seattle

Why being sick isn’t all that bad

Every once in a while the clouds part and Seattle reminds you just why you live in the Pacific Northwest…

Red Room

If you’re coming to Seattle, or you live in Seattle and you haven’t been yet, you have to check out the Seattle Downtown Library. I know, libraries don’t sound that fun but the art and architecture at this one is phenomenal. I’m going to have to go back there sometime soon and spend a full day just taking pictures.

My half-mile walk from where I work to where I have to catch my bus home at night takes me through Pioneer Square. Pioneer Square is a nice district south of downtown with lots of great restauraunts, book stores, and art galleries. A great place to hang out during the day.

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.

Yes. You heard me correctly. Its snowing in Seattle. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly home and start stockpiling boxes of granola.

In all honesty this should be interesting. Apparently nobody in Seattle knows how to drive in the snow, and they have no snow removal equipment. At 1PM, with no snow accumulation, they sent all the kids home early from school. Employees who commute a long way have already started leaving to work from home. We’ve been warned against coming into work tomorrow if we don’t have to.

I’ll try and get pictures when I head home.

So I held off on blogging for a week or two. Partially because I was busy/lazy, and partially because I was waiting to hear back from HR about Amazon.com’s blogging policy.

But I finally heard back from them. I think they created a blogging policy simply because I asked. As such I’ve added a disclaimer to the sidebar of my blog reminding you that although I work for Amazon.com, I don’t speak for them. And don’t expect me to give away any deep dark Amazon secrets… that would certainly get me fired.

What I can tell you is that my group builds the tools that medium-sized third-party merchants use to sell products on Amazon. So when you buy an item thats sold by that mom & pop shop in Wisconsin, you’re dealing at least a little bit with my group’s code. Amazon is an awesome place to work and I’m very excited about the directions in which we are going.

Other than that… I love Seattle. Its an awesome town. I found a great apartment on Alki beach with an old housemate from college and I’m settling in nicely. Now I just need to find a boat to race on…