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

Although I’ve had accounts on a good number of them, I just can’t keep them properly updated and maintained anymore. Thus, I’ve decided to start “pruning my network,” so to speak. As such, I’ve cancelled my accounts on Orkut and Friendster. I haven’t even touched my Orkut account in about 2 years, except to occasionally accept friend requests from the hordes of (often quite attractive) Brazillian women who seem to try and befriend everyone on Orkut. And I hadn’t logged into Friendster for so long that I couldn’t remember my password. I also plan on canceling my Myspace account soon, but I’d like to notify a few friends on there before I suddenly disappear.

From now on, I plan on maintaining a much smaller collection of social sites:

• Flickr for my photo collections
• Facebook for general friend-networking
• LinkedIn for career networking
• Twitter for random comments

If you want to network with me, you’re best to find me on one of those four in the future.

Update: I’ve notified those people in my MySpace that weren’t already on Facebook and I’ve canceled my account.

Well, old or not, I’m off to Bumbershoot to celebrate.

In case anybody noticed my extended absense, I was racing in Whidbey Island Race Week, an annual regatta on an island (Whidbey Island, in fact) in northwest Washington. I was racing on a Choate 27 I often crew for named Allegro Con Brio. By the skin of our mathematical teeth we managed to earn ourselves a third in our class.

I’m slowly adding photos to a photoset in my Flickr account

From the CQServices.com news site:

Donna M. Blake, 55, of Apalachin, N.Y., passed away on Sunday, Jan. 15, 2006 at Lourdes Hospital, Binghamton, N.Y.

She is survived by: her husband of 24 years, Donald Blake; her daughter, Karyn Blake, currently a student at Clarkson University; her brother and sister-in-law, Dr. Jack and Sharon McWatters of Maryland; her two sisters and brothers-in-law, Barbara and Clarence Randall of Towanda and Beverly and Jim Orshal of Sayre; and her numerous nieces and nephews.

Donna was born Aug. 7, 1950 in Sayre, the daughter of the late Harold and Leatha (Traver) McWatters.

She graduated from Sayre High School, Class of 1968, continued to earn her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Clarion College in Pennsylvania and later earned her master’s degree in computer science from Binghamton University.

She was an employee of Lockheed Martin Federal Systems in Owego, N.Y., for the past 30 years, and served as chief information officer for the past two years.

Donna was a great family vacation planner and always enjoyed outdoor activities such as skiing and kayaking with her family. She enjoyed reading best-selling novels, was an avid fan of football and baseball, and especially the Binghamton Mets.

Donna was always dedicated to her family, and was a loving wife, mother, sister, aunt and friend.

A memorial service will be held Tuesday, Jan. 24 at 10 a.m. at Richards Funeral Home, Route 17C West, Owego, with the Rev. William Wells, pastor and family friend, officiating.

Friends are invited to call Monday, Jan. 23 from 6-8 p.m. at the funeral home.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions in memory of Donna may be made to the American Cancer Society, the Lance Armstrong Foundation - www.LAF.org - or the Relay for Life.

The Blakes were like a second family to me while I was growing up. They welcomed me into their home and treated me as if I was one of their own. I hope we can all keep Donna, along with her daughter Karyn and husband Don in our thoughts and prayers in this difficult time.

But on weekday nights it gets a bit sketchier. There are a number of homeless shelters in the area, so theres this huge influx of homeless people looking for dinner and a place to sleep for the night. The majority of them don’t give me any trouble, but occasionally you encounter one that is kind of strange.

Like the fellow I ran into tonight. I was on the phone with my bank (my bank card was accidentally swapped with somebody elses at the bar last night) while walking to the bus stop. All of a sudden this big pissed off homeless guy comes running out of nowhere yelling gibberish, chases me down, and roundhouse kicks me square in the ass. Then he walked away yelling more random cuss words at me.

And thats my random Seattle story for the week.

Since I was backpacking and trying to travel as inexpensively as possible, most of these tips are directed at younger people like myself. But I hope everyone else will find them helpful as well.

• London is expensive! Don’t plan on eating or drinking out a lot if you don’t want to end up broke.
• If you’re doing the hostel thing, stay at The Generator. Only 12.50£ a night for a dorm bed, free linens, and a pretty friendly staff. They also have their own bar with 1£ beer specials every night and huge cafeteria-style meals for 3.50£. They also put on a damn good party…
• Definitely go to the British Museum and the National Gallery. I thought the National Gallery was actually more fun than The Lourve in Paris. Smaller and more densely packed with good art, they have tons of more contemporary works by artists like Monet.
• Probably the best way to see the city is to take one of those open-top tour busses. I went with the “Original Tour” and was glad I did. Its kind of pricey at 16£, but you can hop on and off as much as you want for 24 hours, they have great guides that tell stories about the city, and it also includes a river boat tour down to Grenwich. I know I know, its extremely touristy but it really is worth it.
• Marks & Spencer. You’ll invaribly find that you didn’t pack enough underwear, shirts, etc. Marks & Spencer is a great place to pick up some cheap store-brand clothes that are actually quite nice. And the Marks & Spencer “Food Court” (in the basement of most stores) sells a ton of cheap M&S-brand food that is a great value.
• If you’re looking for cheap Internet access, there’s a place on Charing Cross right near the Leister Square tube station that is 1£ for as long as you can sit in one place. Not exactly the nicest, cleanest, or safest Internet cafe, but its cheap and you can usually find an open station.

Its a weird feeling. I celebrated it by coming back to my apartment and packing for about six hours. And now I’m celebrating with a nice rum and tonic. Still strange though. I had to run some errands around Oakland and I was assaulted by visions of “college life”. Students sitting on porches with acoustic guitars and beers on a Monday night. I’ll miss college.

Well, here’s to what’s next!

Have you ever had one of those days when you realize that there are forces in the world that refuse to make things easy for you?

… Well I just had one.

I was called in earlier tonight to help get some work I did for Red Team earlier this term as we get ready to deploy and test our part of the system. I had my laptop sitting on the hood of the vehicle (a robotic Humvee) while I worked and I stepped away for a moment.

Just about then one of my teammates ran by to hop up on the robot to fix something and inadvertently knocked my laptop from off the hood about 5 feet to the hard concrete floor.

I have less than a week before my practicum project (effectively my masters thesis) must be completed.

The screen, as you can see, is absolutely destroyed. The lid is actually bent enough that it does not close without being forced.

But the machine boots and the disk checks cleanly. If that’s not a testament to the quality of IBM Thinkpads, I don’t know what is.

I’m not angry at the teammate who knocked it off. We all make mistakes. Insurance should cover its replacement (hopefully I’ll get a Powerbook out of the deal). Its just an extremely inopportune time to lose full use of my laptop.

This past weekend I got the chance to go back to Michigan and race with some old (and new) friends on the Mumm 36 “Vanguard.”

Great race. Extremely fast and relatively uneventful besides a few dozen sail changes. Many a record was shattered this year. I beat my personal best by about 10 hours by finishing at 3AM on Monday morning.

I’ve set up a Flickr photoset with my photos from Boat Night and the island.