staying in a hotel for two weeks is no fun, and i’m glad to be in my new apartment.  now instead of living out of a suitcase, i’m living out of cardboard boxes.  hopefully all the red tape of moving is behind me and i can settle in and get comfortable.

so my first week at yahoo went fairly smooth.  monday and tuesday was all orientation down in sunnyvale.  you know, benefits overview, payroll stuff, paperwork; pretty standard really.  another advanced products newbie was there so we grabbed lunch and chatted for a bit.  he’s got quite the impressive resume compared to mine, including places like hotwired and six apart.  i also learned the joys of public transportation in the bay area.  for the record, airport shuttle -> BART -> CalTrain -> Y! Shuttle is the easiest way to get to campus from the SFO La Quinta. :P (realize that “easy” of course means spending 10 bucks a day and leaving an hour early)

the rest of the week was spent in the city at brickhouse (my office) mostly just trying to get my computer all setup.  but i did find the time to fit in a few rounds of Wii bowling and tennis. :P  next week i’ll actually be able to dive into my new project and start making some software.  i’m excited about it, but unfortunately it’s top secret.  :[  also my boss announced that they are still looking for some hot shots to fill out our roster, so if any of you want to move out to SF then give me a call!  here's your incentive... a free tshirt!

so when people say san francisco is foggy, they aren’t kidding. you can see it hovering over the city when you drive up from the south. and i also didn’t realize just how chilly it is here. it’s june but for the past week it hasn’t gotten over 70 degrees. i wonder how hot it gets here…

and don’t forget the hippies. i saw this while we were stuck in traffic caused by a peace parade. (i can’t make this stuff up).

but now for the real reason for this post. i’m glad to announce that the apartment hunt is over. and even better news, we got lucky and were able to get the cool loft with the roof deck! first, here are some pics of the places we didn’t pick:

the rejects

what the hell is up with the dollhouse one anyway? pink, yellow and green paint with “doors” smaller than people? our second pick was the split-level loft in the last 5 pics. it was in a really cool part of town where we would have literally walked everywhere. work, groceries, nightlife, everything. but we decided to go with our other, cheaper option.

my new apartment

this place has it all. new appliances, garage parking, washer/dryer, it’s close enough to my work that i could (and i plan to) ride my bike, a roof deck, and all the open space i could ever want. not much privacy though as you can see, so if you plan to visit SF, bring some pajamas to sleep in! we might hang some cloth beneath the loft to divide up the main area, but we’ll see how it goes.

for all that empty wall space, i have a neat idea. terri and i will pick out all our favorite movies and get posters for them. we’ll frame them in those plastic black frames you can get and fill up the walls. what do you think?

so overall i’m pumped about the place. we don’t move in till june 8th, so we’ll still be living out of the hotel until then. after we get everything set up, i’ll be sure to post more pics. or maybe i shouldn’t to give ya’ll a reason to buy a plane ticket and come visit!

so i’m chilling in my sunnyvale hotel, unwinding after a long day of apartment hunting. good news: we found an awesome place in the city and we’re ready to drop a deposit down. bad news: it was the first place we looked at and we didn’t look at many other places today. it feels a little compulsive, but the place is really cool and close to work. so we’ll see how it pans out. i’m feeling some “grass is greener” syndrome at the moment, but i’m pretty sure i’d be happy with this place even if a better place shows up after i move in. i mean, it has a freaking roof deck! how cool is that? maybe roof decks aren’t a big deal here, but to me they are really cool.

did alot of driving around the city today to get a feel for the neighborhoods. it made me realize just how valuable a garage parking spot is. but we got to see alot of cool places like fisherman’s wharf and the Presidio. even went through downtown a bit, which reminded me of pictures i’ve seen of new york. hopefully if we can nail down a place to live soon, i can spend the rest of the week checking out cool places and get some nice pics for ya’ll. here’s what i’ve got so far:

so i’m sure some of you have heard the rumor by now, and yes it is true. i’ve accepted a position at Yahoo! in San Francisco. i’m stoked, even though it means moving even farther away from family and friends. :[ i'm shedding the corporate software yoke that i've been wearing ever since my first job, and now have the chance to make something that you might actually use!

the story behind my switch is pretty simple, really.  remember this post?  well less than a week after i wrote that, my consulting company was bought out by an even bigger consulting company.  Where our original focus was all about custom application development, the new boss is all about selling new buzzword-compliant solutions to companies.  that shift of focus caused me to question if i'd accept a job there if i was actively looking. (the answer was no)  and the whole acquisition process reminded me how unfulfilling making business software was.  kinda like the straw that broke the camel's back, you know?  so i set out to search for not only a new job, but one that was centered around making software for people, not businesses.  since Houston is oil-and-gas headquarters (and a cool opportunity in Dallas didn't pan out), i looked west.  and i liked what i saw. :]

now normally a job for the big Y would mean Sunnyvale, deep in Silicon Valley. but my position is actually based out of the city itself. i’m going to be joining the Advanced Products Team; we are responsible for designing and developing Yahoo!’s future products. (alongside Brickhouse, another internal Yahoo! innovation team) it is comparable to a startup within Yahoo!.  we come up with ideas for new applications, get them out there as quick as we can, and judge the response.  except in a startup if your product is a flop you go bankrupt; we’ll just learn and try something different.

i was worried that my interview would be torture, but it was quite pleasant actually. everybody i talked with was cool and so much smarter than me, it was actually comforting. it lasted about 5 hours though, and my throat was dry as a bone afterwards from talking all day. (keith, talk alot? never!) lots of discussion about my opinions on how and why software should be made, with a few rounds of technical drilling to make sure i had the chops for it. (i confess; i practiced reversing a string and binary searching in the flight over there just in case, but luckily the technical questions were more difficult than that :P) i just hope that i can meet the hype.  my official title will be “Technical Yahoo”, although i’m sure most people that know me would already use that phrase to describe me.

so the next month should prove to be pretty interesting. finishing up my current gig, moving to SF, and trying to find an apartment somewhere where we won’t have to worry about getting accosted by crazy people looking for change.  if you have any hookups that you could swing my way, including people you know who live there or an awesome apartment available for rent, let me know!  and somewhere in all that, terri and i will be in BR/NO from 5/13 - 5/22. i’ve heard rumors of a party that i may have to crash :]

and you know the best part? Yahoo!’s color scheme is purple and gold.  i think i’ll fit in no problem. :]

here are some snaps from when i was there for my interview.

ok, not really. but i did buy a macbook pro. :]

i actually bought it a long time ago (march?), but my whole job situation has kept me so busy i haven’t had the time to post about it. (that story will be a whole post in itself once it all works its way through, trust me)

i’m loving it so far. i haven’t really turned my PC on since i bought it. of course, i haven’t had the urge to play any games yet, (guitar hero is still my sweet, sweet mistress) so once that bug hits me i’ll probably boot her up. or i could just take a weekend and setup boot camp on my laptop and run both. :] then i’d be set.

i’ve only scratched the surface with customizing it for me. there are tons of shortcuts and scripting options to learn. but working on my wordpress plugin has been a good experience as far setting up a development environment goes and using textmate. the great thing is that i’ve been able to find an open source tool to replace everything i did on my PC. (well…i do miss google talk, but Adium supports jabber so at least it works) hell, almost everything i do is already web-based, which is why i got the urge to switch in the first place.

so my macbook gets a thumbs up from me. now i wonder how much the new version of OS X is gonna cost when it comes out…