the way, it’s time to start executing on the work breakdown (Yes, I have a WBS for this move). First things first, we’re off to SF this weekend to find a place for me to live (short term) while Andrina gets her affairs in order.

A Decision To Make

The offer that I received on April 20, 2012 left me with some tough decisions to make. Good compensation, the opportunity to get involved at the ground floor with a Y-Combinator startup, and the idea of moving right into the thick of things as it relates to the tech sector. But, at my current position at BCLC, I’ve really taken a true leadership role of late with lots of opportunities to continue down that path. It seems like all of my hard work over the past five years is about to pay off. It truly was a great situation to be in. I had two great choices, without the ability to make a bad one. All that said, this would be, arguably, the hardest decision that I have had to make.

Of course, the best timing for a trip to Las Vegas is when you have a life altering decision on the table. As a result, the following morning, I joined some good friends for a 3 night bachelor party in the sin city. Of course, the details of that trip are to not for blogging but I can say that we had a great time. I can also say that my travel mates (Mike Kuromi, Corey Kuromi, and Todd Drake) provided me with a great sounding board. Next to the Excalibur pool, we spent many hours and about one million beers, chatting about what moving to the Bay Area could look like and what the pros and cons could be.

Ultimately what this trip did was reduce the real amount of time that Andrina and I had to work through this decision together. When the dust settled from my trip to Vegas and a last minute work trip to Vancouver, I was left with just 48 hours to make a decision and more questions than answers.

One of the key challenges that we identified is Andrina’s ability to find work in the US. Clearly, as a Chartered Accountant working at the executive level for many years, she is infinitely employable but the states are pretty different when it comes to common law marriage and Andrina and I have absolutely no rights as a couple in the great state of California. So, the way it seems to have shaken out is that Andrina will need to find a position in the Bay Area on her own while living up here in Canada. Well, either that or we could married. Seriously. We had some difficult getting a handle on Andrina’s ability to come down with me so we felt we needed a couple extra days to figure out how we could manage her inability to work in the states. And oh, yea, I forgot to mention the issue around Andrina’s soon to be sixteen year old daughter. Yea, there was a couple big deals here that we needed to get a handle on before any yeses or nos could be given.

As only a computer geek and a chartered accountant can, we spent the entire weekend developing attributes of moving or staying, assigning importance factors, and scoring those attributes. It was all an attempt to attempt to quantitatively determine what the right thing to do is. But unfortunately we came to the decision that this was not a situation that could be assessed completely based on logic alone and emotion plays a huge factor that isn’t easily captured in an Excel spreadsheet. Go figure.

Kelsey, Andrina’s daughter couldn’t have made the decision much easier. As a sixteen year old, our relationship has been not without its difficult times. Those times have been plentiful lately. But this young lady has blown me away with her enthusiasm for this idea. In fact, as it turns out, Kelsey’s enthusiasm and maturity about the situation may have been the swing vote.

With Kels’ definitive desire to make this happen, we reevaluated our RFP style matrix and the decision was made for us. A last minute trip to my Dad’s house for confirmation that we aren’t crazy and I was on Skype with one of the founders of my employer saying that I would see him in a few weeks. The decision has been made. Now I just need to tell everyone that we are moving 1800km to another country. After the week that we had just had, this will be easy.

We Want You To Come Work For Us

I’m sitting at my desk on Friday, April 20th, just getting ready wrap up for the weekend and head to Las Vegas for a bachelor party when the email comes in. That familiar desktop notification pops up in the lower right of my screen, indicating that I’ve got new email on my personal account. In direct contrast to my work account, I don’t get a ton of email on my personal account so I quickly hop over to my pinned gmail tab and see those words that are changing my life: “We want you to come work for us.”