general

After 2 years, 7 months, and 7 days at Amazon.com, I’ve decided to make a major career change.

May 16th was my last day at Amazon. After about a week of a half of vacation I’m starting all over today at blist.com, a small, early-stage startup in Pioneer Square, Seattle. My tentative job title is “Technical Project Manager”, but my actual work will encompass so much more. I’m looking forward to working with such a young, ambitious company and getting the chance to leverage my skills and experience in ways that will hopefully help make them very successful.

In my tenure at Amazon, I had the opportunity to work with so many awesome people that I can’t count how many people I need to thank. I still love Amazon and all it’s hard working employees, but this opportunity at blist was too good to pass up. They’re small, scrappy, and have a grand vision of the future, probably much like Amazon did when it was starting out. It’s a big jump, but it should be a great ride, and I look forward to being able to accomplish some great things.

Photo borrowed from TheMahers Seattle Lunch2.0 photoset on flickr

Yeah yeah, I suck at blogging.

I have a few posts queued up about projects I’ve been working on lately, and I’ll be posting them soon. I promise.

Most people who know me well know that I’m a bit of a bag whore. I seem to accumulate them. Special purpose bags mainly. Bags for backpacking. Bags for sailing. Bags for hauling laptops. Bags for protecting cameras.

And for general purpose bags, I’ve accumulated a couple messenger bags, namely a Timbuk2 Laptop Messenger and a Patagonia Critical Mass bag. The Critical Mass, by the way is a great bag - practically indestructible and big enough for up to a week long trip. Big enough, also, to often be too big.

But I’ve always been craving something a bit more unique. Sure, there are companies like R.E.Load (an awesome Seattle-based custom messenger bag company), but I don’t feel like paying $300 for a full-on custom bag. And it would be much cooler if I made it myself. And I just happen to own a sewing machine. Yes, I’m a straight guy who owns a sewing machine. Don’t mess with me or I’ll sew you a pillow or something.

Fortunately there have been a lot of cool messenger bag designs popping up on the Internet lately. I picked out one of the more popular designs which has also been featured on Make Magazine’s blog. I especially liked his last design, the one based on the pythagorean theorem. Ignore all the mumbo jumbo about “perfect ratios” - what you really end up with is a bag with a nice wedge shape that you can pack full of stuff but still close tightly. And it’s very similar to other bags that I really find comfortable, like my Timbuk2 bag.

Read on for more details.

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome Lifehackers! Looks like another one of my posts has been lucky enough to be featured on Lifehacker! Very cool. I hope you enjoy my how-to.

About a year ago I picked up a pair of Shure E2C headphones. Well worth their somewhat expensive price, I use them all the time. They provide a ton of isolation, so they’re great on the bus and when flying.

But, in my experience, the actual headphone plug leaves a lot to be desired. Within about 8 months of regular use, I started getting the traditional crappy connection problems you get with cheaper headphones. After a few months of constantly trying to tweak the connector in order to get a good connection, I finally decided to replace the connector myself.

The final product was quite impressive. For more details, read on.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yes… chrismetcalf.net has gone corporate.

Well not quite, but close. Given the fact that I’ve been running various websites for nearly 8 years without a single cent in funding, I’ve decided to start running some rather unobtrusive Google Adsense ads at the left-hand side of the page. I know that the decision to turn a site ad-supported is not usually met without controversy. I’ve just come to the conclusion that I’d like my blog to be at least self-supporting. All I really want to do is cover my hosting costs. I’ve got a perfectly good job and I don’t plan on supporting myself off of blogging (I’m amazed anybody can).

So, if you’ve got opinions, feel free to chime in in the comments.