Stultitia Delenda Est

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a new apartment or something.” – Jane Austen, probably

My new digs are treating me well so far. Other than having some car prowling barbarian scumbag break into my car last Sunday, the move actually went pretty smoothly. My choice to hire movers to haul my stuff to the new place proved to be a solid one. I went with Budget Moving, who were awesome. Mike, who I coordinated with, was responsive and professional, and even handled a fairly last-minute reschedule with aplomb. Also: he does business over email and text message, which I greatly approve of. The two guys he sent (Oscar and, I believe, Ken) were quick, efficient, and affable. They got everything moved an hour under estimate with no damage to any of my stuff or either building. If there’s any way they could have done a better job, I’m at a loss for what it might be.

My new building, Via 6, is excellent. The units have great amenities, fetching decor, and impeccable fit and finish. The building itself is perfectly located. I’m within walking distance of some of the best music venues in the world, an easy walk to downtown or Belltown, and close to major transit lines for anything further afield. Pike Place market is about 8 blocks away. My office is 4. Other than the occasional trip to QFC or the range, I think it basically makes my car unnecessary.

Suffice it to say, I’m pretty pleased with my move. Especially now that I finally have reliable Internet in my new place. (Another advantage of the move: finally ditched Comcast. I moved to Condo Internet, which was price-competitive, faster, and so far has had MUCH better customer service. Win-win-win.)

All this is to say: apologies for the prolonged service disruption, (ir)regularly scheduled blogging will henceforth resume.

Sorry for the radio silence. I just moved apartments and re-establishing Internet connectivity took longer than expected. I switched my provider from Comcast to Condo Internet and so far I’m thrilled with the decision. Better service, faster connections, and roughly same monthly price. Win-win-win.

I’ll have more about the move later, but for now, entertain yourself with the new Queens of the Stone Age singles, “I Appear Missing”, off of their forthcoming album …Like Clockwork, coming June 4th on Matador Records:

Just home from an awesome long weekend in DC hanging out with my friend Heather. More bloggage soon. Now, though, it’s unpacking, sleep, and unapologetic New Wave-y goodness:

Sylver Tongue, “Hook You Up”

“They charge by the coil, so I just had them do one coil per word.”

“It’ll still be legible, right?”

“Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

I love living in a city. I had four hours of phone screens this morning (by the way, my team is hiring) so afterwards, I went for a wander to stretch my legs. In the span of 45 minutes, I discovered that there’s a tunnel from Rainier Square to Union Square, saw a guy moonwalking down the street like it was his primary mode of transport, and found an excellent lunch place called Cafe Abodega.

Good show, Seattle. Good show.

So an Indian, a Pakistani, a Ukrainian, a Brazilian, and an American walk into a bar…

This isn’t the setup to a joke, but just me and four of my coworkers arriving for our friend Zain’s going away party. We gathered at the Edge Grill in downtown Seattle and had a hell of a good time.

Zain, best of luck with your new job. Microsoft is lucky to have you, and we’re sad to see you go.

A squirrel eating from a discarded granola bar wrapper. Sorry for the low-quality. Taken on maximum zoom from my camera phone. I watched this little dude pick every last stuck bit of granola bar from the wrapper, lick the remaining grease off the foil, and then throw the wrapper out of his tree.

One of the things I love about working at Amazon is the sheer density of brilliant, obsessive nerds with diverse skills and passions. This translates not only into an awesome work environment and Amazon’s ability to ship some seriously cool products, but also in some incredible products bashed out on the side.

Three examples:

1.) St. Optimus of Prime.

2.) Custom robotic target holder with randomized target presentation:

3.) No link for this one, but I was talking to one of my fellow Amazonians over beer the other day, and apparently his team just got finished building out metrics, monitoring, and alarming for their kegerator. Yes, in the true “metrics or GTFO” engineering attitude, they added scales to check beer weight left in the kegs and wired it up via an Arduino processor to send an email when the beer is low. Apparently the next step is to set up a real-time metrics dashboard to track beer consumption over time and to add a way for the metrics to be content-aware so they can alert people which beers are on tap and which are running low.

Work has kind exploded on me, as it does every fourth quarter. I’ve got big deadlines both tomorrow and a week from tomorrow, and then it’s the holiday season with all the craziness that entails for a retail company.

So posting will be light for probably the next few weeks, and definitely for another week and a half. In the meantime, here’s a track that you should just put on repeat until I resurface:

Just a quick note to highlight the news that the Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Fire HD tablets are now available for order in Japan. I’m very proud of my work on the Silk browser and the Fire tablets more generally, and it’s awesome to get to see them ship to new countries. The kindle devices are incredible pieces of technology and I hope that our Japanese customers get as much enjoyment out of them as I have gotten out of mine.