Blog: Entries Tagged With 'work'

I've been thinking a lot about purpose lately. It's now been four months since I left my job with Pure, and being free of a job has afforded me time to actually do things like think.

But kidding aside, in some senses I've been busier than ever. I've definitely had my hands full with fixing things around the house, doing things for parents, working out, researching health, relearning science concepts, and fellowshipping with people at church and in our small group.

I reckon that most of us won't find our "grand purpose" in lofty ideals like changing the world or becoming the top ranked in something. But, to loosely paraphrase Theodore Roosevelt, we can all do a bit of good where we are, with what we have.

To say that life is more about finding purpose in the day-to-day rather than living out some "grand purpose" is helpful. But, for followers of Christ, I think that doesn't capture the whole picture. We are called to a higher purpose, and that is to glorify God and find joy in doing so. Our purpose should be the one that He has set for us. Nothing more, and nothing less.

So we continue to live each day - learning, laughing, and loving. Finding small doses of purpose in enjoying life and helping others do the same. All the while, allowing Christ to work in us and wanting the same for others. That, I submit, is our grand, glorious purpose.

This past Friday was my last day with Pure. Since moving to SoCal, I've been fortunate to have been working remotely for 3 months. But alas, the company denied my manager's request for me to be permanently remote, as the executives have been pushing to have everybody back in the office and are apparently not granting any new requests for permanent remote positions. We knew that this would be the most likely outcome when I decided to move.

I could've stayed and made them fire me, but I didn't want to make life difficult for my manager, and I gathered that they probably would have fired me with cause due to non-compliance, so I left voluntarily. This means that I don't get severance or unemployment, but I do get 90 days to exercise my stock options. A dismissal with cause would've meant losing my options (as well as no severance or unemployment).

So for my final two days, I visited the office in order to see my coworkers one more time. Priscilla and I drove up Wednesday, this time taking the 101 because it's now the most direct route for us, and the drive wasn't too bad save for a couple places where there was construction.

I had lunch with some team members on both Thursday and Friday, and my manager arranged a farewell get-together with our combined team Thursday evening. Some team members even came into the office when they would normally be working from home, just so that they could say goodbye. It was great to hang out with people one last time, and people were really kind and encouraging. Our team has been the best part of working at Pure and we've always supported one another. I'm going to miss everyone but I hope to visit again.

When people would ask me how I'm feeling, I would say that I'm wistful but optimistic. I've been with the company over 11.5 years and have been part of its culture and growth. There's so much that I didn't get to do that I wish I'd had the time for, and there's so much more that I did get to do that I will treasure forever. I enjoyed the ski trips, holiday parties, board games with my team, foraging for leftover lunches with fellow-minded teammates, the fun antics, mentoring 8 people, and being part of the amazing work that my team has done to make the rest of engineering more productive.

At the same time, I've been feeling somewhat burned out for the past several years, feeling like the work that I do often doesn't really matter. I'm planning to take at least a few months off before thinking about finding another job. It will be nice to finally be able to sleep more, train more, and have time for all the things that I've been wanting to do. Work would often leave me drained by the end of the day, lacking the energy to do things requiring much effort. I have a lot of things that I want to do now that I have an extra 30 to 40 hours a week.

We're fortunate to have reached our goal for financial independence, largely thanks to my job at Pure, and we're incredibly grateful for that. I'm hoping that I will be intentional with how I use my time and that it will be not just for bettering myself but also serving others. I don't know for sure that I will actually want to find another job, but if I do, it will be because I want to rather than because I have to. If I do find another job, I'm hoping that it will be at some sort of Christian/humanitarian non-profit, ideally still doing software development, where I feel like I'm making more of an impact in people's lives. Regardless of what I end up doing, I hope that it will be purpose-driven. If it's not working at a job, then that time should be spent doing something even more purposeful.

While I was working on Friday, Priscilla hung out with old church friends. Saturday, she had lunch with old coworkers and then we brought dinner to my uncle and aunt. And yesterday we visited our old church, caught up with people there, had pho for lunch with Randy and Eva, and then brought dinner to my other uncle and aunt and picked up some stuff that we'd left at their place.

It also seems like we're entering the season of helping parents more. Priscilla's uncle passed away last week and the funeral will be at CCAC later this month. Priscilla's dad can't drive and her mom isn't comfortable driving that far, so we're going to be staying with them for two days so that we can all go to the funeral together. Eventually they will need more help more frequently. So part of living purposefully will mean being more involved in parents' lives, particularly through the hardest times.

We'll have a lot to figure out. But for the first time in a long while, it feels more manageable now.

For the second time in our lives, our new house is beginning to feel like our home.

It's been 1.5 months since we moved in, and we're taking our time getting settled so as to not feel overwhelmed. We're using the corner room for our sleeping quarters and for my office. Eventually, after we get a couple more home improvement things done in the master bedroom, we'll probably want to buy a bigger bed and start sleeping there.

So far we've spent a combined $17k on termite treatment and repairs, a water heater repair/repiping, sewer lateral replacement, and installation of roof vents. The outlets in three bedrooms need to be grounded and the master bedroom needs to be painted a color that doesn't burn the eyes. I also need to drywall over a couple outlets which were placed in a weird spot halfway up the wall in the gym room before we can have a full-length mirror put in there.

The first week in the house, we bought a washer and dryer and a dining table with 6 chairs. Next was a sectional sofa, 3 small bookcases, a large coffee table, and finally now a TV stand. I just finished building most of the TV stand and we finally set up our PlayStation 3 and watched a DVD that we had borrowed from the library - The Money Pit. My coworkers had mentioned it when I first mentioned buying a house. The movie was a little weird but had its moments. Our house is a bit of a money pit, but fortunately nothing like the house in the movie!

There are a lot of small things that need to be done for the house. I cut down one of the giant bird of paradise plants that was growing too tall next to the house, and I've been repairing various leaks which are present in half of the 13 irrigation zones. In a month, I'll have more time for these things. My company is not approving any new requests for people to be permanently remote, so I'm going to have to leave after September 28 when my 3-month transitional period comes to an end. I could refuse to leave and have them fire me, though if they fire me with cause then there would be no severance, but I'd rather leave on good terms and not make life difficult for my manager. I should be able to give 2 weeks notice on September 28 which would allow me to remain employed for the first two weeks of October. That way, my 90-day window for exercising stock options will extend into next year. I'd rather exercise them next year since we have too much income this year, though our stock has fallen $20 in the time that I could've exercised this year, so was that really the right call?

I've been working for 16 years, 11 of which have been at Pure, so I'm feeling overdue for a change. It's been good here overall, but lately I've been feeling like the work that I do doesn't really matter. I'm planning to take several months off before deciding whether to find a new job. I'm looking forward to having more time for the things that I want to do, and I'll also need to help Priscilla's parents understand their finances. We probably have enough to be financially independent, assuming the stock market doesn't crash, so I don't need a high-paying job anymore. If I do get another job, I'm hoping for it to be with a Christian non-profit where I feel like I'm making more of a difference in people's lives. But in whatever I ultimately decide to do, I hope that I can live with purpose.

Being down in SoCal has allowed us to see family more frequently. They came over the first week and helped us unload the pod, and Aaron came by one day to mount our TV and another day to bring my bike which I'd been storing at my parents' place. We visited Priscilla's parents during a weekend when we went to Arcadia to see Sharon who was visiting her daughter there. We got together with my parents and Aaron's family earlier this month to celebrate birthdays. And we'll be staying at Priscilla's parents' place again next week in order to keep her dad company while her mom is helping out at a church retreat during the week.

We've also visited a few churches, two of which are in Camarillo. But we feel the most comfortable at a church in Thousand Oaks due to the worship style being close to what we're used to and the people being similar to us demographically. Church community should not be constrained by demographics, but I can't say that they don't matter at all. We haven't committed definitively to the church yet, but we're hoping that it will be a place where we can grow, serve, and build deeper relationships.

There's no shortage of things to sink money, time, and effort into. Some of it is meaningful, some of it less so. We have a lot to figure out, but one step at a time. Do the next right thing.

We closed escrow on our house last Monday! It felt so good to finally be done, and closing and having the money wired to our checking account (the most cash we've ever had and probably will ever have) felt like turning the page towards the end of this chapter of our lives.

It's hard to believe that we only started the home selling process with Susanna two months ago. It certainly has been a journey, and it's gone by very quickly. The buyers gave us a month of free rent back, but we're planning to have everything packed up over the next week and drive down to SoCal on July 3. We ordered a container from PackRat that's supposed to be delivered tomorrow, and half of our stuff has been packed up in the garage ever since we did the house showings.

We've been constantly looking at Redfin listings for houses in Camarillo. There were two houses that we were considering: a single-story house in Camarillo Heights that's far from everything, and a two-story house in Mission Oaks that's close to a Vons and 10 minutes closer to parents. But talking with some church friends about their and their parents' experiences with two-story houses convinced us that a second story can be a major obstacle later in life. Having just one bedroom (or in some cases no bedrooms) downstairs just won't do for what might be our forever home, especially if we ever have parents come live with us. Unfortunately, that rules out most houses in Mission Oaks.

We're quickly passing through a season of "lasts." Today was Priscilla's last day going to the office; Thursday will be mine. Sunday will be our last time at this church. Over the past few weeks, we've had over a dozen get-togethers with various people/families from church, including a dinner with many people who've been in Family Fellowship with us. We/I have had just about as many get-togethers with other friends (old friends who used to come to our church, old coworkers, current coworkers, and more). There is just not enough time to say goodbye. In a way, this is showing us that while we haven't felt close to many people, there are actually a lot of people whom we care about and vice versa.

We'll have a lot to think about when we move down. Like whether we really want to live in Camarillo, which house to get, where to go to church, how to serve our families and others. Aaron had a serious health scare a couple weeks ago and was in the ER/ICU due to meningitis. I guess he ate some old food, and having a compromised immune system plus additional risk factors due to lifestyle caused him to get a brain infection. He ended up being in a coma and was intubated, and tests revealed that he also had a small clot in his brain. Apparently he'd also had a mini stroke. When he woke up, his speech was a little slow and he would sometimes exhibit minor confusion and occasionally forget that he'd had some conversations. There was also indication that he might need dialysis.

Fortunately, he seems to have made nearly a full recovery (and continuing to get better by the day) and didn't need dialysis. He'd started trying to take better care of his health before the hospitalization, and we hope that he continues doing so. Maybe I can use his guest pass at 24 Hour Fitness to go work out with him, and hopefully we can have a deeper relationship in adulthood than we had as kids. Even though it would be a 30 minute drive, maybe we'll want to go to Priscilla's old church in Woodland Hills, partly because it's familiar and we know some people and partly because Aaron and his family go there.

We'll have a lot to think about and work through. But we'll have a whole new chapter of life to figure it out.

Call it... February frenzy and March madness?

Over the past couple months, it feels like I've done a lot and also not done a lot at the same time. Where does the time go?

After my large project wrapped up in November, my workload at work has been manageable. The first week of February, our business unit started requiring employees to come into the office four days a week. I'm typically a lot less productive in the office - there are so many distractions in the form of meetings, people asking for help, having to walk around to use the bathroom or get food, and overall just not having long blocks of focused time. Last week, I was so behind on interrupts that I decided to just take a WFH day so that I could focus, and I was able to close/dispatch 50 tickets in our triage queue. Granted, I ended up working some extra hours that day, but there's no way that I could achieve that level of focus in the office. Leadership really needs to understand that everybody works differently and that people, and thus the company, benefit from flexibility.

Since I have to be in the office, I make time to go running with Frank almost every week. We ran together sporadically before the pandemic, but starting at the beginning of 2023, we've been running together after work one or sometimes even two times a week, with each run averaging around 5 miles. It's a good way to stay accountable, though he already runs most days each week, unlike me.

Two Saturdays ago, I participated in the annual RealOptions Walk for Life 5k race. Our church participates every year, though most people do the walk instead of run. Thanks to the generosity of our church, our team raised over $19,500 to support the work of RealOptions. This was my fourth year doing the 5k and I ended up getting 1st place out of 65 runners this year, though my time of 21:34 was slightly worse than my time of 21:31 from last year. It just depends on who shows up - when I first participated in 2018, there were 8 people with a time under 20 minutes! I had been hoping to get a time under 21 minutes, and my personal goal is to be able to run a sub-20 minute 5k, so I have a long way to go.

The day after, Priscilla and I sang in the combined choir during the combined service at church. We had 6 people total from the English congregation joining the regular choir members from the Chinese congregation. I think this was a record turnout from the English side! We sang an arrangement of "Then Sings My Soul" by Mary McDonald, which is a little different from the traditional hymn. It was actually kind of fun, and it was awesome hearing how the four vocal parts came together in a beautiful composition. I was actually the one who suggested joining, as Priscilla was thinking that I wouldn't want to do it. I guess I'd be okay with doing something like this again - but not on a regular basis, Priscilla!

On the home improvement side, I've been working on replacing the old blinds in the spa room and gym room. I ordered some basic blinds (still not cheap at $230) from blinds.com and I've had to find bits of time on random evenings to get the brackets installed. One of the windows is not totally square and so one of the brackets isn't flush with the other one. Since the design of these blinds makes it so that they just sit inside the brackets without being tightened down, the entire assembly wobbles when pulling on the lift cord. I'm trying to see if I can get something to act as a shim to sit inside the bracket so that the headrail doesn't have as much room to move vertically.

We're leaving for Japan tomorrow and need to spend today packing and getting things ready. After we get back, we'll try to find a real estate agent to get information on selling our house. We're thinking of listing with Redfin due to the lower commissions. There are still a lot of things we need to fix including reglazing the showers, replacing a toilet, painting (definitely exterior and maybe interior as well), cleaning grout, cleaning patios and walkways, landscaping, finishing the drip irrigation, and more. So we might not even list our house until May or June. We just have to take it one day at a time.

You know how the song goes. There's no place like home for the holidays.

For the second year in a row, Priscilla and I stayed home for Christmas since we made an extra trip to LA in July ("Christmas in July") in addition to our usual trip for Thanksgiving. Despite not traveling in December, we had a pretty eventful holiday month. Here are the highlights.

We went to WinterFest at Great America on December 1. We both had the Gold pass this year due to me getting an award at work. It was nice to see all the lights and the holiday magic, though it was a little sad to see that the "It's Christmas, Snoopy!" show had been updated and no longer has the scripture reading from Linus. It was an impressive show in its own right, just not the same and felt a little empty without referencing the real reason for the season. We did a couple rides - RailBlazer twice and the holiday version of the Barney Oldfield Speedway, the latter at which we learned the lyrics to "The Twelve Days of Christmas" due to signs and decorations they had up.

Priscilla visited Great America again last week to get food one last time, since she had the dining pass for the year. The Great America app said that she's been there 53 times this year, and that's not including the days where she visited twice (once for lunch and once for dinner). She's definitely gotten her money's worth from that pass.

I took two weeks off work to make up for the four weeks of overtime that I put in when I was scrambling to get my big project done. I'll take a couple more weeks off when we go back to Japan in March. I got back to work the week before Christmas, which was a light week. And then nobody was really working the week between Christmas and New Year's. So, while I've been doing some work here and there, it's been a good time of getting away and focusing on other things.

Unfortunately, I was battling a cold during two of those weeks, and it seems to have turned into a mild case of pneumonia. I'm almost over it now, but progress has been slow.

We attended my business unit's holiday party on December 15. For the second year in a row, it was held at The Plex in San Jose. We enjoyed the food (and got a decent amount to take home when they brought out the takeout boxes at the end of the night), hit up the arcade, and did a good amount of roller skating. This was a familiar and predictable holiday party and I can see how some people would be turned off by that, especially since the parties of yesteryears were no-expenses-spared amazing, but we enjoy this venue. We don't mind the simple things.

Throughout the last month, we've been better about meeting up with people. I ran 10 miles at Rancho with Yang, we had dinner with the Leongs the first week of December, ate with Sharon during church lunch, I had my third and final training session with Brian (through the service auction at church), we had Christmas dinner with Uncle Kenway and Aunt Susan and her family, did respective Zoom dinners with my parents and Priscilla's parents, and Sharon and two of her daughters came over the day after Christmas and we walked and ate ice cream. And Tracy came over tonight for dinner and then we walked around the Willow Glen Holiday Lights. Unfortunately, visiting on New Year's is apparently a little late, since a fair amount of the lights were turned off. Our previous visits there were on the 28th and 27th, so I think that's what we'll have to do next time.

But there might not be a next time for us, at least in the near future. Priscilla and I have been talking about moving back to SoCal to be closer to family, particularly since her parents are getting to the age where they're starting to need more help with things. Weather is a big factor for me and I wouldn't enjoy living in the San Fernando Valley where summers get pretty hot. But we've been eyeing a city called Camarillo in Ventura County since it's semi-close to family while still providing some separation, homes are more affordable there (most places we've looked at seem to be between $800k and $1.2 million), and the weather actually seems to be better than where we are now. Camarillo is more coastal and it's not in the San Fernando Valley, and it doesn't get as hot in the summer and doesn't get as cold in the winter compared to Santa Clara. The crime rates are lower as well. It's not the perfect place, but no place is, and it would seem to suit our needs. I'm pretty sure that my manager would let me work remotely since three of my coworkers are fully remote. Priscilla thinks there's a chance that her workplace can shuffle job duties so that she can also work remotely, but it remains to be seen.

We're thinking of moving this year once the right house comes on the market. So far, I haven't really liked any of the houses that have shown up on Redfin, though I have more criteria than Priscilla. Hopefully inventory will pick up in the coming months. But I don't think we'd really want to buy anything before our Japan trip. We've also been discussing whether to sell our current house first and the logistics around that.

At any rate, moving will be a big change. I've been in the Bay Area since 2008 and at RBF since 2009 or 2010. Priscilla married into the church in 2012 but, even so, has been there longer than most people. Though we're not super close to people here, we do have valuable friendships that we will miss. Who knows whether we'll be able to cultivate the same level of relationships when we move, even if we end up going to Priscilla's old church (which would be a 30 minute drive, doable but not ideal). And we've worked hard to make this house a home over the last 10 years; moving and going through that process again will be no small effort. So much is up in the air, but we do think we're intent on moving. We've been in the Bay Area together for nearly 12 years, but it didn't take long to come to this conclusion once we started seriously discussing it. The timing and circumstances just felt right. So we'll see how things go.

On a final note, my home improvement project for the past two weeks has been to install motorized shades in the family room. The wand on our old blinds broke and we had to operate them by climbing onto the couch and turning the mechanism by hand. Not great considering that we operate those blinds a couple times every day. The blinds also never worked that well. So I did some research and decided that I wanted motorized shades, and I found a company on Yelp that quoted me $1,700. But I found some shades on Amazon that came out to $400 when I selected my dimensions and options, so I decided to order those and attempt to install them myself. I had to remove the old blinds and patch the holes, and the first time I installed the new shades, the drywall anchors that were included started pulling out of the wall. The shades are mounted on the underside of the window frame and the anchors didn't provide much holding strength when used vertically. So I had to remove everything and patch those holes as well. I ended up buying 2-inch screws from Home Depot and used those to attach the mounting brackets to the window frame, with an inch of each screw secured tightly in the header of the wood frame. Those brackets aren't going anywhere now. So now we have some pretty useful shades that are programmable and can even be operated using a voice assistant. Priscilla loves the shades and loves telling the Google Home to open and close them. This was something that was time and money well-spent, and it should also enhance the appeal of our house when it comes time to sell!

I think it's been a productive month and a meaningful year. I hope that we can be intentional about how we spend our time, who we spend it with, and where we spend it, so that the new year is equally as purposeful.

Wow. 10 years. That's how long I've been at Pure now. It's amazing how time just... flies by.

When I joined, engineering was maybe 35 people and we all fit on one floor. We occupied the 4th floor of Building 650, and everyone else was on the 5th floor. At that time, I knew everyone in engineering by name, and most by face.

We were small and scrappy but we got the job done. There were antics characteristic of a startup. Like a Nerf gun fight that broke out when the 5th floor came down and started shooting (with weapons having been distributed an hour before). There was a shrine that two HR people made to "worship" our CEO, and that became a meme with posters around the office and buttons that were passed out. And a gong that was rung every time we made a sale in the early days. The gong was on the 4th floor and some people tended to hit it pretty hard, and I had mixed feelings about it.

The first company meeting that I was a part of was held in the couch area on the 4th floor, and it was large enough for all the on-site employees to fit there. Then there was a ski trip the year I joined, and someone called it the annual ski trip even though it was the first one, so then it became an annual thing. And later that year, there was a boat trip to celebrate the company's fourth birthday, and I remember the CTO telling us to relish the moment, since we would probably be too big the following year for the whole company to all fit on a single boat again. That prediction definitely came true.

Over the years, the company grew steadily, eventually exponentially. At one point, I think we occupied 5 separate buildings on Castro Street. We had perhaps the most employees of any company along Castro. My team got moved around a few times, and my favorite location was Building 605 where it was just us and the lab team on the top floor. We were pretty isolated from the rest of engineering, which has its downsides but also upsides.

Fast forward to today, when we have over 5,000 employees and have outgrown our Mountain View home. The company has for several years wanted to have a campus where we can fit everyone, instead of having people be dispersed across multiple distant buildings. So for the last several months, the Facilities team has been working hard to renovate the two new buildings at Santa Clara Square that will be our new headquarters, and in the last few weeks, departments having been moving over. My department moved over this past week.

Compared to the old office, the new one feels more corporate. Everyone has a cubicle now and the desks are a little narrower. The free lunches are gone, replaced by a cafe where lunches are subsidized (but the quality isn't great and the price isn't that cheap). The canned drinks are gone, replaced by a touchscreen dispenser with soda and sparkling water. Parking needs to be validated daily, unless you're one of the few hundred or so employees lucky enough to have garage access via a parking app. There's a gym but it's not open weekends, and it's shared with other tenants and was fairly crowded when I visited. On the upside, my commute by car has gone from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. I plan to bike to work most days, and the ride is only 15 minutes. I just wish that the company would build another bike room, as the single bike room we have is already at capacity, and we still have employees who haven't moved here yet.

Pure is definitely not a small company anymore. Teams are more specialized, though a lot of process inefficiency and tech debt still remains. I've been feeling like a cog in a machine even before the move, but now even more so in the new office. The ski trips are gone, the holiday gift at Christmas is no more, and last year we almost didn't get to bring a +1 to the holiday party - no telling what will happen this year. I get that tech companies are scaling back in this economy and Pure is fortunate to have avoided the kind of widescale layoffs that some larger tech companies have had, but I think a lot of the changes are just due to how the company has grown. It's the end of an era, and the move to the new office cements it in stone.

So will I stick around? Another 10 years, or another 5, or 2? I do like my team and I generally like my work, and the work-life balance is still usually decent. So while I'm always open to new opportunities, I recognize that I still have a good thing here, even though it doesn't quite have the "it" factor that it did before.

Yesterday was Pure's engineering holiday party at The Plex in San Jose. This was our first holiday party since 2018; we didn't have one the previous two years because of the pandemic, and in 2019 we had a 10th year anniversary party in lieu of a holiday party.

This year, our party encompassed just the engineering orgs, as the company has gotten so big that we can't fit a couple thousand people under one roof just anywhere. Other orgs got their own parties. For budgetary reasons, this party was originally open to employees only, but it was changed to allow guests after enough people complained. If there's one thing the company does right, it's caring about and trying to listen to its employees.

Sadly, nobody from my team appeared to have attended. A few people were traveling, a few were sick, and a couple people probably didn't want to make the long drive. I saw just a couple people that I recognized but didn't get a chance to talk to them. So Priscilla and I just kept to ourselves and enjoyed the many amenities there. Cost savings aside, I can understand why the company wanted this to be an employee-only event; being there with a spouse/guest results in a very different dynamic. Of course, if only I were able to go, I probably wouldn't have gone.

But I'm glad that Priscilla made us go. We arrived 10 minutes after the start time and went straight to the buffet, where we loaded up on a little bit of mostly everything. The dinner theme was burgers and tacos, though the taco shells were absent at the start. I piled up my plate high with salad, potatoes, chicken, ground beef, tater tots, bacon, a burger patty, pulled pork, and cheese. They also had things like charcuterie, Impossible Burgers, and beignets. There was also a beer wall with different kinds of beer; Priscilla sampled a few of them and liked the Angry Orchard the most, as usual. We probably could've eaten more but I didn't want to stuff myself silly, though we did grab a slice of pizza later in the evening.

So after dinner, we hit up the arcade, where most of the games were free to play. We did basketball, ball throwing (I was very bad), bowling, skee-ball, and a couple shooter video games. Then we did roller skating for a little over half an hour. Nobody else was skating at first, but people started gradually joining. The first few of us weren't that great, but I think we all improved with a little practice. Priscilla had a tough time as always, but she too was a little better by the end. And she liked that the DJ seemed to be playing an entire album by rapper NF.

We ended our time by playing a couple rounds of cornhole. I did a lot better with this, redeeming myself from my prior poor performance at throwing balls.

We had a lot of fun. This party was noticeably not as fancy as previous ones, but I think this one was my favorite because of all the activities we could do at our own pace without it being too crowded. If future parties are like this one, I guess I won't mind going!

Now that most people seem to think that the pandemic is over, life appears to have gotten back to normal. Well, maybe a new kind of normal.

At the beginning of March, governor Newsom lifted California's indoor mask mandate. And in April, the federal government's nationwide mask mandate for public transit was struck down by a federal judge. As COVID turned the world upside-down in a matter of a couple weeks in 2020, things have gradually started turning right side up in the last year or so as people have gotten vaccinated and as the virus has mutated into a less deadly form. Nowadays, supply chain issues, labor shortage and inflation seem to be more pressing problems than "the rona."

As such, companies have been calling employees back into the office, typically under a hybrid schedule where feasible. Pure gave us notice a couple months ago that today would be the first day of the mandatory return to office (RTO), where most of us are expected to be in the office three days a week at minimum. So at last, after being able to work remotely for 2.5 years, I and most others stepped foot back into the office under the new schedule today.

The office had been open for the last several months, though most people unsurprisingly chose to keep working from home during that time. Attendance had been ramping up over the past couple months as lunches started being offered on Thursdays and then on Tuesdays as well, and as upper management "strongly encouraged" people to come in in order to make the transition to official RTO less jarring. I'd gone in a few times over the last two years, including stepping in a couple weeks ago, but by and large I preferred the flexibility that working from home gave me.

Going back today felt pretty, well, uneventful. I stopped by the IT helpdesk to get another dock, since I'd gotten a new laptop during the pandemic and I'm keeping my current dock at home. I spent time setting up the new dock and cables at my desk, clearing out emails, eating with coworkers, being in two meetings, and I managed to get a little bit of actual work done as well. The Tuesday and Thursday lunches are now buffet style, served in the kitchen close to where my team sits, and today we had BBQ chicken, brisket, mac and cheese, Hawaiian bread, salad, and roasted vegetables. Pretty decent fare. There were cookies and other sweets for dessert, and some cupcakes showed up in the kitchen a couple hours later. There were balloons and some decorations set up in the kitchen, which I thought was a small but nice way to welcome people back, but otherwise, the RTO went by with not much fanfare. Maybe because many people had been coming back already.

I still prefer working from home, but I'm glad for the lunch and the snacks (and I got some leftovers for the next day), and it was nice seeing teammates and some old familiar faces in person. Today was fairly special, but I'm sure the days will start feeling more mundane and more of a slog soon. Maybe let's just try to make the best of it. Having to commute this way again gives me more reason to hit up my gym in Sunnyvale; I kept the membership since it's just $14 a month, but I haven't been going often because I have dumbbells at home and I don't usually have any other reason to drive that way. And I'm looking forward to sometimes biking to work again since my cycling ability has fallen off a cliff during the 2.5 years of working from home. I'm thinking of biking to work this week but we're in a 1-week heat wave after nearly a whole summer that's felt cooler than usual. Today it apparently got up to 107 degrees, tomorrow it'll be 96, and Thursday will be 101. LA's been pretty hot as well; Priscilla's been down there visiting her parents, and one day it was 115 in the San Fernando Valley. We seem to be smashing a lot of climate records in recent years. Yesterday, both Livermore and Fairfield hit 116 degrees, an all-time record for the Bay Area. Hottest day ever? More like hottest day so far! This is fine. Totally.

Yesterday I got my second dose of the Pfizer COVID shot. Slightly worrying is the fact that other than very minor soreness at the site of the injection (and less soreness than last time), I've been feeling no side effects. But according to articles, the severity of side effects is not predictive of vaccine effectiveness, so I'm not stressing out about it. Pretty sure they didn't just run out of vaccines and give me a placebo...

Getting vaccinated felt, well, like a mundane affair. Definitely not life-changing. I recognize how privileged I am to be able to say that. I'm thankful for the wide-scale availability of the vaccine in the US, with basically anybody who wants the vaccine able to get it (and at no cost to them), and with almost half of the population now having gotten at least one dose, and over a third of the population having been fully vaccinated. I am privileged to be able to work from home, to be paid well for it, and to be in a position where the worst part of my day is Zoom fatigue. How many countless people in the world are still suffering greatly because of the pandemic (India comes to mind as of late), how many livelihoods have been affected, lives turned upside down, and how many people are out on the front lines risking their health for the benefit of society and getting paid little for it? Yeah, I'm blessed to live in the US and privileged to be in the position that I am.

One is considered fully vaccinated two weeks after the final dose, according to the CDC. And their guidance is now that fully-vaccinated people don't need to wear masks, either outdoors or indoors (though this guidance doesn't apply to healthcare and public transportation settings). I'm grateful that I'll be effectively protected when hanging out with/being around people, but I'm still a bit skittish and would prefer to continue keeping social distance and wearing a mask when around others. After all, we're still in a pandemic and the US is still seeing around 35k new cases a day. Priscilla thinks I'm too extreme and reminds me that the number of new cases in California is quite low. Maybe she's right. Perhaps a compromise?

As for Priscilla, she's down in LA for 10 days now and her last day of work was yesterday. She's been consistently waking up around 5:30 now (an improvement from 3:30) and has continued being fruitful with her time. She'll be helping her parents organize their finances and hanging out with friends in LA. So I'll have to wing it as a bachelor for the next several days, though she did make me a ton of food (porridge, pulled chicken, scrambled eggs, kale, shrimp, and a huge pot of soup) before she left, so I think I'll survive.

Well, it's been a pretty eventful four months into 2021. We're still in the midst of a global pandemic, but places are starting to reopen and life is starting to get back to some semblance of normalcy.

So far, 44% of Americans have gotten at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, with 31% fully vaccinated. In California and most other states, vaccination appointments are now available to anybody who wants them; I got my first dose last week. Daily infection rates in the US have been hovering around 50k, down from a high of 300k in January. Around the world, the situation is still more dire. Right now, India has it the worst with daily infections having ballooned to around 400k, and with only 9% of the population having had at least one dose of a vaccine and 2% fully vaccinated. Of course the western countries would get faster access to vaccines than the rest of the world. It's especially ironic that India is the world's largest producer of vaccines. The inequality is real, sometimes seemingly unreal, and visible. We have so many blessings living here that we must not take for granted.

One thing we're grateful for is the ability to attend church in-person with others again. Our church resumed in-person gatherings in February, and we've been meeting outdoors so as to not be limited by the capacity and singing restrictions for indoor services. Each family sits in their own socially-distant space in the parking lot and brings their own chairs, so there's a bit of setup involved each Sunday morning. We have to be there at the unbearably early hour of 9am for the morning service, and 8am on days when we help with worship, but I don't have a good excuse to not be waking up early anyway. The livestream (which we still have) is so much more convenient, but there's no substitute for meeting in person. Sometimes it feels like a drag to get myself there, but I know it's a good thing.

As for the two of us, Priscilla and I took a short trip at the end of March to hike at Pinnacles National Park, California's newest national park and the closest one to the Bay Area. We visited on a Monday, and we ran into a fair number of people but not a lot of people. Because I underestimate trail distance and difficulty, we ended up hiking for 8 hours and did nearly 14 miles over 4,000 feet of elevation, which included going a good ways up the side of a hill where there was no marked trail (I saw a sign saying there was a vista point and I thought it was at the top of the hill, but it was actually refering to an observation spot nearby which didn't register in my mind as an actual spot with a view). Priscilla was extremely tired through the latter third of the hike, but she very graciously put up with me.

I really enjoyed the relative solitude of Pinnacles, seeing a few condors on the Condor Gulch Trail, and visiting the scenic reservoir towards the end of the day (I ran there while Priscilla hiked back to the car). Because of COVID, the two caves at Pinnacles were closed - quite a bummer since they're supposedly awesome to visit. Hopefully we'll be able to visit again when the caves are open, and I'm sure that the hike will be better planned the next time around...

So during that trip, we stayed overnight in Hollister, which is a 30-mile drive to Pinnacles. This allowed us to save some money (hotels near Pinnacles are pricey) but still be able to get to the park early-ish without having to drive too far. On the way to Hollister, we visited the Gilroy Ostrich Farm, which Priscilla particularly enjoyed, and Casa de Fruta, where we didn't buy anything and spent more time walking around outside than looking at goods inside the shop. After Pinnacles, we ate at Carpo's Restaurant and stayed overnight in Capitola (Soquel, technically) and walked around Capitola and the beach the next day. The coolest part there was walking along the old railroad trestle (the rail line is no longer active, so no chance of getting flattened by a train) high above across Soquel Creek. This trip was our first since the start of the pandemic where we stayed in a hotel (wow!).

Then at the end of April, we drove down to LA to see family. We hadn't seen them since Thanksgiving; we didn't visit during Christmas because of the increased travel restrictions at that time. Our visit was pretty low-key, but it was good to see everyone, and Aaron's kids are a little older and the older one seems slightly more comfortable with me now and couldn't stop pointing out what color everything is. It's pretty cool (and a big relief!) to see her opening up, because before she would always just stare blankly at me, not wanting to engage.

Finally, Priscilla will be going through a career transition soon. She and her coworkers have been having a rough time due to the new CFO who's been difficult to work with. Priscilla was experiencing a lot of stress that was taking a toll on her mental health. Finally, she asked to work from home until the company found a replacement, after which she would leave. For reasons, her last day was supposed to be last Friday, but the new person hasn't started yet, so the company asked Priscilla to continue working another two weeks, which she agreed to because she knows how overloaded her team is. After she leaves, she wants to learn about self-employment and will be going down to LA for 10 days to help her parents sort out their finances, which they will pay her for - they gift her money every year anyway, but she wants to use this as a way to make self-employed contributions into a 401k. Later, she's planning to find a job with another company, ideally part-time and remote. It'll be good to see her more and for her to have more time to help me with things around the house that I don't have time for. Her sleep cycle got really messed up due to the stress she was experiencing, and she still can't help but wake up at 3:30am many days, but she's had more free time as a result and has been using her time more fruitfully.

I too need to better learn to carve out time for the things that matter. I think the pandemic has made me better in this area, but I'm still very much a work in progress. You never know how life is going to go or what day is going to be your last. If there's one thing that this time has taught me, it's that life is a gift and should not be squandered. As our modern-day millennial philosophers so eloquently put it, YOLO.

Now that it's fall, I figured I'd better get to writing an update for the rest of summer. A lot has happened since I wrote my last blog entry!

Workwise, the situation has remained unchanged. I'm still working from home, as Pure has directed all non-essential staff to continue to do so for the rest of the year. Priscilla is still working from home only 2-3 days a week.

In late June/early August, I decided that I may never be able to set foot in my gym again and that we should start purchasing gym equipment. We originally wanted to keep our two spare rooms free in case we decided to rent them out again in the future. So we were thinking of having an outdoor gym, which would involve removing two trees in the backyard and installing a canopy and hard flooring with rubber flooring over it. But eventually we decided to convert our larger spare room into a permanent gym room, meaning we'll never rent out that room again, which we decided was acceptable.

So I bought rubber floor tiles and had a glass company install a 8x6' mirror. I also purchased a weight bench and dumbbell rack on Amazon. I wanted dumbbells because they're the most versatile. The problem was that they were sold out everywhere, and the price gouging for used dumbbells on Craigslist was insane. I'd heard of Rogue Fitness and knew that they were well-regarded in the fitness community but also that their stuff had been considered pricey. But unlike most companies, Rogue had seemingly not increased prices during the pandemic, making their gear competitively priced by today's standards. It took a couple weeks, but I was finally able to order 10-50lb dumbbells, and later 60lb dumbbells and a 35lb kettlebell. Orders were naturally quite backed up, so it took 5 weeks for everything to arrive, but it was awesome once it did.

Unfortunately, now I have a problem with weight distribution. The dumbbells plus the rack weigh about 850 pounds, which is a lot to put in one small area given that we have a crawlspace and a foundation that doesn't seem too strong. We don't have major foundation issues, but we have creaking floorboards everywhere, a sagging floor in many spots, and evidence of minor settling all around. I went into the crawlspace and found that we have 4x6 beams with subfloor planks on top. No joists and no plywood, unlike with modern homes. I did a lot of research about foundations and also had a structural engineer come take a look, and he determined through very generic calculations that I can have no more than about 360-400lbs of weight in that area. I loaded up the rack with 375lbs (including the rack's weight of 75lbs), and a couple weeks later, I noticed some thin cracks on that side of the room where the floorboard was starting to pull away from the wall. I'm not sure if the floorboard was like that before, but I didn't want to take chances and exacerbate the problem, so I took the 40lb dumbbells off the rack. Now the lighter dumbbells are on the rack while the heavier ones are distributed around the edges of the room.

I have the rack centered over two beams, though it's slightly wider than the beam span by a few inches on each side. The structural engineer didn't go into the crawlspace as I had hoped he would, but he gave me a suggestion to install one additional pier per beam to support the weight of the rack. I'm having an actual foundation repair company come next week, and they will actually go into the crawlspace and give me a free estimate. Of course, I'm afraid that any work they do will cost a lot.

But the gym room has been an investment that's already been paying off. I had been feeling down due to not being able to go to the gym for 4 months, let alone losing a lot of my previous strength gains. I had the cheap adjustable dumbbells in the shed, but it wasn't the same. It's been awesome physically and mentally to be able to get a real workout again. We also added an exercise ball as well as a custom metal sign hung on the wall to complete our gym setup. Overall, we spent around $4k on the home gym, and Priscilla's parents graciously paid for most of it (they insisted). But perhaps we may have to shell out another $4k for foundation work - who knows.

Not to be left out, Priscilla decided that we should convert the other spare room into her spa room. Our last renter left a twin bed and some small furniture when she moved out. At the start of July, I purchased a Casper Wave Hybrid mattress, hoping that it would help with Priscilla's back pain. Casper was among the many companies having supply issues, and the mattress shipment kept getting delayed and ultimately took 5 weeks to arrive (and probably would've been longer had I not emailed customer support). The new mattress was pretty pricey at $2,360 (though we got a $109 refund due to the delays), but it's been an invaluable investment since it's helped a lot with Priscilla's back pain when all other mattresses we've tried have failed. Since our previous mattress was only 2.5 years old and still in good condition, we didn't want to just toss it. So Priscilla decided to use it as a backrest between the wall and the twin bed, creating a day bed. Thus, her day bed and spa room was born. It seems like we will never have renters again while we are living here. I guess we're at that stage of life now where we are ok with that.

Our other home improvement projects have been focused on the backyard. I had a handyman come and fix some things around the house including repairing some rotted wood behind the shed door hinges. We finished planting green onions in the planter box and also planted 6 tomato plants that Priscilla's coworker gave her. I installed a 3ft fence around the perimeter of the planter box to keep cats from pooping there (and it has worked!). I pressure washed the patio and also surprised Priscilla one night with string lights hung from the patio cover over our patio table. Afterwards, she bought tiki torches and a gas firepit so that we can enjoy our backyard at night in even more style.

However, we haven't been able to spend a lot of time outdoors since August. The second week of August, we saw a record-breaking heat wave. And then on August 16, a rare thunderstorm event caused a long period of dry lightning that sparked hundreds of fires. We were kept awake most of that night by the frequent sound of thunder; I have never heard so much continuous thunder in my life. Over the next few days, over 12,000 lightning strikes were recorded over Northern California, sparking up to 585 wildfires. In an unprecedented fire season, massive wildfires burned across Southern and Northern California, as well as Oregon and Washington, spreading quickly and wide due to hot weather, dry conditions and high winds. The August Complex, which originated as 38 separate fires, soon became the largest fire in recorded California history. Pretty much the entire West Coast was on fire, and firefighters were stretched thin, and it took a few weeks before any real progress was made. I found myself incessantly checking the AQI on PurpleAir and AIRNow, as most of the time the air outside was very smokey and not ideal for going out, let alone for cardio exercise. At times, the air quality in the Bay Area was the worst in the world. A couple days this month, the sky was red and orange all over the Bay Area, making everything look apocalyptic. With all that's been going on, it certainly felt like it.

Across the three states, more than 5.8 million acres have now burned - a combined area larger than New Jersey. Containment on many of the fires is still ongoing, but firefighters have been working relentlessly and under straining conditions. Finally, a couple weeks ago, the Bay Area started seeing healthy AQI levels again. Since Priscilla and I hadn't been able to travel since the start of the pandemic, we had planned a trip to Yosemite from September 26-29. We booked this a week before the start of the fires. Unfortunately, Yosemite air quality has been greatly impacted by the nearby Creek Fire, and there are a couple smaller fires burning inside of Yosemite itself, so the park was closed for about a week prior to our scheduled trip. We decided that we should go down to LA instead, so we drove down last Saturday and stayed until yesterday. Since Priscilla's parents are older and thus more at risk to COVID, we saw them first for two days, followed by my parents for the latter two days. We also got to have dinner with my brother and his family. It was nice to be able to see family again; we hadn't seen them in person since the start of the pandemic.

While the Bay Area has been seeing healthier air than LA as of late, that's now changed thanks to the Glass Fire in Napa and Sonoma which started on Sunday. Air quality all around the bay is now back in the "unhealthy" range. People are getting fire fatigue, and those having to evacuate and go to shelters have the added danger of exposure to the virus in the middle of this pandemic. Things could be worse, but they have not been great. And weather conditions and wildfires are probably just going to get more extreme with time thanks to global warming. In all of this, while the future can look bleak and hopeless, we as Christians must remember that while we are stewards of this world and its resources, that ultimately man is sinful and creation is fallen, and our hope must be in our Creator who will redeem all things.

In last week's post, I mentioned the challenges of working in the office during the current crisis but that I hoped to stick it out for a couple days. Well, after two days total I decided to revert to working from home. Not having much that I could eat and having to wear a mask the whole time in the office were too burdensome (and half the time while I was at my desk with nobody around, I either wasn't wearing the mask or didn't have it covering my nose).

Everyone else on my team had already elected to continue working from home. And this week, due to the rising number of coronavirus cases both nationally and statewide, Pure decided to roll back the reintegration plan and require all employees, except essential staff, to revert to working from home again.

Today, with 44,782 new cases reported, the US set the single-day record for new cases for the fifth day in a row. For comparison, the number of daily new cases was less than half this number at the beginning of the month. Cases are spiking in western and southern states, California included. But it's encouraging to see that New York, where things seemed out of control in April, has appeared to have flattened the curve since then.

The spike in cases is likely due to states reopening, though people not taking as many precautions is probably a large contributor. One need only look around to see the signs. When we visited Santana Row mid-June, it felt like there were way too many people there, and many people didn't seem to be socially distancing or wearing masks. When I went running at Rancho San Antonio (an extremely popular hiking spot) last weekend, the trails were crowded and only about 25% of people were wearing a mask. It seems like the fact that we're reopening, plus some quarantine fatigue, has caused people to let their guard down, and now we're starting to see the consequences of that. Half of the new cases in recent weeks have been in adults under the age of 35, a worrying trend.

Personally, I'm not taking chances. I keep a cloth mask with me when running in an area where social distancing is not always possible, and I'll put it on when someone is approaching. And when going into stores, I've started wearing an N95 mask and a cloth mask over it - partly for the double protection, and partly to cover up the N95 mask because there seems to be a stigma against non-medical personnel having/wearing them due to shortages. We bought two N95 masks 2 years ago when NorCal was experiencing large-scale wildfires, but I don't want people getting the wrong idea.

At the current rate, I expect the crisis to get a lot worse before it starts getting better. Young people might continue not socially distancing and unknowingly catch the virus and spread it to others. We could be past the inflection point where the exponential spread of the virus really starts to accelerate. States could scale back their reopening efforts and shut down again, causing new economic woes that compound the earlier ones. Bay Area companies could very well require employees to work from home for the rest of the year. There's so much uncertainty now. But, places like New York (where all parts of the state have reopened to some degree) are proof that things can turn around, but it requires everyone to work together.

As mentioned in last Friday's post, yesterday was the first day back to the office for a couple hundred Pure employees. Every other desk is now unassigned, meaning that many people were moved, though I still have the same desk by the window. On my floor where there are normally around 200 people, I'd estimate that there were only 10 people in. I was the only one on my team who came in (the only other person on the team who elected to come back was still working from home yesterday). The next nearest person on my floor was sitting 100 feet away.

Lunch is currently not provided. And in our microkitchens, there's about 1/3 of the previous amount of snacks. There are individual-sized cups of cereal, Cup Noodles, popcorn, chips, beef jerky, granola bars, cookies, and a couple types of energy bars. Plus a couple types of soda, energy drinks, tea, and sparkling water. And one type of beer - Corona (ironically?). All the perishable stuff like eggs, hummus, carrots, yogurt, cheese, almond and soy milk has been removed. So have the bulk bin snacks, oatmeal, and peanut and almond butter. Unfortunately, there's not that much that I can eat on my limited diet.

Before work, I visited my dentist for a cleaning that was 2 months overdue. They reopened their office at the beginning of the month, and there are naturally more protective measures in place: a health questionnaire and temperature screening up front, patients having to rinse their mouth with hydrogen peroxide, masks and face shields for the dentist and her assistant, and the dentist chair and other equipment covered in disposable plastic to be changed in between patients. The assistant told me that they used to have 2 or 3 patients per hour, but now they have 1 every hour back to back. The dentist asked me to pay a $20 charge for the PPE that they have to use, since insurance doesn't cover that yet. A small price to pay given that the office is bringing in much less revenue now but can't suddenly start billing higher rates to insurance. I don't know how they'll be able to keep the lights on like this.

Being back in the office yesterday was difficult for me. Part of it is probably that I still need to adjust (it was an adjustment going from working in the office to working from home), but the lack of food that I could eat was a significant hindrance to productivity. Also, wearing a mask for long periods was uncomfortable, so half the time when I was at my desk, I either wasn't wearing it or had it resting lower on my face, not covering my nose. I don't know how cashiers, dentists and other people can stand wearing a mask for long stretches at a time. Compared to them, I have it good.

Today I'll be bringing a lot of food to work to help get me through the day. But that defeats the purpose - why don't I just stay home where I already have things I can eat, which also has the benefit of eliminating a commute (however great my commute to/from the office currently is) and not necessitating a mask. I don't have much incentive to go into the office at the current time, especially since our renter is no longer here and I can work quietly at home (see previous post). I'm planning to stick with it for a couple more days and then make the request to switch back. Everybody else on the team is already there.

With the shelter-in-place shakeup, it seems like people are embracing the benefits of working from home - having more schedule flexibility and ditching the commute - and companies are becoming more amenable to the practice. Last month, Twitter gave its employees the option of working from home permanently, even after the shelter-in-place is lifted. Many other companies will probably do the same. We'll probably see companies downsizing and consolidating their office space, which will cause office rents to fall. Fewer workers in the office may also negatively impact businesses, particularly restaurants, that are nearby. The same businesses that have already been hit hard by the economic crisis. In turn, perhaps we'll start seeing an exodus of people - those working remotely as well as those in the service industry - away from areas with a high cost of living in favor of more affordable places that still offer a high quality of life. We've seen the ability of this crisis to shake things up, and we probably haven't seen the end by a long shot.

Today, California entered Phase 3 of the four-part plan to reopen the state. This allows schools, bars, gyms, campgrounds, professional sports and more to reopen with modifications. Bay Area counties are taking things a bit slower, though last Friday Santa Clara County opened up things including outdoor dining at restaurants, in-store retail shopping, outdoor swimming pools, camping, and all outdoor recreational activities with one other household that don't involve physical contact.

After hiking last Saturday, Priscilla and I were running errands and decided to go pick up gyros at one of our favorite restaurants, Yiassoo. We weren't aware that outdoor dining had opened up, so seeing the patio area open was a pleasant surprise and we did not miss the chance to eat there. After a few months of not being able to eat at a restaurant, this felt like such a blessing. Ah, the little things.

Today we went to the CVS by Santana Row to pick up my meds, and we took the chance to wander through Santana Row. It was uncanny to see all these shops open and so many people dining outside. The area looked to be at maybe 40% of the pre-COVID levels of occupation. It felt like an unsafe number of people, and some diners didn't appear to be seated 6 feet away from other tables. But I guess this is the new normal. Santa Clara County's coronavirus numbers have been relatively low (only 3,117 confirmed cases thus far). But will it stay that way?

This coming Monday, I'll be joining a couple hundred or so other Pure employees in returning to the office. When the survey went out to see who wanted to return sooner and who preferred continuing to work from home until August, I was quick to respond and choose the former. But that was at a time when our renter was home all day and it was more difficult for me to have focused time at home. She has since moved out (her last day was June 6) in order to do a PhD program on the East Coast. So now our two non-master bedrooms are unoccupied, the first time in over 6 years that we haven't had a renter. Priscilla and I are enjoying the long-forgotten peace and quiet and privacy, and we're not rushing to find a new renter. I'm not really jumping at the possibility of finding someone only to have them be at home all day if there's another lockdown this year.

In terms of work, though, the current situation at home has allowed me to have better times of focus. Going into the office could actually make me less productive, especially when you factor in time commuting, less schedule flexibility, and the strict health guidelines (e.g. having to continuously wear a mask when in the office) that we'll have to abide by. Also, lunch will initially not be provided, and drinks and snacks will be limited. I know that many others don't get those things at their workplace, but it's a major productivity booster to have food taken care of, especially since I get hungry all the time and find it difficult to focus when my mind is on my stomach. So we'll see how things are next week.

With all this uncharted territory that we as a society are venturing into, I think we can only take things one step at a time, assess regularly, and try to do the best with the situation we're in.

It's now been two months of mandatory working from home for my company, but it feels like it's been forever. Today, Santa Clara County finally went to Phase 2 of California's four-phase plan to reopen the state. Now only two counties in the state - Los Angeles and Sacramento - are still in Phase 1. Nonetheless, an end to the current shelter-in-place order seems far off.

I've accepted the reality that I may never set foot in my gym again. It seems more likely that they won't survive the current economic crisis. I've been doing pullups and dips at the park, and I have some really ghetto adjustable dumbbells in the shed in the backyard. In the midst of sheltering at home, the backyard has become my second home, of sorts.

I've contemplated building my own monkey bars in the backyard, but that project will be at least a few months out. What I have been doing is clearing out weeds, as I do every year. Except this year, I've also been filling in the gaps between patio sections (where weeds love to take root) with polymeric jointing sand. I also plan to replace sections of the backyard with rocks and mulch, and convert sprinklers to drip irrigation. With investments in making my backyard low-maintenance, I hope to reduce the amount of time I spend doing manual labor in the future. Like with improving the infrastructure at work, it's about spending less time bailing water out of the boat and finding more time to build a better boat.

I've also planted quite a few green onion bulbs. Every time we finish using a sprig of store-bought green onion, the bulb gets planted in the back. So far I've planted 36 bulbs in the planter box and another 30 in small plastic pots. I've had issues with some animal burying its poop almost nightly in some of the planter box holes where I planted a green onion bulb, and from some cursory research, I believe the animal to be a cat. Covering the smaller plantings with buckets at night and spraying the area with citrus has seemed to deter the animal from leaving its droppings. I've also noticed that the animal hasn't gone for the larger plantings, which is another reason I started the new bulbs in pots instead of immediately putting them in the ground. Not to mention, starting plants in pots seems to be a very common thing to do.

I also had to deal with bugs which appear to be aphids attacking the green onions. Spraying with neem oil seems to have helped. And when I watered using a wide spray pattern, small weeds popped up everywhere. After spending a couple hours painstakingly pulling all those weeds out, I switched to spot-watering using a pitcher. I have drip irrigation parts due to arrive in a couple weeks, at which time I'll run a drip emitter to each planting, with weed barrier and mulch in between plantings. Overkill for green onions, maybe. But, better boat.

While I've been spending much of my free time in the garden and learning more about gardening, I wouldn't say I actually enjoy it. I guess what really appeals to me is not the act of gardening, but the state of not having a ghetto, weed-ridden garden. And I like the idea of having food automation - having low-maintenance plants that will provide some food during the year. It won't really protect us from being affected by potential food shortages, but it's something productive and worthwhile that we can do with our space. One of the many ways in which we are truly blessed.

It's amazing how quickly society can adapt to a new normal.

It was only 7 weeks ago that the 3 major US stock indexes were at an all-time high and most people didn't have a reason not to be confident in the economy.

Since then, due to the ongoing pandemic, the indexes lost 33% of their value in a 1-month period, though they've been climbing slowly (currently down "just" 22% from the all-time highs) due to the unprecedented $2 trillion stimulus bill passed by Congress.

It seems that nothing about this crisis is precedented. Statewide shelter-in-place orders, aimed at slowing the spread of the virus, have caused millions of jobs to disappear. 10 million people filed for unemployment in the span of 2 weeks. Many who can still work are forced to work from home (I'm in my fourth week of doing so). The amount of vehicular traffic I've seen around here is maybe 15% of what it used to be not all that long ago. Weekly gas demand has fallen to the lowest rate since 1993, and gas prices are at a 4-year low.

California was the first state to issue a statewide shelter-in-place order, and since then, 41 other states have followed suit. Under those orders, people are allowed to go out only for essential purposes including buying groceries, exercising, and commuting to essential places of work. Maintaining six feet of distance from others who don't live in the same household, a.k.a. social distancing, is required. When two people are nearing each other on the street, one of them moves well out of the way. It's become so second-nature.

Only businesses considered essential are allowed to be open. The stores that are open are limiting the number of people who can be inside at one time, causing lines to form outside during peak hours (which, at Costco, seems to be all hours of the day now). It's common to now see stickers on the ground, both outside the store and inside leading up to the register, guiding people in where to stand to maintain adequate distance. Stores have put up plexiglass barriers at the registers to separate cashiers from customers. And it seems like more people than not are wearing some sort of face mask, with Santa Clara County having recommended cloth masks to help limit transmission of the virus. All of this would've been a foreign concept a couple weeks ago, but now it's the norm.

Priscilla and I have been walking outside every day. Exercise, after all, boosts the immune system. In the quiet of night when there's almost nobody out, it feels like, in Priscilla's words, an introvert's dream. Grocery stores now have special hours and are closing earlier, so there's really no reason for people to be out at night unless they're crazy, which it appears that most people are not. On the flip side, it's hard for me to not be able to go to the gym. I can do pullups and dips at the park and bodyweight exercises at home, but it's not as practical. I'm getting tired of working from home, mostly due to the lack of office perks - I realize how entitled that sounds, but something can be said for being able to better focus on tasks when you don't have to worry about things like grocery shopping, cooking and washing dishes. Meanwhile, Priscilla wishes she were working from home more (she's only able to work from home twice a week, and she had to fight hard with management to be granted even that). But at the end of the day, we're very fortunate. We have stable jobs, shelter, food, savings, and good health. How many others can say the same? Plus, it seems like the curve is starting to flatten in the US, echoing what's already been seen in some other countries. There may very well be a second wave of infections down the road, especially if the virus mutates, but hopefully by then the world will be more strongly positioned to handle it. Ultimately, as Christians we must trust in God's sovereignty over all things. Yes, we must all do our best to protect health and save lives, but ultimately God is our shelter, and we must bring everything to Him in prayer.

2020 has shaped up to be quite an eventful year. It seems like the coronavirus outbreak (a.k.a. COVID-19) is what's on everyone's mind these days. State and local governments and companies have taken drastic steps to limit transmission of the virus. This week alone, the outbreak was declared a pandemic by WHO, the NBA has suspended the basketball season, the three major US stock indexes touched into bear market territory, California governor Gavin Newsom banned gatherings of 250 people or more, President Trump imposed a 30-day travel ban for flights from Europe, and, just today, Santa Clara County closed all public schools for 3 weeks as Trump declared a national emergency.

Many tech companies have required their employees to work from home, and while Pure has made it optional, my manager mandated that our team work from home until further notice starting next week. My commute to work this week has been great; I guess it's going to get even better now. It's difficult for people at Priscilla's company to work from home due to the nature of their work, but it sounds like the company is seeing what can be done.

At church, youth ministry and Sunday School were cancelled. Yesterday the pastors decided that we'd continue having worship service while advising people to stay more than an arm's length from each other, but today they sent another email announcing that worship service will now only be available via streaming after the Santa Clara County Public Health Department issued a legal prohibition against gatherings of more than 100 people. It's amazing and frightening how many new developments there have been in just a few day's time.

On a societal level, frequent hand washing and social distancing has suddenly become the norm. And stockpiling seems to be increasing, with Costco and other stores quickly running out of toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizer, water and some food. There's especially been an insane level of toilet paper buying. Once some people started panic buying, others felt forced to as well. This is how runs on supplies happen.

Though some supplies are running out at some stores daily, so far we haven't seen real scarcity. But there have already been some reports of isolated instances of violence over things like toilet paper. I shudder to imagine how society might unravel if scarcity and joblessness increase. Businesses in industries including travel, food and retail are losing money, which affects how many people they can afford to hire. What's going on isn't economically sustainable, and it seems like a recession is all but inevitable at this point. Our renter's internship at a school is threatened by today's school closures, and she also just lost her waitressing job at a restaurant that has closed indefinitely. What will be the ripple effects of many people losing their jobs? It feels like we're teetering towards the end of the world, but I have to remember that many people/places have it much worse.

In my lifetime I have not seen a global response as strong as what is happening now. So far there have been 145,810 cases of the virus worldwide, with 5,436 deaths and 72,531 people recovered. In the US it's been 2,466 cases, 50 deaths and 41 recovered. The amount of tracking, the amount of up-to-the-minute updates on this pandemic is of a scale not seen before. Information spreads faster than ever, and perhaps that's a large reason why the response has been so dramatic. To put things in perspective, it's estimated that the 2009-2010 swine flu pandemic saw 700 million-1.4 billion people infected, with 150,000-575,00 deaths. However, swine flu had a mortality rate of 0.02%, while WHO has estimated the coronavirus mortality rate at 3.4%, topping out at 14.8% for adults 80 and older. And since a viable vaccine could be many months away, I can understand why governments want to severely limit the spread of the virus. We don't want hospitals overwhelmed with critical cases like what's happening in Italy, we want to protect those who are most vulnerable, and we want to give researchers more time to develop a vaccine.

As Christians, our hope must be in God, not in the flawed institutions of this world. I know this, but living it out is hard. I still feel hopeless when my stock portfolio drops by another 7%, when I read about the permanent effects that the virus can have on the body, and when I think about how society could be on an unchangeable course headed towards major systemic problems. But as an article from The Gospel Coalition reminds us, "it takes the same amount of energy to worry as to pray. One leads to peace, the other to panic. Choose wisely."

It seems like Apple AirPods have been all the rage recently. And perhaps especially so with the AirPods Pro, released on October 30, which have better features (like active noise cancellation) than their predecessor models.

Apple experienced such high demand for the AirPods Pro that they're out of stock in most stores and won't ship until January when purchased from various websites. Which is especially suboptimal given that Christmas is fast-approaching. So it's a pretty amazing feat that my company gave everyone in our division a pair of AirPods Pro (with wireless charging case) as a year-end gift. How we were able to acquire a few hundred of these is beyond me, but clearly somebody in the company is on top of their game.

It seems like the AirPods hype may be justified, but Priscilla and I wouldn't be able to make use of some features like Siri-integration, since we both have Android phones. And reportedly, streaming AAC audio over Bluetooth is noticeably worse on Android, though that seems like a narrow use case. We also already each have a pair of wireless headphones that work decently well for their $26 price tag. Priscilla likes having headphones with a cord since she can wear them around her neck when they're not in use, and the cord helps her not lose them. And I don't like accumulating more things. So we were both ok with selling the AirPods.

Online, people are selling them marked up by 25% or more. Exploiting scarcity for personal gain. Or call it retail arbitrage. Since I received the AirPods as a gift, I didn't really feel like selling them for more than face value. They're retailing at $249, so I priced them at $270, which is around the after-tax total that somebody would pay in a store. A coworker recommended selling on Facebook Marketplace, as it lets you vet buyers by looking at their profiles. So yesterday, within a few minutes of my post there, I got a message from a woman whose profile showed pictures of a nice, normal-looking family. I arranged to have us meet up at the local library today.

Today, the woman had her brother-in-law and niece meet me. They came at the arranged time, looked over the box, asked some questions about my work, and gave me the $270 in cash. They were very nice and seemed happy to finally get the AirPods, saying that it was a Christmas present for the niece and that all retail stores were sold out. This was my first time meeting a stranger in-person to sell them something (well, excluding the few times I met a fellow student in college to sell them my used textbook). But it ended nicely and I like the fact that I was able to vet the buyer to some extent, something that elevates Facebook Marketplace over Craigslist. If only either service had a reputation system built in. But I think I'll arrange my in-person transactions through Facebook Marketplace going forward, and that may even apply to the next time we're looking for a new renter.

Last Friday was the Pure annual holiday party, this time at the Fairmont San Jose, a very swanky hotel in downtown SJ. I normally don't want to go to these things, but Priscilla likes free food and the event wasn't too far away (compared to being in SF last year), so we went.

We arrived at the start of the event (7:30) and claimed one of the reserved parking spots. Pure had pre-paid for 300 spots spanning two parking garages. Getting to and, later, leaving the garage was hectic, but the fun night more than made up for it.

The theme of the party was prom night. But in a cool way, not in a lame, ghetto high school way. I never bothered going to my high school prom, but there's no way it could've compared to prom Pure style.

We basically had an entire floor in one wing of the hotel reserved. There were food stations galore: Mexican, sashimi, liquid nitrogen ice cream, hot chocolate. There was a room set up with student desks and The Breakfast Club playing, and a blackboard on which somebody had written "I will not push a test killer during the holiday party" (engineering inside joke) many times. There was a room with a pool table. Another with karaoke. And another with a bunch of video games including two-player tetris, space invaders with a laser gun, DDR, mechanical pong and more. There was a silent disco where a DJ was playing songs and you could only hear them if you put on a pair of multi-colored flashing headphones.

In the main ballroom was a band that was really loud, people dancing, 4-way air hockey, and a 2-player basketball game. And a couple times during the night, a marching band made their way through the halls playing a song at full blast. So awesome.

We ran into four people from my team. But it was pretty loud everywhere and hard to hear people, so mostly it was just a night of food and fun activities. Compared to the holiday party two years ago at the Computer History Museum (which was not bad at all), I think the company really outdid itself and went over the top this year. Excited to see what they do for next year!

Over the past several years, I've noticed Bay Area traffic getting worse, stores getting more crowded, and high rise apartments going up along busy streets. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population for Santa Clara County was 1,682,585 in 2000 and 1,781,642 in 2010. It'll be interesting to see what the count is in 2020, but the estimate for 2017 was 1,938,153. That's an 8.8% increase in the last 7 years. In contrast, San Francisco County had an estimated population of only 884,363 in 2017 - less than half of Santa Clara County. Not what I expected.

Here's what traffic looks like on a typical day when I want to leave work:



It takes me about a constant 32 minutes to bike from home to work or vice-versa. During times of heavy traffic, it might take me 37 minutes to drive home. Freeways and expressways turn into parking lots. Working from home is starting to look like a better option.

Perhaps the one silver lining of all this population growth is that our home value has appreciated by 85% since we bought it nearly 5 years ago. Which is not necessarily great now since it means that our property taxes go up by the maximum allowed amount under Prop 13 every year, but I guess we'll be happy the day we decide to sell and move somewhere less crowded.

Warning: minor Tough Mudder spoilers ahead!

Yesterday I ran my second Tough Mudder, this time at the Sonoma Raceway, an hour and 45 minutes from home. I and two others from Pure signed up and were supposed to do it last year, but that event was cancelled due to the Sonoma wildfires. Fortunately, the skies were clear this year for the rescheduled NorCal event.

Our start time was 10:00, but despite pulling into the parking lot an hour early, we ended up going out in the 10:45 wave due to insane wait times, particularly a 45-minute wait to get checked in at Mudder Village. The checkin process was pretty slow and inefficient, and there were not enough helpers. It took another 15-20 minutes to get our bag checked in. At least there were enough porta-potties at the village for there to be no wait there.

Once on the course though, everything was great. There were well-stocked water stations (half with food) every couple miles. The obstacles were excellent and the wait times at each were minimal. And the camaraderie was amazing.

When I did my first TM in 2014, there was only one type of event, which is now called the Full. Now, there's also a Half and a 5k that overlaps with the Full event. It's TM's way of broadening the appeal and reaching those who may not want to do the full distance or set of obstacles (e.g. no Arctic Enema or Electroshock Therapy on the 5k and Half). Our group did the Full (I wouldn't settle for less). There are also harder event types that are held in different locations, but we're not crazy enough to do those, yet.

The format for the Full has changed. It involved doing two laps around: first a 6-mile loop, then a shorter 4-mile loop. Because of this, 4 of the initial obstacles were encountered twice. There were 20 unique obstacles on the Full route.

After an initial jog up and down a hill, the first obstacle was the Kiss of Mud 2.0, where you crawl on your belly under barbed wire through mud. Great way to start things off - with your frontside completely covered in brown!

The Mud Mile 2.0 was a little annoying. You had to slide down into a 6-foot trench filled with muddy water and get help up onto the next section. The way the walls were constructed, you couldn't really get a good grip on the walls yourself. So usually this would involve at least two people helping you from above, below, or both. You had to do around 8 of these. I skinned both my arms pretty good on this obstacle, and it was the sole obstacle our group decided to bypass on lap 2.

Block Ness Monster was the most fun. This involved teamwork but also some basic physics. Most people however did not turn around and grab the block on their way down; it would've allowed more people to get over faster if they did.

Last time, I didn't have much trouble with Cage Crawl, but this time, my head dipped below the water early on and I got water up my nose. I then started getting anxious and ended up swallowing some of the water a couple times (hope it was sanitary). I guess the trick here is to be relaxed and to realize that you have enough room to keep your head above the water without your face rubbing against the cage.

Berlin Walls was easier this time. The three of us were able to get on the step at the bottom and jump up and grab the top of the wall on our own. Last time, I needed help reaching the top. I think the step has been made bigger so that you can have both feet firmly planted on it, which wasn't the case last time.

Happy Ending was by far the obstacle requiring the most teamwork and coordination, and as a result, was the most rewarding. It involves forming a human support structure to allow people to climb up a smooth 40-degree wall. In some videos, you can see ropes or horizontal planks halfway up the wall, which makes it a lot easier to get up. Ours had none of these. So it took a lot of effort to form a chain to get people up, and man were things chaotic. One person would have to stand on a narrow ledge at the base of the wall, then another on his shoulders, then a third on his. A fourth person would be at the bottom supporting the first person's feet, which otherwise were likely to slip and cause the entire human ladder to come crashing down. Finally, the ladder would be long enough for one person at a time to climb up to the reaching arms above. In practice, things were not so orderly. I started out holding a guy's feet, but then they told me to climb up, but the ladder started collapsing before I could get high enough, so then I ended up being part of the ladder for a while. Finally, people gave me the chance to go up again, and when I was standing on top of a 2-person ladder, a guy above who was dangling down, his legs held onto by others, was able to grab my hands to pull me up. Talk about teamwork!

Arctic Enema didn't feel too bad when I first got in, but when I dunked my head under the water was when I really felt the chill. Still, this was pretty manageable.

On Electroshock Therapy, I got shocked in the middle of the back when going through the first or second row of wires. It felt like a rubber band snapping against my skin, but it probably would've been worse if the wire had touched my bare skin. I rolled over the hay bale in the middle and then crawled the rest of the way, so I didn't get shocked again. Next time I'm going to try to force myself to just run through quickly. It seems more mental than anything else.

On Just the Tip, I did fine climbing along the wood edge, but as soon as I tried to grab a round knob halfway through, I didn't have enough grip and bailed. I'd been wearing gloves up to this point, thinking that they would help during the climbing obstacles, but all they did was get muddy and slippery.

So on Funky Monkey and Kong Infinity, I did it without the gloves and got all the way across on both. These were pretty cool - it was nice to see that those obstacles got a big facelift since last time.

Everest 2.0 was the final obstacle. Despite the rounded lip that's been added, most people were able to get up on the first try as they grabbed onto the hands above. I just ran hard towards the wall, and when I felt myself losing speed due to the curve, I made myself run even harder, so I think I may have gotten my hands on the rounded lip, but of course I had nothing to really grab onto, so the people up there pulled me up all the same. Tough Mudder complete!

Special mention to some very awesome people we met on the course. The first was a guy decked out not in athletic wear, but in a suit and tie. He was also wearing a black 25x headband. Respect! We also ran into some guys carrying a large crash pad the size of a twin mattress. They were also doing the Full and would be rewarded with money for charity for getting the thing to the finish line. Really taking that team building to the next level!

At the finish line, I was sad to see that there weren't people crowning Mudders with headbands. I guess it would get too hectic given that each event type has its own headband, but it could still be done. Instead, there was a table with event headbands and all the different Legionnaire headbands that were out for taking on the honor system. There was a staffer there, but she wasn't looking people up on a list. Also, my headband just says "Tough Mudder Full," no longer showing the year. Makes it a little less fun to collect them. The finisher T-shirt (now blue instead of black) does still show the year.

Compared to last time, the showers were not freezing cold and there were changing tents. It was nice to be able to change into fresh clothes immediately after hosing off. I would've liked to change my mud-water-infused underwear, but I didn't have a towel and didn't want to bare it all in the tent I was sharing with several other guys, so I opted to just change my pants and shirt. I changed my socks and shoes when I got back to the car, and having paper towels on hand was very useful to wipe off my feet before putting on fresh socks.

I had a lot of fun and was glad to run with my coworkers. I trained more this time around, but even without that, this event seemed a little easier than the one we did in 2014 (e.g. there's now just one obstacle with electric shocks instead of three). The obstacles are more complex than some of the more basic ones we did before. Tough Mudder definitely seems to have gotten more mainstream and commercial since 2014, but as far as I know, they still rely on volunteers for staffing. Given that the company had over $100 million in revenue in 2016, perhaps it's time to start hiring people to ensure an adequate level of staffing for the larger number of participants it's allowing into its events.

My Tough Mudder adventure will continue next month as I do the SoCal event in Lake Elsinore.

Well hello there. In case you haven't noticed, it's 2018. I'm now just writing my first blog entry for the year, which is by far the latest that I've started in any given year.

I might try to say the dearth of blog posts is because some of the experiences I used to blog about I now instead write about on Yelp, but that's not quite the entire picture, is it? Whereas in college I'd write about nearly every class, every encounter and what I'd be doing on holidays, nowadays my writing is limited to infrequent highlights of the year, at best. Granted, some of my earlier posts were just a few words long and resembled a Twitter feed before Twitter was even a thing, but what's changed? Could it be that I've simply grown tired of writing about my life? That the novelty of having an active blog has faded? Or could it be that I'm at the stage in life where people commonly settle into a routine where not much changes from day to day, or even year to year?

"Hey, long time no see! What's new?"

"Oh, well, I'm still at the same company I've been at for the last few years. We did some traveling last year and this year. Still playing drums for church. Not much else."

Is this why people feel like life just flies quickly by and is over before they know it?

I don't want that to be my life. There's more to life than work and even more than the sporadic vacation to an awesome place. What am I passionate about, really?

Well, let's get the yearly highlights out of the way, since they do matter. Last December, Priscilla and I contributed a good chunk of money to help her parents buy a condo close to their church, so now their drive to church is 7 minutes instead of 40. Since her parents are retired and her mom spends a lot of time helping church people, this was a logical step. Her mom spends a lot of time at the condo but her dad prefers staying at the house (I completely sympathize with him), but they're trying to get him to commit to moving to the condo so that they can live there full-time. It'll mean serious downsizing, which will be difficult to say the least.

In June, Priscilla and I visited Chicago. I was awed by the architecture and the human ingenuity behind it. Some highlights of the trip were an architectural river cruise, Navy Pier, Buckingham Fountain, Maggie Daley Park, the Field Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and visiting Skydeck at Willis Tower when there were no lines due to heavy fog.

Then last month, we went to Seattle and visited a couple airport lounges (Priscilla loves using her Priority Pass and American Express Platinum card to get into lounges), the Seattle Art Museum, Pike Place, the Museum of Pop Culture, and the Amazon Go store which is an amazing technical feat. We also spent a whole day with Nathan and Andrea and their very energetic toddler at their church, house and two restaurants. We stayed with them longer than planned, but it was the most rewarding part of our trip.

Five months from now, we'll be visiting Barcelona. We're spending a few minutes a day learning Spanish, hoping to better immerse ourselves in the culture when we visit, and hoping to better remember and utilize the Spanish that we learned in high school. I took three years of Spanish in high school and quickly forgot almost all of it. Sad.

This year, I've taught myself more about cars. It was just a year ago that I knew almost nothing about car maintenance, and cared almost as little about having it done. Once it sunk in that this was not a good long-term approach, I started researching more about what maintenance items needed to be done on our old cars. My cheapness, as well as my mechanic's reluctance to fix everything on my nearly 30-year-old car, made me decide to learn to fix some things myself. YouTube, after all, is a great teacher. On the Taurus, I solved an idling issue by cleaning the IAC, diagnosed and replaced a faulty multi-function switch, replaced the fuel filter, and replaced the valve cover gaskets. The car is not designed to be easy to work on, especially since it has a bulky V6 engine. On the other hand, the Corolla is designed nicely, down to the little things like all the bolt heads being 10mm. I haven't had to do as much work on the Corolla (it's a very reliable car), but I did replace the spiral cable behind the steering wheel (the dealer wanted $700 to replace it; I did it myself using a $12 part from eBay), diagnose and replace a faulty compressor clutch relay, and replace the spark plugs. I never imagined I'd learn so much about vehicle maintenance, but YouTube and Haynes/Chilton repair manuals have gotten me far.

So back to the issue of passion. Where is mine? As much as some people claim to be passionate about their jobs, I can't honestly say that I'm passionate about mine. I have a great job with awesome teammates, and I generally enjoy the work that I do. But at the end of the day, it's just a job that's a means to an end, and not something that I live and breathe. A tow truck driver (whose services I enlisted - see above about not taking good car of my car) once told me, "If you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life." That guy claimed to love his job that much. I don't think that will be me. Work is not what fulfills me.

I guess what I enjoy is learning skills and then putting them into practice. I think that's what kept me interested in working on cars - learning a skill to solve a tangible problem. Given enough time, there are a few things I want to do. I'd like to get better at running, trail running in particular, and be able to easily run an ultramarathon. Running the 30-mile Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail is on my bucket list. I'd like to learn to sail and get an ASA certification; being able to charter a boat from SF to Angel Island or even be 100 miles from shore for a week sounds great. And I'd like to learn to fly a plane and get a private pilot license. But these are goals, not passions.

Honestly, I don't think I've found a real passion yet. Maybe I'm still trying to get in touch with myself, to figure out who the real me is while working on the things I think need adjustment. But one thing's for certain - I want to make sure that (what are hopefully) the middle years of my life are meaningful, a time of growth, and not just gone in the blink of an eye.

Pure had our annual engineering ski trip at Heavenly resort in South Lake Tahoe this weekend, and about 200 employees attended. Once again I took ski lessons Saturday morning. I forgot that I took the novice level lessons last time, so this time around I again requested the novice level. However, one co-worker who was in my class last year was in my class this year as well, and overall I felt like my class this year built on what I learned last year rather than merely repeating it.

I definitely improved my control. I found that I was having trouble making right turns, whereas my left turns were generally fine. I think the three main reasons for my bad form were: not always leaning forward in the boots, not shifting my weight when making turns, and my right foot being lazy and not doing as much work. The instructor, Ian, told me to consciously keep focusing on making my right foot do what it needed. Additionally, regarding stance, he reiterated the fact that I should always been leaning forward to maintain control of my skis and thereby my speed.

In this year's class, we focused mainly on turns and using "skidding" to control our speed. The instructor taught us that we should be leaning forward but mostly standing straight ("tall and forward") when going straight, and then crouching a little when turning in order to help absorb the impact.

After the class and after I had practiced my form on the green run a few times, I decided to try the California Trail blue run again. I was definitely making the widest turns there compared to everybody else, and I fell a few times, mostly when trying not to build up too much speed and not crash into other people (it was a little crowded). Were I in a competition, I would've been awarded no points for speed and even fewer points for form, but at least I was able to mostly turn where I wanted to go and control my speed to the point of not just barreling down the mountain. In other words, I have a while to go before I can do a blue run comfortably, but it was my best blue run to date!

This year we stayed at Harrah's, and the rooms were quite nice. It seemed like every room had a double bathroom! I was rooming with Maciej, and unlike the past two years, I didn't get the room to myself due to my roommate not being able to make the trip.

Friday night, Pure had the South Shore Room at Harrah's booked, and we had an awesome dinner with salad, sliders, tacos and ice cream. A rock band, Hairballs, starting playing an hour into the dinner, and people were definitely rocking out on the dance floor. On Saturday, breakfast was provided at the hotel and dinner was provided at a nearby lounge, but for dinner a small group of EngOps people crashed a nearby cabin owned by a friend of Chris'. We had salad, mashed sweet potatoes, steak and salmon - definitely better than pizza!

Due to traffic, the bus ride back to Mountain View ended up being just over 6 hours instead of 4.5. I'm tired from the long weekend, but I had a lot of fun and will most likely want to attend next year's trip as well.

Since I've been on an unintentional blogging hiatus (another way of saying "neglecting my blogging duties") since August of last year, here's what's happened since then:

On the CI team at Pure, we had two college interns join us from June till September: Celia and Candice. I was their mentor, and the three of us worked on a project called the Artifact Cache, a system for caching build artifacts. The interns did well for their role, but we ended up extending an offer to just one of them, who initially accepted but later declined due to having moved up to San Francisco. Overall, it was a pleasure working with them, and our team learned a lot process-wise and what expectations to set on both sides of the fence.

In the middle of September, Priscilla, Christine and I flew up to Seattle to visit Nathan and Andrea, who had moved up a few months prior for Andrea's new job at Microsoft. On Saturday, we explored Pike Place, Chihuly Gardens and Glass and the Sky City restaurant at the Space Needle. On Sunday, we went to their church and did some hiking at Snoqualmie Falls, which has a beautiful waterfall. We flew back on Monday, but not before getting a tour of Microsoft.

On October 7, Pure IPO'd! Most Mountain View employees gathered early in the morning to watch the livestream of the opening bell at NYSE. The day was filled with much partying and food and little work, but the next day was back to work and business as usual. Since then, not much has changed, except for the fact that our options can be exercised for real shares of stock now (still in the 180-day lockup period until April).

Shortly after the IPO, our newest team member Maciej joined CI, and I served as his mentor. I've learned a lot about Docker and related technologies from him, and it's been a good pairing. So far we've used Docker to deploy a cron runner service and an HA-environment for our CI web applications.

Last December, Aaron and Lauren tied the knot at their church in Laguna Hills! I was the best man (returning the favor), and I didn't say anything too embarrassing during my speech, so presumably it went well. Priscilla and I drove down for the weekend and then drove back to the Bay Area on Monday. So for once, we were in the Bay Area for Christmas and New Year's and were able to spend those holidays with Uncle Kenway, Aunt Susan and her family.

It's been a busy few months, and with many things going on in 2016, it's sure to be a busy next few months as well!

I skied a blue run today.

Well, however much you can call it skiing.

This weekend was our third annual Pure engineering ski trip! While we had something like 75 people last year, this year we had 130 from all our different offices!

Last year I took the second-timer ski lessons, and this year I did the novice lessons. Our class was only four people, with one being a co-worker. I started off really terrible, being unable to turn well or slow down well. But by the end of the class, I was carving up the beginner slope with relative ease!

My problem was in the feet. When turning, you're supposed to put more weight on your outer foot and less weight on your inner foot. I had been doing the opposite, and then trying to pull with my thighs to compensate for my inability to turn. Yuck. Once I learned the correct method, my form greatly improved immediately.

Our instructor Jacqueline (aka Jax) was great. She analyzed what people were doing and got to the underlying paradigm of why we were doing things that way. For instance, turning is all in the feet, but novices often try to turn with their legs or hips. This is a natural paradigm in normal life because we turn around first with our shoulders, then torso, then legs and feet. But in skiing, turning is done mostly in the feet, a small amount in the legs, and almost none in the hips.

My form greatly improved throughout the day, though making sharp turns was still difficult. At the end of the day I decided to go for a blue run, so I did the California Trail, the same route that I tried and had to walk down two years ago.

While a green run can mask imperfect form, a blue run will reveal it. My inability to make tight turns hurt me on the blue run, causing me to pick up too much speed and/or bail out of turns. Halfway down, I got a sense that my problem with that I was leaning back in my boots out of fear. Leaning forward is more scary, but I found that by doing so, I had greater control and was able to execute turns better and actually be more effective in slowing down. The trail kicked my butt (100% of my falls that day were during this run), but suffice it to say that I made it to the bottom without having to walk down!

I enjoyed getting to know some people over our dinners. Dinner on Friday was served in a private room at the hotel, and dinner on Saturday was at Himmel Haus, which our company had booked the entire restaurant for the evening.

Instead of Harvey's, this year we lodged at the Hard Rock. The rooms were not as nice as at Harvey's, but no complaints; it was still nicer than the hotels Priscilla and I typically stay at.

And just like last year, my roommate ended up not being able to go, so I got a room all to myself and didn't have to pay extra for it.

Lots of fun. Looking forward to next year's!

When Aaron and my dad came up last month, Aaron brought up a new road bike I'd asked him to order for me, a white Specialized Roubaix SL4 Elite 105, MSRP $2,600, which he was able to get from the bike shop he worked at for $1,600 including tax.

Since then according to Strava, I've put over 100 miles on it, mainly commuting 8.5 miles each way to work. After moving to our new house, the commute was too tiring to do on my Crosstrail so I'd only done it once, on Bike to Work Day. But with the new road bike, the commute is so much more comfortable. Whereas hitting 20mph on the Crosstrail took quite a bit of effort, on the Roubaix I can do it with relative ease.

I've gone riding with co-workers to Philz twice, and I'm trying to spearhead semi-regular afternoon cycling rides at work. This past weekend I biked with Alex on a good deal of the Stanford Loop, except instead of starting from Stanford, we started from his place in Mountain View and took Foothill Expressway to get to Arastradero Road. The whole ride was 24 miles and my first real ride with hills. Fun!

The next thing to do will probably be upgrading the stock platform pedals; those are the only things that feel cheap on this bike. I swapped the hard saddle with the more comfortable one from my Crosstrail, which helps alleviate the pain on my sit bones from prolonged rides. Once I get used to wearing my new pair of bike shorts (Pearl Izumi from Amazon), I may put the original saddle back. I also feel soreness in the shoulders after prolonged rides; I haven't figured out the cause yet, but a co-worker suggested replacing the stem.

Right now, perhaps due to the new cables stretching, my shifting has gotten sloppy. Interestingly, I've never had this problem with my Crosstrail; it still shifts fine after I've put maybe 1,000 miles on it. Anyway, learning how to adjust the shifting on the Roubaix will be good to add to my repertoire of experience.

Yesterday, a team of five from Pure made our way over to Diablo Grande in Patterson to participate in the exhilarating challenge of Tough Mudder. Our team name: Dirty Puritans. Originally we had 13 people sign up, only to have most of them flake. Their loss!

The event was quite fun, but I would've gotten way more fun out of it had I been with my team the whole time. Sadly, a small injury from last week came back and caused more pain in my knee as the event went on. At mile 3, I told my teammates to go on without me because it hurt to run, and I was holding them up too much. Making it down hills started getting tough, and I had to resort to walking down backwards to avoid landing hard on my knee. My team ended up finishing an hour before I did but was gracious about waiting for me.

A quarter mile in from the start, even before the first obstacle, we had to cross a swampy river. So much for running in dry shoes!

The obstacles on the course were as follows (with three additional obstacles available for Legionnaires only):

1. Glory Blades: A 6ft wall, sloped downward, so once you got over the top, you just had to slide down. I asked for a boost, though I probably could've made it over without one.
2. Warrior Carry: An athletic girl and I took turns carrying each other 100 feet up the hill. Not too bad; she was probably only 110 pounds or so.
3. Cage Crawl: Floating on our backs, we had to make it across a pool of water with a chain-link fence overhead. Somewhat relaxing, but at times it felt like I was short on vertical room.
4. Pitfall: Had to duck under a beam with electrified wires hanging down. There was enough space between wires for me to avoid getting shocked, but one of our team members wasn't so lucky.
5. Killa Gorilla: Had to go up and down the steep face of the hill a couple times. Crouching on all fours like a gorilla helped.
6. Mud Mayhem: Crossing over wet, muddy trenches. Not too much to this obstacle, but it sucked getting lots of little rocks in my shoes.
7. Walk the Plank: Climbed up the face of a 12ft tall platform and jumped into the water below. It helped that there were three lines of people jumping, with a staffer having one person from each line go on the count of 3. Scared of heights? Too bad. Jump, and let gravity do the rest.
8. Arctic Enema: The least favorite of many, but I didn't think this one was that bad. Perhaps the compression shirt and pants I was wearing helped me from feeling too cold. Getting that sudden chill on the way out was probably the worst part.
9. Ladder to Hell: Climbed up a series of rungs spaced about 5 feet apart, then back down the other side. This was pretty easy for me.
10. Funky Monkey: Had to climb up monkey bars first angled going up, then going down. Halfway on the way up, I reached for a bar that wasn't there and plunged into the pool of water below.
11. Balls to the Wall: Had to climb over a tall wall using a rope with knots spaced 6 feet apart. This rope was very slippery and I almost didn't make it up, but when I got enough altitude, I grabbed onto the top of the wall and pulled myself over.
12. Cliffhanger: I don't particularly recall this, but looking at Youtube videos from other events, it looks like this was just going up a steep muddy slope. I sort of recall doing something resembling this. I don't think it was that bad.
13. Devil's Beard: Had to crawl under a long, heavy net, on a downward incline. Would've been easier doing it with more people, but since there were only a couple people running this when I was, it was harder on us to lift the net.
14. Kiss of Mud: Crawling through mud with barbed wire overhead. A great way to get one's frontside completely muddy, and for me to lose my paper bib that I should've attached to my backside, not my frontside.
15. Hold Your Wood: People had the option of carrying an individual block of wood (50 pounds?) or to carry a longer log. I carried a log with two other guys - it was probably a good 150 pounds.
16. Berlin Walls: Two 8ft walls. I had help from members of another team getting over. Meanwhile, two shirtless Chinese guys jumped up, grabbed the top of the wall, and effortlessly lifted themselves over. Dang.
17. Soggy Bottom: Fording another wide muddy river. I learned my lesson from the first one and tried to keep my shoes angled downward so as to not get stuck in the mud as much.
18. Pole Dancer: Using your arms, make your way over a pool of water using two poles that are first angled downward, then upward. I was able to do most of this without landing in the pool on my feet, but at the end I strained my calf reaching out for the edge with my foot. Not good.
19. Quagmire: Just running over a couple mounds of mud with shallow muddy water in the middle.
20. Prairie Dog: Going through a downward tube. Pretty much just slid on my bum as I saw others doing.
21. Everest: A lot of fun, but seemed a little easy. Everybody seemed to make it up in one or two tries. I was able to run up and grab onto the edge of the platform but didn't have a very good grip to pull myself up. The good people at the top helped pull me up.
22. Electroshock Therapy: The emcee from the start was now here at the finish, encouraging people to run through this obstacle and take the shocks, while lots of crowd members were watching in amusement. I took the easy way out and crawled, very slowly, under the wires and got completely muddy from face to toe. The emcee had something funny to say about me taking my sweet time to make love to the mud, and that girls should get my number and give me a call.

The event overall was well-run with lots of volunteers on the course. It was good to see staff at each obstacle and to have six water stations, three of which provided food. I missed my cup of Dos Equis at the end and when I tried to go back for it later, the lady denied me re-entry (despite still having my wristband), which really sucked. At least I got my finisher t-shirt, though.

Overall, I had a blast and just wish that my leg didn't act up so that I could've run with my team. Guess I'll have to do more hill training in preparation for my next Tough Mudder!

I've been blessed to be at Pure for a year now, and man how time flies. I still remember the small company feel when I joined the other 115 or so employees, among whom were 35 or so engineers. Now we have more like 415 employees and 80 engineers. We're rapidly outgrowing all our available space.

The small company feel hasn't been lost too much, I feel. I know mostly all the engineers by name and have interacted with most of them somewhat well. In the last year, we've done a release party, a San Francisco boat trip, movie nights, a sales kickoff and various impromptu social gatherings.

The people on my team like me (I think), and my new manager, who joined last November, is supportive and doesn't like to micromanage people, which helps with me having a lot of autonomy over what I'm working on. A couple weeks ago, he told me that in honor of my upcoming anniversary and my contributions, I was getting a pretty sizable raise and a stock refresh grant. I'm humbled and grateful for a company and manager who take notice of my contributions, especially when I feel like I'm not doing as well as I can/should be.

So... back to social festivities. This weekend was our second annual engineering ski trip, again at Heavenly in South Lake Tahoe. Jay was supposed to be my roommate, but at the last minute he cancelled, leaving me with a large room with two queen sized beds to myself. Poor me.

Actually, it was nice. For one, I could watch all the Flipping Vegas and Property Brothers I wanted without worrying about bothering anybody!

We bussed up Friday morning, and it was snowing in Tahoe pretty heavily that afternoon. I've never before seen so much snow coming down! 60 or so people (employees and a few spouses) attended the trip this time.

Dinner that night was at Stateline Brewery and Restaurant (I had decent mussels, edamame and chicken appetizers and a nice salmon entree), and the next night was at Base Camp Pizza (excellent pizza once again).

This time around, Pure paid for ski lessons for those who wanted them. So I took second-timer lessons for 2.5 hours on Saturday. My instructor Jimmy, an older man with 25 years of teaching experience and a funny sense of humor, helped us learn how to use the wedge formation to control speed, and how to turn. The recipe for turning is all in the feet:

1. Balance: shin good, calf bad. Meaning your weight should be centered around the balls of your feet. Your legs should lean slightly forward with your shins touching the boot. If instead your calf is touching the boot, you're leaning too far back.
2. Wedge: make a wedge with your skis pointing inward, about shoulder width apart.
3. Press: press down the toes on the foot that will be on the inside of the turn. This helps to create a pivot point.
4. Twist: twist the outer foot in the direction of the turn, pointing your big toe in the direction you want to go. 10% more toe gives you 80% more turn.

The upper body should be still, as it is not doing any of the work. Despite having learned what constitutes good form, my turning was sloppy when I was skiing on my own. I think it's because I tend to lean into the turn with my body, which causes there to be not enough weight on the outside ski, which hinders my ability to turn. Also when I start building up speed and get scared, I tend to lean back (calf bad), which reduces the control I have.

But I did better this time, falling only a couple times (when I forced myself to bail out of a turn to avoid hitting something) and never falling out of my bindings (despite them being adjusted to the loosest, most cautious setting), unlike last time when I fell out on a few occasions. Hopefully next time I'll get more comfortable and improve my form. I'm not in a hurry to go skiing again, but it's fun and I'm looking forward to next time.

Until then, here's to another great year with Pure!

If the benefits at Pure Storage weren't awesome enough, last weekend the engineering department went on an all-expenses paid ski trip to Tahoe!

Around 30 of us left on a bus at 10am Friday morning (great excuse to have the day off), and 223 miles and 4 hours later arrived at our hotel - Harveys in South Lake Tahoe. We had the afternoon free, with some people immediately hitting up the hotel casino and lots of others hitting up a couple of the bars in the area. Most of us rejoined for dinner at Base Camp Pizza, a place that has amazingly tasty and fresh pizza!

Everybody received gondola tickets which we used on Saturday at the Heavenly Mountain Resort. Those not skiing took the gondola up to the lodge to play board games. I of course had to try my luck at skiing for the first time. I didn't want to take lessons right off the bat, so I just winged it on the green run. I'll let the text of my Yelp review tell the story:

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Me: "Lessons are for suckers. I've snowboarded twice and done some ice skating. I'll be fine."
Me: [Going down the green hill] "AHHHHHHHHH!!!!"
Me: [A few runs later]: "Ok this isn't so bad. I'm starting to get the hang of this."
Me: [A few more runs later]: "Hey I have a crazy idea. Maybe I should try a blue run?"

So I ask a guide which blue run is the easiest, and he directs me to the nearby "California Trail." Sounds good! Well I regretted it as soon as I got on the chair lift and saw how far up it went. Or rather, did not see how far up it went, because the cable stretched off into the horizon.

I knew I was going to have some trouble when I got to the top of that billion foot tall mountain. That trail was freaking STEEP.

Me: "Well, there are only two ways down, and I'm not taking the chair. Ok here goes..."
Me: "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"
Me: [Between screams]: "WHY DID I NOT TAKE LESSONS?!?!?!"
Well needless to say, I fell more during that run than I had all day prior. At least the view was awesome from up there. =/
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That night we had dinner at Stateline Brewery because lots of my co-workers like to drink, which probably also helped drown out the pain that anybody may have been feeling from that day's (mis)adventures. And after that, since drinking at Stateline wasn't enough for some people, a bunch of us caravanned over to a bar near the hotel.

We stayed at Harveys for two nights - Friday and Saturday. I shared a room with one of the younger guys at Pure. We had a pretty nice room with double queen beds, a view of the lake, and a swanky bathroom with a separate changing area, room with a toilet, and a room with a bathrub and shower stall.

It was pretty awesome how the company lavished so much on us and got us an expensive room when cheaper ones were available. And as far as I could tell, there was no special treatment - for instance, the CTO had a room on my floor which probably had a worse view than mine! Man, this company is awesome.

Last Friday was my last day at AST, and it was a bittersweet day. I made my rounds saying goodbye to the friends I've made over my five years of employment. I had my exit interview with HR at 2pm, but since I was being paid for the whole day, I wanted to get as much work done as possible and work a full day.

Unfortunately, though I requested that AST keep my badge and computer accounts active through the rest of the day, that fact wasn't conveyed up to Raytheon IT which manages the Windows accounts. As I would soon find out, there was a request to have my Windows account deactivated by 5pm, but it was actually done a litle earlier, because some time after 4pm I locked my computer and stepped out, and when I got back I couldn't log back in.

I placed a call to Raytheon IT, but the guy who took my call was powerless to do anything but put in a ticket. The people with the power to unlock my account had gone home, and going by experience, I knew it'd probably be a couple business days before my ticket was even looked at.

Moral of the story: Don't lock your computer on your last day. Or maybe it should be "Go home early on your last day like everybody else does." At any rate, I was able to get into my computer using the local admin account, but since I couldn't access my user account, I couldn't get to my email. I just tied up loose ends as best as I could and had my officemate send my goodbye email on my behalf.

And so, that chapter of my life was closed. Not in the most elegant way possible, but certainly in a memorable one.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of reconnecting with most of my former team at my belated goodbye lunch at Sweet Tomatoes in Mountain View. I didn't want anything special done for me, but Lisa insisted on it, and we agreed to have it this week so that my former manager (who would be in town that day) could make it. Seeing my former coworkers again was really great, even though I'd only been gone for less than a week.

And now, there's Pure Storage, where I started this past Monday. This week has been extremely busy, as I've had no down time at work. Pure follows more or less an agile methodology, and people work long hours (I even see emails bouncing around after midnight) and half-jokingly apologize when they don't work weekends.

For now, I'm on the devtest (development in test) team. I have a mentor who's been helping me get up to speed, and I've been learning a lot, but the learning curve is huge. I've learned enough to start fixing my first issue, a non-destructive upgrade test that's failing because an assumption is broken when installing an older build on a non-blank slate system.

So do I like it at Pure? Indeed. Everybody there has been friendly and helpful, and sometimes other people will chime in when I'm asking somebody for help. The open floor plan definitely makes that possible.

Since Pure is a startup (mid-stage now, I think), there's less process and red tape in place. You get to pick your own keyboard and mouse, which are ordered before your start date. Need a standing desk? Ergotron ordered; almost half of the engineers have one. How should your code get reviewed? In whatever way works best for you. What kind of laptop would you like? We have Windows, Mac and Linux. You can compile your code natively in Windows or do it in a Linux VM.

The free snacks and drinks in the breakroom are also much appreciated. As are the catered lunches that coincide with the weekly company meeting, dinners provided for those working late, and a lunch delivery service where the company pays the delivery cost and tax. Silverware, plates, bowls and cups are provided as well. It all boils down to making things convenient for employees to allow them to be more productive. I'm glad this company recognizes this.

Eventually I'll hope to have a better work-life balance (I don't want to be working so much that I don't get to enjoy life) once I become more experienced, and thereby more efficient. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the work that I'm doing, and I'm glad to be onboard.

After 5 years and a few days working at what is now Raytheon Applied Signal Technology, it's time to move on! As of this Friday, it's official - I've accepted an offer with a company in Mountain View called Pure Storage, and I've given notice to AST that my last day will be February 22. I'll start at Pure the following Monday, the 25th. In the meantime, I'll naturally be helping to tie up whatever loose ends I can and possibly train whoever will be taking over my role on my current team.

Why the change? Well I'm at that point in my career where I feel like a change would be beneficial for me to grow my experience and work with new technologies. Defense is also an uncertain field to be in right now, with the government cutting defense funding. My previous team was affected by this last year and had to let some engineers go to other teams because of dwindling funding. And sadly, with the acquisition by Raytheon, the environment at AST has slowly turned from personal and employee-centric to impersonal and rigid. Soft benefits like monthly lunches, section lunches, service awards, holiday parties, company-sponsored events, and even the budget for the candy bowl in the lobby have been slashed. Meanwhile, healthcare premiums have gone up, including employees having to pay a good amount in premiums for a high-deductible HSA account which used to carry no premium for the employee.

Things haven't been so great for morale, and walking down the hallways, this is evident by the name signs many people have modified to display only their employee ID number (in reference to the fact that Raytheon changed our logins from our name to said impersonal ID numbers)... a silent protest, if you will. In the past year, I estimate that at least one person I know has left every month on average, an attrition rate that has been unprecedented.

So I'd been applying to companies I found through job boards like Monster and TechCareers. I applied to 15 companies from late November to early December, and 7 in early January. Unfortunately I didn't hear back from most of them, and I think the primary reason was that I was applying to ads that were a few days old, which in this job market usually means that the position's been filled, at least for a smaller company that's not hiring for too many positions.

But along the way, I happened to apply to a recruiting agency (found through Monster), and the recruiter who got in contact with me eventually sent my resume over to Pure Storage. Things progressed rather quickly from there, and though I thought I could've done slightly better in the interview, they were pleased to give me a competitive offer!

Prior to the agency submitting my resume to Pure, I knew nothing of the company. But I did some research and liked what I saw, and apparently they have a Wikipedia page, which is a good sign.

Pure is now a mid-stage startup with around 110 people. They operate on the cutting edge of enterprise-grade flash storage, and their flagship product is a flash array that delivers better performance than spinning disk at a lower cost. Their office is on Castro Street and they have some awesome perks like unlimited vacation days, which encourages people to be responsible, be productive while they're at work, and to take ample time off when they need to. Everybody there seems really bright, and I'll probably be amongst the youngest of people, so I'll have a lot of people to learn from.

I'll definitely miss working with some awesome and bright folks at AST. It was difficult to break the news to my managers and I did so with mixed feelings, but they were pretty understanding. AST was my first company right out of college, and it'll always have a special place in my heart. At the same time, I think I'll really like it at Pure. Not just for the exciting and challenging work, but for the laid back (but hard working) and personal atmosphere. Something that I miss about AST, and something that I've realized is important to me.

A company's bottom line should be its employees, not profits. That's not to say that profits aren't important (because at the end of the day, we all need to get paid and the company needs to have enough left over to keep the lights on and continue growing), but a company that invests in its employees first will know how to retain talent and create a positive working environment that channels into a positive feedback loop. That's the kind of environment that I thrive in. And I'm looking forward to seeing it again!

After nearly four years of being in Building 490, I've been moved along with Lisa to an office in Building 460. The company is shuffling people around partly because it's not renewing the lease on Building 400, and because renovations are being done in every building including putting new carpet in the offices in 490.

I'm now further from all the amenities I care about: a break room, restroom, printer room, shipping and receiving, and even the bike racks. On the bright side, I'm closer to the lab where our servers are set up as well as to some team members who frequently have baked goods to share. And best of all, my new office has windows! The view of the parking lot isn't spectacular but it's an improvement over no view. Also, we're on the south side of the building so we get the sun shining through. I like being able to have the office lights off and just work in natural light for part of the day.

So whether I feel better off in the new office is a close call. The window view and being able to save electricity are a nice perk, but there are disadvantages to being in this location. Then again, that just means I have to walk further, which probably isn't a bad thing.

As expected by almost everyone, Raytheon's stock tender offer for shares of Applied Signal was approved. 12,413,103 votes (shares) were received in favor of the acquisition. This represents a total of 87.8%, over the 76.3% threshold needed.

Today AST became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Raytheon. We've been told that there won't be major changes for the first year; however, in the long run anything is possible. I don't yet have a substantial reason to be nervous about the future of our company, so I'm taking the default position of being optimistic.

Priscilla hit the cap in her vacation hours and was told she had to use some hours or forfeit them. Being an awesome girlfriend, she decided to drive up impromptu to visit me last weekend.

Friday night we went to my company's holiday party, where my company went all out on expenses (perhaps since this will be the last AST holiday party). There were four food stations- Japanese (sushi and California rolls), Mexican (tacos and fajitas), Italian (ravioli and pasta), and American (salmon and roast beef). There were some pretty sweet raffle prizes including a PS3, 55" flatscreen TV, netbooks, iPads and gift cards up to $500. There were also casino games where chips were redeemable for tickets for the final raffle.

Unfortunately there was a miscommunication, and everybody received the same number of tickets for the final raffle, regardless of how many chips they earned or whether they played casino games at all. Furthermore, all the good prizes had been raffled off in the previous raffle, where everybody had the same chance of winning. It was disappointing to find out, after the fact, that the casino games were purely for fun and had no bearing on peoples' chances to win prizes, and that aspect could've been handled better, but altogether Priscilla and I had a great time at the party.

But the real fun began on the drive home, when a wheel bearing on my car gave out (but I didn't know what was wrong at the time) and the car started shaking violently and became unable to drive straight. We were in a remote part of San Jose, 20 miles from home at midnight, and I felt it was too risky to try to make it home. Priscilla has AAA but she left her member card and all forms of ID at my house, so AAA couldn't help us out. I had to call my roommate to bring the card to us, but by the time he reached us we decided to ride home with him and return the next day.

So Priscilla drove me to my car on Saturday and we called AAA to have my car towed to a mechanic. I rode with the tow truck guy, a burly, entertaining guy named Wayne who told me that his favorite tow jobs are "PD impounds."

On Sunday Priscilla and I visited a sister church, CCIC South Valley, and met some cool people mostly in the same demographic as CCIC MV. Priscilla also cooked a lot of food (chicken for tacos, herb chicken breast and baked pasta) ahead of time so that we had more time to do other things, like start watching Autumn's Concerto, a hackneyed Taiwanese drama that she seems to like for some reason. ;)

This week the mechanic called me in and showed me the busted wheel bearing as well as an outer tie rod end that was in sloppy condition. The wheel bearing explains why I've been hearing a whirring noise while driving as well as why the tread on that tire kept wearing out abnormally quickly. The mechanic ended up replacing both wheel bearings and tie rod ends for $740, and he comped me coolant because the job was finished later (this morning) than promised and because my coolant reservoir was empty. I still have a coolant leak, but for now it's cheaper to use some Stop Leak, top off coolant and keep an eye on it than to isolate and fix the leak.

My department laid off 16 people today, which is a significant number considering that we comprise maybe a couple hundred people. I knew half of the group that got laid off, which includes two of my team members as well as Dave and Fred. They all seemed optimistic; Dave seemed almost happy, saying that he's been wanting a change of scenery, and Fred cited a few potential job prospects.

We let go of some talented and hardworking engineers, but according to management it was a necessary evil due to a shortfall in customer funding. Management also assures us that the rest of our jobs are safe for the near future.

I really feel for those who got laid off, especially my friends, but I'm glad they seem to be taking it well, probably even better than I am.

I had a pretty productive weekend. On Saturday I cleaned my room, read through pages and pages of legalese for Raytheon's stock tender offer sent to holders of AST stock, and fixed up a program that I made for a friend that she's been bugging me about.

On Sunday I went biking with housemates for four hours, and we had burritos at a hole in the wall place that has the biggest super burritos I've ever seen, for under $6. I also made a lot of headway into a problem at work and found a quick and clean solution.

There's still so much to be done!

Until this year I hadn't ever taken the entire week between Christmas and New Year's off from work. But this year, since both holidays fell on a Saturday, my company gave us Monday, Tuesday and Friday off during the week following Christmas, so I ended up vacationing in LA from December 24 till January 3.

During the long break I hung out with two sets of high school friends, went to three holiday parties (four, if you count the one at my house that I caught the tail end of), saw two movies in the theatre (Narnia and Tron), worked out with a friend once (not nearly enough), helped my dad install shelves in the garage, did a lot of work on the website I'm making for church, played many games of Monopoly Deal with Aaron and other people, and found gift money that had apparently been sitting around for years.

I of course spent the majority of days with the girlfriend. We decorated her family's Christmas tree, cleaned her room, did our weekly study discussion while walking at Balboa Park, did puzzles, watched random Youtube videos, and had a lot of meals with different people.

This vacation time has been good, but I'm ready to get back to "normal" life. For one, my body is in dire need of exercise after a plethora of holiday food combined with inactivity. I've also more or less repaid my entire sleep debt, so I'm looking to go back to work refreshed and to start off this year on the right foot!

A lot of people at work are being moved around. My manager is relocating to the east coast, a dozen people including someone from my team got laid off last week, another person from my team announced this week that's he's leaving to go to business school, and my manager is hoping to reduce the team size by another two people because of funding issues. Another team desperately needs two more engineers, and I was being considered due to my skillset, but somebody else from my team ended up getting chosen because he really wanted to go. So that leaves potentially one more person who will be leaving the team, making 14 the target size, down from 18 two weeks ago. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. The smaller team size may make our team more productive.

Regardless of short term uncertainties, we still found reasons to celebrate. On Tuesday my team had a picnic in the park to celebrate a (mostly) successful release, complete with hunting for figurines hidden throughout the park, an egg-on-spoon relay race, and a pinata game made hilariously difficult by people swinging the pinata around on its string while the blindfolded person tried to hit it.

On Wednesday we had our second company lunch of the year, with all barbecuing done on site this time. I wolfed down all the chicken I could, and there was lots of food to spare. And Thursday saw catered appetizers as a thank you to everybody in our program for getting 100% customer award fees across the board (not easy at all).

So for the most part, this week was totally double rainbow.

Yesterday was my third time representing my company at the UCLA technical career fair. We seem to attend every fall and winter quarter, and I've been volunteering every time. It's a win-win: the company benefits from the recruiting, and I get a free trip to LA to see family and the gf (and I get more Southwest Rapid Rewards points, muahaha).

We're hiring mostly Software Engineers, so we look primarily for CS/CSE students at the fairs. Unfortunately, we didn't see many CS/CSE students this year- I talked to only a couple of CS students, and of the five resumes the other recruiter and I recommended, the majority of them were EE students with strong programming backgrounds. In fact, probably 70% of the students who stopped by our table were EE. 20% were physics majors.

I think it's mostly a branding problem. AST is a signals processing company, which implies that we have a lot of EE jobs. We do, but not entry level. And I think the Software Engineers outnumber the Electrical Engineers, since we have a very large and ever-growing software department. The other recruiter and I brought up our concerns about branding, so hopefully we'll see some changes by the next career fair. We also have a newly-created marketing department, so I'm counting on it!

Other than the career fair, I got to spend more time with Priscilla than I usually do, since I flew into LA a few hours earlier. We spent Tuesday evening trying on Halloween costumes at a seasonal shop (mostly just for fun since the costumes were cheap in quality yet ridiculously overpriced), eating at King's Burger (not your typical burger joint- I'm surprised at how many genres of food they have), and carving a pumpkin since she's had a deprived childhood and never done it before. We also took a bunch of pictures of my rental car, since I got a pretty swanky G6 GT this time. :)

My company hosted a two-day CPR and first aid training seminar that I was fortunate to get a seat for (there were only twelve spots available). The pair of three-hour long sessions were taught by one of the security staff who's also a Red Cross instructor. It was cool that the company covered the costs of the materials, the instructor's time and even dinner for the attendees. Win-win for everybody.

So today was the second session, and since we all passed the (very easy) exams we're now lay responders (certificates pending), meaning that we're allowed but not required to provide CPR and/or first aid, which differs from a first responder, who is required to assist a person in need.

Some cool things I learned:

• You need to identify yourself and get somebody's permission before you can provide assistance. If they're unconscious, there's implied consent, which means you can assume they would've given consent if they were conscious.
• Check, Call and Care. If somebody needs assistance, first check the surroundings and make sure there's no immediate danger to yourself. Move them to a safe area if it makes sense to do so. Call or have somebody else call for help if necessary. Then provide care for the injured person.
• If you're not sure what to do or panic, best to call 911.
• 5 back blows, 5 abdominal thrusts. If somebody is choking, alternate giving them 5 back blows with the bottom of your palm, and 5 abdominal thrusts to the midsection.
• 2 rescue breaths, 30 chest compressions. CPR is performed when somebody has gone into cardiac arrest and involves (at least the Red Cross-endorsed method) giving 2 rescue breaths of 1 second each, then 30 chest compressions to the mid-chest. You should be doing five cycles of this every two minutes.
• To bandage an open wound, first apply pressure with gauze until the bleeding stops. Then wrap the gauze firmly with dressing.
• If somebody has a broken arm, you can wrap their arm in a sling by wrapping it in a triangular-shaped cloth tied around their neck.
• FAST. To determine if somebody's having a stroke, ask them to smile (Face), raise their Arms, note how quickly or clearly they can Speak, and note the Time at which the symptoms started.
• If somebody's having a seizure, help them onto the ground onto their back and let them have the seizure. Don't try to restrain them.
• A diabetic feeling weak/dizzy/light-headed should be given sugar in liquid form. If their sugar level is too low, the sugar they ingest will help. If it's too high, the extra sugar won't cause any extra harm (sounds weird, but that's what the manual said!).
• Overexposure to heat may cause heat cramps, heat exhaustion and heat stroke, in that order. Heat stroke may be fatal. Allow them to lie down in a cool place, place something like towels soaked in cold water on their chest and forehead, and give them small sips of water.

Some of this information is probably inaccurate, which is entirely my fault. Needless to say but for liability reasons, I'm not a CPR/first aid instructor, so please don't read this information and then go try to assist somebody, mess up and then sue me.

Anyway, the training was pretty useful, and though I am by no means an expert, I'll sort of know what to do should a situation arise. I'd recommend to anybody to take CPR/first aid training, as it's offered for free in numerous places. You never know when you may need it, and having training at that time just might make the difference during the crucial minutes before proper help can arrive.

Today marks my one-year anniversary of starting work at Applied Signal. I can't believe it was one year ago that I left home, moved up to the Bay Area, and became, more or less, independent. Time really flies. Is this what it's like to get old? Pretty soon I'll be in my mid-30's with a mortgage and 2.5 kids, wondering where all that time went.

So what have I done in the past year?

• Moved three times (was in corporate housing for a month, then in an apartment by myself for six months, and now a townhouse with two roommmates).
• Interviewed several software engineering applicants either on the phone or on-site. Became familiar with general interview format and hiring criteria, from the employer's standpoint. Recruited students at two UCLA technical career fairs. It's great to be on the other side of the table now.
• Improved my understanding of software engineering, C++, Linux, shell scripting, and various software development tools.
• Got my security clearance so that I can take on more types of work, yet still not really know the significance of what I'm working on.
• Gained about 15 pounds from lifting weights (I'm not as scrawny as before). Got into biking and recently running.
• Got to know some really great guys through my smallgroup Crossover, and I meet with them roughly bi-weekly. We usually meet over dinner at Google. Saying that I love the food there is an understatement.
• Accumulated in savings this year 5% of the cost of a down-payment on a house. Yeah, it's gonna be a while.
• Had a fair share of ups and downs with the girlfriend, but am cultivating what is mostly a positive relationship. Need to work harder on being God-centered, though.
• Gotten moderately better at cooking. Still a long way to go.
• Met some really cool people through work, church, and then some.
• A bunch of other stuff that I can't recall at the moment (told you I'm getting old).

Yeah. I'm really thankful for what I have. Life's been good.

Today I was down at UCLA recruiting students at the Winter Engineering and Technical Fair. This was my second time recruiting at a career fair, my first being in October of last year.

This time around, the fair spanned a single day instead of two, and there were fewer students and companies that showed up. Nonetheless, I talked to more CS students than I did last time, and I got 4 or 5 good leads.

This time around, management wanted us to pre-screen candidates on the spot, rather than us doing phone-screens later. So I spent several minutes per candidate drilling them on programming, design, and data structures, and having them write simple code. This wasn't too conventional for a career fair, so I'm sure the students were a little put off, or at the very least surprised, but I do see the merit in risking scaring students in order to narrow down the candidates of interest. Since I'm convening with management tomorrow to review resumes, it also means that we can contact students as early as next week with an offer to fly them up for an on-site interview. I don't know of another company that moves so quickly in its hiring process.

As customary, last night I surprised Priscilla at her house, since only her parents knew I was coming. Her dad's 70th birthday is tomorrow, so last night we sang happy birthday and had some chocolate cake. We had dinner at my (parents') house tonight, and my mom gave me more food to take home. I didn't anticipate otherwise. ;)

California has been having some pretty cold weather these past few weeks. And it's most likely not going to end soon.

Cold weather usually doesn't bother me too much, but tonight I left work in the late hours of the night to find my car frozen, with the rain from this morning having turned into ice. My windshield was covered with a thin layer that I had to scrape off, and even then I had a hard time seeing through it while driving. Not the most ideal of conditions.

But perhaps most entertaining, was the discovery that my sliding door was frozen shut. But it did open a crack- just enough to make the door-open indicator stay on the whole drive back home. Once I got back, I gave my car a good garden hose thawing.

I'm sure people in places like the East Coast deal with these occurences all the time. Heck, maybe even people in the Bay Area. It is my first winter out of LA, after all.

The plus side of this cold weather, is that I'm going snowboarding in Tahoe this weekend with a bunch of CCIC people. I borrowed a lot of gear from a snowboard-holic friend, so I saved quite a bit of money, which I can then spend on better things like blowing it all at a seedy casino. ;)

This Friday was a harrowing, hauntingly horrifying Halloween. Well not really, but we did have a power outage at work around 3:10pm that crippled four out of our five buildings. Interestingly, I was in the middle of playing a haunted house Halloween game when it happened. All of a sudden, my monitor started fading, my computer sputtered to death, and the lights flickered out. For a quarter of a second I thought the haunt had come to life.

(Un)fortunately, there was no ETA on restoration of power, so not being able to do our work, most people soon left for the day. I shot hoops in the parking lot with a co-worker for an hour, after which I returned to my office to get my stuff. There were some emergency lights on but they were starting to get dim, and walking through a corridor that was completely dark felt kind of eerie in a horror film way. Like something was going to jump out and grab me and eat my face. Needless to say, I didn't stay in there long.

Well, that was a fun way to end the week on a Halloween note. I don't think that happens too often. =)

I can't believe it's been just over a year since the last Fall Engineering and Technical Fair at UCLA, where I met reps from Applied Signal who were responsible for leading me to this job. This past Wednesday, I again participated in the career fair, but on the other side of the table - representing AST and telling students why we're such an awesome company to work for.

I had a lot of fun being a recruiter for the day, and I collected some great resumes... and some not so great ones. In a sense, I saw different stages of myself in those students - from the freshman me who had only unrelated cashier experience at Toys R Us, to the junior me with a polished resume who sort of knew what he was doing, and the senior me who'd seen enough to be able to get by.

But the best part of the trip was that I got to go home courtesy of AST. Tuesday night, after landing at Burbank and picking up a rental car (a Pontiac G6), I surprised Priscilla at her home. She had had a rough day, and that combined with the surprise of me randomly showing up, caused her to break down and soil my shirt with her tears and snot. Next time I should bring tissues.

Wednesday night Priscilla came over to my home, where my mom, as customary, cooked us way more food than we could eat. I miss my mom's cooking. Especially considering how pitiful my own cooking is.

Finally, the trip was a nice mid-week break for me, after which I had to work only two more days until the weekend came around. I'd definitely volunteer to attend any future UCLA events that AST decides to visit. It's win-win all around.

After only five months of an extensive background investigation consisting of investigators interviewing my family, friends, co-workers and supervisors, countless but sporadic back-and-forth communication, and a couple of almost-traumatic polygraphs, I received my security clearance and was briefed today.

The whole conferment was rather unceremonious. Our customer just one day gave a verbal OK, and that was it. No parade. No balloons or a cake. I could've settled for a measly cookie.

Anyway, I don't think there will be many changes to my current job duties. Having a clearance will just let me get over hurdles and expedite things when trying to do work that involves sensitive data, which will empower me to be a better worker and make everybody happier. But I do think it'll get me a $200k pay raise, and let me find out who really killed JFK.

This past week has been busier than ever. Last week, one of our customers made a last minute "request" to see a major part of Switch Control, our product, that we didn't even have finished or ready to show. So this week my whole team has been scrambling to move things forward. With the support of some people in our Utah office, I've been in charge of integrating a GUI viewer with our product. And I've become a guru at building Switch Control and know more of the pitfalls since I've messed up a couple times. =)

The workload has since subsided since we got everything working in time for the customer meeting. But it was cool seeing everybody pulling double their weight without complaining. When I left last night around 10pm, one guy was still there fixing things so that the guy who comes in early would be able to work without stuff breaking on him. I definitely noticed a lot of teamwork effort this week.

As part of getting a security clearance for my job at AST, I needed to be polygraphed for our "customer" to determine that I'm not a threat to counter-intelligence. This past Tuesday I went in for a polygraph and failed -- or rather my results were "inconclusive." I tend to over-think questions, and I projected feelings of guilt for the things I've done that they don't care about, onto things I haven't done that they do care about. And the worse I did with the questions, the guiltier and more stressed I felt, resulting in a downward spiral.

Needless to say, I felt pretty bad afterwards and entertained fears of them thinking I'm a criminal, and not being able to get a clearance and as a result losing my job.

But my officemate Dave and later Priscilla gave me words of wisdom. Dave reminded me that even in the worst-case scenario of losing my job, I would still have that which is most important -- my life -- and I could easily find work elsewhere. Priscilla showed me that most of my fears were unfounded, and that I wasn't trusting in God. I was reminded that everything that happens is according to God's sovereign plan, and my responsibility is to do my part and leave to rest to Him. I was also reminded that he has paid the price for my sins -- past, present, and future -- and that I shouldn't harbor feelings of guilt.

I went back Thursday morning for a re-test and, despite still being nervous, seemingly did just fine. I'm grateful for God's grace, and I'm glad that I can trust that He has a plan for me even when I can't see through the darkness.

Wow, I haven't written anything here in almost a month. This past month has been busy, exciting and tiring. Here's a recap of what's happened:

Priscilla and Audrey drove up at the end of February to visit. They slept over Friday night and Sunday night and I made food for them that they didn't really like (cough, ingrates!). While Audrey was down in Monterey visiting a friend, Priscilla and I explored the Sunnyvale City Center, visited CCIC Mountain View, and stayed at home making food and listening to online broadcasts about relationships.

Work at AST is going well. I'm definitely keeping busy. Last week I even got to interview an applicant over the phone.

My replacement officemate is a guy named Dave. He's pretty chill, and we're always making fun of each other. Unfortunately the higher ups have seen fit to relocate him as well, which will make him the second officemate who's left me. I guess I have a knack at scaring people away...

AST has already started my application for a government security clearance, which is interesting because a lot of people don't have theirs started until they've been here several months. As part of the process I got my fingerprints taken. I guess I won't be robbing banks any time soon.

I've also visited a few churches but at this point I like Great Exchange (GrX) the best because the messages have really spoken to me. They have a dozen young adult small groups so I should be able to find one that fits me. This Sunday I had lunch with one of those groups at this Korean tofu house, and they paid for me (despite my protests). I'll check them out this Thursday; they meet at 7pm at one of the guys' apartment in Sunnyvale. I've also been going to Transformers, the young adult group that Steve and Shirley host at their place every other Sunday.

Other than that, I've been doing a smorgasbord routine of shopping for home furnishings and groceries, cooking, reading, web surfing, working out and eating with people. I've been pretty tired lately, but I think the main reason is that I still haven't gotten out of the college mentality of going to bed late. Once I force myself to get over that, I'll be in good shape.

After a long bout of phone calls, reading good and creepy reviews online, and touring many places, my search for a new apartment ended when I decided on the Olive Garden Apartments in Sunnyvale. Now I won't be homeless when my corporate housing term is over in two weeks. ;p

I got a 672 square-foot, 1-bedroom unit that's newly remodeled. Everything is brand new and looks beautiful. It's situated on the second floor of a 2-story complex, so I won't suffer the noise of people walking above me, as is the case in the apartment I'm in now. Also, the complex is just under two miles away from my company for an easy commute, or a good jog should I decide to get in shape again!

For this fine unit I'll be paying $1455 a month on a six-month lease. My first choice was to get a studio, but most places I talked to didn't have studios, and the studios I did find seemed a little iffy.

So here's a little more info about the Olive Garden, which shares its name incidentally with the Italian restaurant chain:

The complex is semi-old, having been built in either the 60's or 70's. Some negative reviews complain that the fixtures/appliances are old, but that doesn't apply to me since I'm in a remodeled unit. The facilities are also kept up with two heated pools and a recreation room with no less than three pool tables.

Most people seem to enjoy living at Olive Garden. According to the managers, half of the residents have lived there for 20 years or more, and one person (who is 98 years old) is an original tenant from when the place opened. The place does seem very tranquil and loud music and wild parties are frowned upon. Security seems good with gated access to the parking lot, a patrol unit that comes four times a night, the Sunnyvale City Hall and a police station down the street two blocks away, and the area being on the low end of Sunnyvale PD's crime statistics (Sunnyvale being one of the safest cities in the country per capita notwithstanding).

So all that's left to do is to sign the lease this Friday and coordinate with the moving company to bring my furniture up from LA!

Well one week has passed since I started working at Applied Signal Technology, and I'm still here, so apparently I haven't done anything too bad. :)

The week started with a full day of orientation on Monday, during which I was given a huge stack of paperwork to read and complete. I also got three free lunches in a row- Monday with my two managers, Tuesday after a welcome briefing for new hires, and Wednesday at the monthly company lunch, at which I boxed a lot of food to take to work on Thursday, so I guess that counts too!

Workwise, I've been placed on the several-person Switch Control team, the group that writes software to control network switches. The learning curve is very steep, and the first couple days were pretty tough, but oh how much more I know now compared to a week ago. One team member, Michael (and there are actually two Michaels and a Mike on the team, so maybe I should say one of the Michaels), has been my quasi-mentor and helping get up to speed. I'm getting bite-sized projects of increasing difficulty as I'm becoming more familiar with concepts and terminology (and there's LOTS of that) related to the project. I'll be a guru in no time!

I'm really enjoying the organized but relaxed environment at the company. The friendly social atmosphere and people-oriented mentality is one of the things that attracted me in the first place. Every person gets his/her own office, often shared with an officemate. My officemate is a really cool guy who started a week before I did, but unfortunately they relocated him today. Maybe they'll put in a new hire with me next week and then I'll be the one with one week's experience!

The company also tries to make sure its employees' needs are met. Relocation assistance has set me up with temporary housing and a rental car, the company offers 100% reimbursement for grad school (which I need to decide if I want to do), and free medical and dental coverage. We have a facilities request helpdesk system where we can put in a request for supplies and furniture. If I need an additional whiteboard in my office, want the desk behind me removed, or want my table adjusted, it's taken care of pretty quickly. We also have an IT department that takes care of computer issues, but unfortunately they seem to be a little slow because of understaffing.

So overall, things have been good. I'm really enjoying my job and being independent for the first time. Of course, my family (particularly my dad) has helped me immensely during this transition, and I owe them so much and am certainly going to miss them.

I am typing this entry sitting in my new (temporary) apartment in Santa Clara in the Bay Area. The move was, for the most part, pretty smooth. Priscilla even made a surprise visit in the morning to see me off, and being late for work because of it. I guess she really does care me. ;p

So I'm in this 2nd-floor 1-bedroom apartment in a large community called Mansion Grove. The place is fully furnished, so I have cooking and eating equipment, a queen size bed, a dining table, and a coffee table with a couch. Right now I'm sitting on the floor with my computer hooked up to the 22" widescreen TV. If I could get a wireless keyboard and mouse, I'd be able to surf the web from the couch. And I wouldn't have wires streching across the room for me to trip over at night. ;p

Yeah so.. it's been a long and tiring but rewarding day. Right now everything is kind of crazy but I'm looking forward to getting settled in, unpacking, and starting my new job this coming Monday! And of course apartment hunting to find a permanent place to move into after my free month's lodging is up!

Ok, I'm several days late with the Happy New Year, but I haven't posted anything in a while. Here are the highlights of what I've been up to these past couple weeks:

• Prayed with Priscilla and her parents on New Year's Eve.
• Started watching an anime called "Death Note" with Priscilla. The series started off on a high but unfortunately has been going downhill.
• Went bowling a few times and got pretty good (bowled 158 in one game, beating my previous best score by 40-something points).
• Been playing a Scrabble-based game on Facebook, Scrabulous, which I've gotten semi-good at.
• Went to UCLA to sit in on Sophonias' discussion section. He's a great TA (naturally) but unfortunately I didn't understand a word he said about fluid mechanics.

This year promises to be filled with change, as I prepare to make the transition to full-time work and get ready to move up to the Bay Area next week. Whatever happens with relationships, job and living, I know God has a plan in everything!

Yesterday I informed Applied Signal Technology that I was accepting the Software Engineer position. I will start working on January 21, 2008.

From what I've seen thus far, I think I will enjoy working at AST and with the people there. The salary and signing bonus they offered and the benefits they provide are also competitive. And they even have a gym on-site. ;)

Well, this is going to be a big transition for me. But it's just another stage of life that everybody has to go through. I'm looking forward to what the future holds!

This past Thursday I had a job interview for a Software Engineer position with Applied Signal Technology, a signals processing company headquartered in Sunnyvale. I flew up Wednesday night, got a rental car, and stayed overnight in a hotel, all paid for by the company.

Three engineers met with me successively during the interview and asked me a mix of questions ranging from database design to algorithms to the product design process. I then met with a senior technical recruiter to wrap things up.

All in all, I felt pretty confident during the interview; in fact, I had so much fun meeting and talking with people that it began to seem more like a friendly conversation than a daunting test of my knowledge. Apparently they liked me just as much, because three hours after the interview was over, the company called me and offered me the job.

The scariest part of the whole trip, however, was not the interview process but driving the rental car. I was given a sweet 2006 Chevrolet Impala LT, which has more engine power and electronic controls than any car I've yet to drive. Which is not saying much, considering that I drive mostly a 1996 Toyota Previa or a 1992 Mazda 626. Wednesday night, still getting used to the feel of the rental car as I drove through the airport and onto the freeway toward the hotel, I constantly felt like I was going to crash into something. Man, those 20 minutes were some of the scariest I've ever had. Any anxiety concerning the interview didn't even come close. ;)

Anyway, I'm still weighing my options, so I don't know if I will accept the offer. But if I do end up moving up north, one thing is for certain. It's going to be cold!

Today at work we had a guy come from Apple to give us a two-hour crash course on Mac OS X. I thought it was pretty informative since I'm a total Mac newbie. Some cool things he talked about were:

• Normal, administrator, and root accounts. How root is disabled by default and how to enable it if needed.
• File structure for the system and for individual users.
• Using FileVault to create an encrypted disk image. Hard drive free space quirks about disk images.
• Configuring ethernet, Airport, VPN, bluetooth, etc. settings and how to assign preferences for which device to communicate over.
• Installing IP printers.
• The differences between Parallels and Boot Camp. Demonstration of Parallels to run Windows XP.
• And I got a free Apple keychain!

Yeah so.. I learned a lot of useful things in those two hours. I think I now know more about Macs than Silly Goose who actually has one. ;)

Lately I've been helping to replace the computers in each Anderson classroom with newer ones. Most of the classrooms consist of a few rows of cushioned swivel chairs around a central podium with a computer in it. The podiums themselves have a button to raise or lower their height depending on the professor's preference. There is a monitor beneath the glass top of the podium for the professor to look at. A pull-out touchscreen device controls everything from the digital projector overhead, the retractable projector screen at the front of the room, and input from an optional laptop connection. There is a regular mouse on top of the podium, as well as a bluetooth-enabled gyro-mouse that can be operated by waving it around in the air. Not to mention a slick sound system tucked nicely behind the paneling of the walls.

Unfortunately, as nice as the podiums are, they weren't built to be technician-friendly. The only access is in the back of the podium (facing away from where the students sit), and reaching all the way in there to unplug/plug in cables isn't easy when you've got large controller devices and a hundred wires stuffed back there in a mess of spaghetti.

Anyway, it was cool to be doing something new for a change. The complexity of those classrooms amazes me. Compare that to the classrooms we have in the engineering/science buildings that consist of pretty much a chalkboard and chairs. And the chairs don't swivel.

I'm back working at UCLA Anderson doing tech support for the summer, and yesterday was my first day. I'm working four hours a day, Monday through Friday, with my shifts starting in the afternoon. But I'm commuting by bus and the latest bus in the morning leaves at 9:30, and I need to take that one because the next one to Westwood comes 7 hours later. So I'm really leaving for work around 9:30am and getting back around 7:30pm.

After getting home today and eating dinner, I had to run to the gas station and supermarket to pick up some things. Then it was time to do some chores and administrative stuff. Finally I got only about an hour free time before it was time to get ready for bed.

It's only been two days of this routine and I'm already tired of it. How's it going to be down the line when I'm working a real, demanding job and have to support myself and maybe a family? How do people find time for leisure? I seriously don't know how people do it.

I've been so tired lately. It's not even 2am yet and I can barely keep my eyes open. At school it was just the opposite- this would be the time when I would feel most awake.

I guess being at home around people who actually sleep at normal times (well, except my brother) is rubbing off on me. That and the fact that I've been sleep-deprived from having to wake up early to take the bus to work.

Wow, I've been neglecting this blog a little. I don't think I've gone more than a week this year without posting something, let alone two and a half. I guess I'm just enjoying vacation too much. ;)

I've taken spring quarter off, for reasons that I won't go into here but friends are well-aware of. Suffice it to say that I've been using my time pretty productively, uh.. for the most part. I'm back at home, and having time off to read, relax, do programming, and enjoy the company of others is quite nice.

I'm still working at my tech support job because I promised them I would stay till the end of spring, but I had them compact my hours into two days so that I don't need to commute as much. And I take the bus, so I don't have to deal with the hellish 405 rush hour traffic. Whatever guy came up with the idea for carpool lanes is a genius.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday I was with Priscilla and her parents in fabulous Las Vegas. The night we arrived, we walked down one side of The Strip and back up the other side. We were staying at the Circus Circus hotel at the north end and walked all the way to the Excalibur at the south end - nearly the entire four miles of The Strip. I never knew Las Vegas was so... dirty. I was surprised to see so much of the sidewalks under construction, and we couldn't walk five feet without seeing ads for hookers on trucks and in things that resembled newspaper dispensers (interestingly I never saw a dispenser for actual newspapers), and call girl cards strewn about the ground like confetti at a festival, and shady-looking people, who would never in their life pass for call girls, trying to hand them out. We ended up getting back to our hotel at 4 in the morning. Yeah, walking The Strip and taking pictures of all the flashy buildings was fun, but I wouldn't want to do it again, at least not the whole length of it...

So the next day, being a little tired, we stuck to the hotel. We checked out the mini-circus area where they had some pretty cool shows every half hour, the two most notable ones being where one guy was using just one hand to balance upside-down on top of another guy's head, and some chick being twirled from a tall pole like a tetherball, held by only her hair. That didn't look quite fun, but she seemed to enjoy it enough.

Finally, somewhere in there Priscilla and I decided to hit the casino. Since we have no game whatsoever and are cheap, we avoided the tables and played $2 in slot machines. And lost it all. Then we put $2 in DDR at the arcade. And lost there too.

So that was Vegas. It was fun seeing her parents' neurotic side in taking a billion pictures of everything that blinks, and I had a good time. I don't know if I would want to go back, but if I did, I'd better find out beforehand where all the good shows and hangouts are. And maybe learn how to gamble.

Ok, I guess blogging after a hiatus isn't so hard after all, once you finally get around to starting. Just look at how much I wrote. If you did manage to read through it all, I give it up to you. Give yourself a pat on the back.

The new year is quickly approaching (2 hours and 4 minutes remaining at the time I'm writing this). 2006 has truly been a great year. Here are some of the highlights of my year:

• Got a job at school that has helped in my study of computers
• Got my first A+ in college
• Grown closer to God and to friends
• Finally got a girlfriend, who cares about me as much as I her
• Saw a good friend come to faith in Christ
• Moved and redesigned my personal site

May 2007 bring another year of blessing and joy to us all!

Another quarter has drawn to a close. I soon shall be going home, basking in a much-needed euphoria called winter break. I'm now just finishing up my shift at work, bored out of my mind since there's nobody around. This whole week this place has been a ghost town, with students being too busy with studying to come in asking for computer help.

But it's all good. I finished my CS final this morning with an hour to spare, and I think I did pretty well. Hopefully this will supplement my abominably low project scores. We shall see.

I love my job as a helpdesk technician. Some of the people who bring their laptops in have funny questions. One guy brought in a laptop where the battery would not charge. Turns out he just never had the computer plugged into an outlet.

Today was the first day I got up before 9 this quarter. It was also the first day of this quarter that I had breakfast. Granted, there are very few things in life that could actually motivate me to pull this off. This one happened to be my new job.

As of today, I'm working as a helpdesk technician at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. We support mainly grad students who use laptops. People having issues bring their laptops in and we troubleshoot.

It's a pretty laid-back job since people aren't coming in all the time, so I'll get to do homework when I'm just sitting around. And getting paid over $100 a week isn't too shabby either.

Sorry for the paucity of updates. Two weeks ago I killed my laptop messing around with the internal hardware. Due to the holiday season, it was hard to find a repair shop, and the one I settled on took a while to determine that the motherboard was burnt out. I found out it would cost $500 for me to get a new board, so I decided to build a desktop instead.

Fortunately we already had most of the parts at home and I went to Fry's to get the remaining parts for $400. Here's what my new system looks like for the interested:

2 GHz AMD Athlon64 3200+
512 MB DDR RAM (I want to upgrade to 1 GB)
80 GB Western Digital HDD, 7200 RPM
256 MB GeForce 6600 LE (PCI Express)

I worked at Toys 'R Us for 3 weeks doing mostly cashiering. It was pretty boring (and tiring) standing around the whole day. The week before Christmas was insane, and they had me working 10 hours a day for 5 days. But at least I now have a job to put down on my resume, and I made $500, which I unfortunately used most of building that computer.

Man, these entries keep accumulating on the front page because I'm too lazy to archive them since I was planning to revamp my site. I can't believe it's already been half a year since I decided to do that. I was planning to get it done this winter but the sudden lack of a computer made it difficult. Hopefully I'll find some time in between the stuff I have to do at school.

Speaking of which, classes are extremely soporific.

Today was my first day of real work. Aaron got me a job working at his Toys R Us for my three weeks of winter break. They haven't assigned me to any particular thing, so I did a little bit of everything: learning the cash register, stocking, retrieving shopping carts, walking through aisles making sure things were in order, and helping Aaron assemble bikes. Basically whatever I felt like doing.

I also haven't received any official training. It was frustrating because customers asked me a lot of questions and I didn't know the answer to any. All the "training" I've had has been finding out how to do things by observing other people and trying to repeat it. Learning by falling.

Altogether I worked ten hours. My feet, legs, and head were killing me when I got home, and I cut myself on a cardboard box. I just hope they pay me correctly, because I'm not in the time system so I had to write my hours on paper. Man, I'm hating working already.

My ear is a lot better, though not fully functional. Just needs a bit more... work.

Speaking of work, I made $42 at work today! I also made $42 Tuesday. Today is my last day (unless I decide to work Saturday) and all in all I've made $98 in 3 days!!! Working is so great.

This week I'm going to be working at the office of an optometrist from my church, doing data entry. Tonight I worked two hours, and it was really fun. The time passed by so quickly, and I get paid $7 an hour. It's like money for doing almost nothing.