Carl the Zealot

My Seattle condo has been on the market now for a few weeks and I wanted to write a blog post to try and talk about it and provide some extra info.

It is an amazing location in the heart of Capitol Hill. A cozy 2 bedroom unit, it is in a great building. The management is phenomenal and though the building is pushing 20 years old, they are working to make lots of improvements to increase its value. The unit is 720 sq ft with and additional 100sq ft in a storage unit. The unit includes a parking spot too.

The unit is a few blocks from the bus tunnel, 2 blocks away from 5 other bus lines, a few blocks from the Seattle Center (PAX, Emerald City Comic Con), and a 15 minute bus ride from the International District.

If you are interested in renting or buying the condo, please email cmyers _at_ cmyers _dot_ org.

Hey folks, this is gonna be a quickie – I might edit to add my comments later, but I wanted to post this link to a really superb treatment of net neutrality by the indispensable Cory Doctorow.

Sad news.

I have had four pet turtles for over 6 years now. Frankly, they aren’t the smartest or most satisfying pets one can have. They can be a lot of trouble too, despite living in an aquarium, their filter needs to be cleaned, they prefer live food, and they just keep growing. Aquatic turtles like these can live to be up to 80 years old. I thought they might outlive me.

Sadly, for one of them, that won’t happen. Cleopatra passed away yesterday, Sunday, May 3rd. Cleo was the first of the four that I got. I got her when she was only 1.5 inches long. I could have lost her in my pocket. Now, 6 years later, she is over 6 inches long and has a beautiful painted shell and bright red ears. Of the four, she was the most docile and friendly. Unlike the others, she didn’t mind being held as much, and didn’t startle as easily.

I don’t know how smart turtles are. I don’t know if she recognized me, knew I was the one that fed her and took care of her. I don’t know if she was aware enough to be happy, like a dog or cat is. I hope she was happy though. I hope she lived a good turtle life.

Brutus, Mark Antony, and Nefertiti seem to be taking the loss well. They appear to be healthy still. Hopefully the vet will be able to tell me more about what happened tomorrow. Perhaps it was the stress of the move, or maybe she was ill, or trying to lay eggs. Regardless, she will be missed.

UPDATE: The vet has given Brutus, Mark Antony, and Nefertiti a clean bill of health. He thinks Cleopatra died from Sepsis due to an infection, exacerbated by the stress of moving. He says all things considered, the turtles are doing great and are very healthy for 6-year-olds. He said a realistic age range is more like 20-30 years, not 80 as I had suspected, but I am still reading lots of mixed reports on that. He was also able to confirm all four are male, which was not obvious before they became fully grown (Sorry Cleo and Nefer…or should I say, Clem and Nefarion?).

I am looking into securing them better lodgings, it is clear that the three of them, at nearly 8 inches long (depending on how you measure) really require about a 200 gallon enclosure, with at least 75 gallons of water, hopefully more (Turtles require water which is 2.5 to three times their length deep (3 * 8 inches) and at least 2.5 x 2.5 feet to swim around, so that is just under 100 gallons), and an equally spacious place to bask under the heat lamp. Such lodgings would keep them happy and growing for another 2 years probably. I think (hope?) they are close to their maximum size, and won’t grow more than another couple of inches.

Cleo was a kind, gentle, friendly turtle. She will be missed.

Wow, there is just SO much going on. I wonder how long it will take for the phrase “from Sunny Palo Alto” to wear out. I mean, of course it is sunny, it is always sunny. That is how California is. Where I live. California. Wow. That’s hot. Literally.

I signed a 6-month lease on an apartment, so I know where to tell the movers to take all my stuff now, so that is good. I also found a property I like, but I can’t make an offer on it until my Seattle condo sells (anyone interested in a 2 bedroom condo in Capitol Hill?), which I am betting will take less than 6 months, and hoping will happen before someone else snatches up this other condo I saw so I can snag it.

This has been a fairly productive weekend. On Sunday I will head back to Seattle for my last 4 days there, 3 of them hanging out with friends and the last day helping pack up all my stuff and watching the movers put my life into a truck. Packing is the 29th, loading the truck is the 30th, then I will probably hop in the car with my 2 cellos and my four turtles, and maybe some swords and other stuff I didn’t want them to move, and that is pretty much that.

I located an “In the Groove 2″ machine nearby – in Milpitas (MGL, or Milpitas Golf Land). I played a game or two last night and it was “just ok” – it is a converted machine, so the pads are actually DDR pads, but on the whole they played ok. I’m going to go play a few more hours and see how it goes. Maybe I will try the pump machine too. Sadly, the “infamous” ITG2 machine in SVGL (Sunnyvale Golf Land) is gone, they have only a single DDR machine, a Supernova2 machine.

Well, I have some more paperwork to do, and some DDRing to do, so I’m off.

At last, I have some awesome news! It looks like my job search is at an end. I have been given, and accepted, an offer at Palantir Technologies in Palo Alto, CA. They are an amazing company and they have made me a very attractive offer. Also, from my on-site interview, and the people I met there, I can tell it is a truly amazing place to work. The people are just great, the problems they are solving are interesting, and I know moving down there is going to change my life.

I am going to talk about the decision to move down there now, since once I decided that moving was an option, accepting any offer from Palantir was practically a given. The hard part of the decision (which I actually made 2 weeks ago) was deciding whether or not I was really willing to pick up my life and move.

I am a person who is resistant to change. I almost went to grad school at Purdue just because I didn’t really want to leave, or change. I could very easily see myself still living in student housing, playing in the orchestra, playing World of Warcraft every night, and attending classes or being a teaching assistant by day. That is where I would be if I hadn’t embraced the change Amazon offered – and thank goodness I did!

Moving to Seattle was scary – I didn’t know one single person here. No family, no friends, nothing but a job. I clung even tighter to my World of Warcraft security blanket. But as time went on, I met some of the best friends of my life. I adopted many hobbies to hang out with them (gaming, DDR, Anime), things which had already interested me, but I learned to take seriously and enjoy even more thanks to them.

Now, a few weeks ago, I was faced with another choice. As happy as I would have been to continue working for Amazon *forever*, stay in Seattle *forever*, I had to leave Amazon. That called everything into question. Just like graduation did for me at Purdue. I could take the “path of least resistance”, the “path of least change”, and try to stay in Seattle. Apply to job after job, not even caring what they do, so long as I could commute there from my current home… and that is in fact what I tried to do at first. Over time I realized, however, that I was not going to find a job I enjoyed as much as Amazon, and from the looks of things, I might not find a job at all for some time. I had to open my horizons to something more.

Still, I did not just decide to go to Seattle. What made me make the decision to go to Seattle was actually that Amazon recruited me on-camups, and made me an offer. The west coast sounded great, Seattle weather sounded right up my alley, how could I refuse? The change was too good to pass up, and finally it overcame my resistance to change.

Now a company in Palo Alto had brought me out for an on-site interview. They originally said “sure, come interview with us, maybe you can work remotely from Seattle”. That sounded pretty attractive – no big change there – so I went on the interview. In the end, they decided to make an offer only if I was willing to relocate. Once again, like Amazon’s offer, they really made me think about this big change I’d have to make. In the end, due to my reluctance to move, they decided not to make me the offer after all – even though I was still thinking it through. But what they did for me – what turned out to be invaluable – was make me seriously consider moving. After that, I started looking at other options. After talking to some friends in Palo Alto, they got me an interview with Palantir.

By the time Palantir made me an offer, I was ready to embrace this change, and so I accepted it. I am confident it is the best thing for both my happiness, and my career development (and probably my personal wealth as well). Unlike my move to Seattle, I have a couple friends in Palo Alto already, and even some family in nearby San Jose. Unlike my move from Purdue, however, I am leaving behind many dear friends as well. At Purdue, most of my other friends were also leaving to go start their lives in various places. This time, it is just me abandoning them. On the bright side, it will be easier to come back and visit. I could drive to Seattle in something like 10 hours, a short enough trip that I could drive up for a long weekend or something easily.

Another consideration is that I own my condo. I am going to have to sell it or rent it out or something. That makes things harder, but is “just one more thing to worry about” in the end.

I am very sorry I am going to be leaving so many friends behind in Seattle, but I hope we can stay in touch. I am sure I will visit. Also, I am sure they all appreciate my situation, that I am making the best decision for myself here, and it is fortunate that I am able to embrace this change. I think I have learned something from my experience accepting the Amazon offer. Change is good. It isn’t easy, but it is important. It is strange because I didn’t actually realize I had learned anything until just now, over three years later, thinking about the various similarities and differences of this situation.

I also want to thank my many friends here in Seattle for making Seattle feel like my home these three years. They rescued me from the grips of a video game that was sucking up all my time. They helped me learn and grow as an engineer, in ways I never could have without their help. They have always given me helpful advice, technical and personal. They have helped me experience music the way I did back in school, a part of my life which was missing once I moved here. They have made me feel accepted just the way I am, in ways I wasn’t sure was even possible before coming to Seattle.

I feel like a chapter of my life is winding down, and a new one is spinning up. It will be exciting times, of that I am certain. I thank all of you for your support!

…and today I have quite a decision to make. I’ve retold the story too many times already so I will put it here for my friends to read, so I don’t have to tell it again. I interviewed with a company in Palo Alto, CA yesterday. Originally, they said I would probably be able to work remotely, from Seattle, if given an offer. I was really excited about this possibility. They asked really interesting questions, and the interviews were challenging. The people were friendly, and really great all-around. Their offices were very nice, and Palo Alto looked great too. It was quite a day, I flew in, interviewed, and flew out all in a single day.

Then, today, I heard back from them. I was told that the feedback from my interviews was overwhelmingly positive, however, due to my inexperience with PHP and JavaScript, they did not feel I could work effectively from Seattle. They said if I was willing to relocate to Palo Alto, they would extend me an offer including equity and relocation (we talked a little bit about compensation and it sounded like it would be a very attractive offer).

I asked when they needed to know by, and we agreed I would contact them some time next week to let them know whether or not I was willing to relocate, so if I was, they could check my references and draw up a formal offer.

I talked to some friends in Palo Alto, and they were very excited for me. They had nothing but good things to say about Palo Alto. One exclaimed “Geez, Carl, why didn’t you tell me, I could get you an interview at my company here, we are hiring like mad!”. Since I am already pretty far along with the first company, they are getting me a rush interview so I may soon have two offers to consider in Palo Alto. Getting to work with an old buddy from college could be pretty cool too.

Both companies do very interesting things, but very different things also. The former company has more of a “start up” feeling, probably more risky, but also with more potential reward (via equity), though the latter would probably make a better initial offer (I am told). Also, the work I did for the former company would be more visible, as their product is a website which can be used by anybody. The latter company, however, has two people working for them I already know, and is most assuredly a more stable choice (been around longer, more likely to succeed – though I have faith in both companies). Also, the latter company’s products are used by the government and financial institutions, not typically the general public, so my work would be less visible.

Finally, after talking to some of my friends here, one is trying to get me a rushed interview with Amazon (on a different team than where I used to work) so I would have an offer here in Seattle, and not have to leave. Frankly, even if I got that offer in time to consider it, it would have to be pretty good to bring me back to Amazon after getting burned the way I did, but I would genuinely appreciate having the option to stay in Seattle. Also, I already know everyone on this team, and know I would be a good social fit for sure (which is pretty important).

Today, right now, I have two options: Stay in Seattle, and stay unemployed, or agree to go. Tomorrow, and in the week that follows, I may have other options (like returning to Amazon), as well as choosing between the two Palo Alto companies. One thing is certain – the next month is going to be very interesting, and drastically effect the rest of my life.

One of the things I really miss about my old job is we had a default mutt configuration available for folks to use as a starting point which was really awesome. Additionally, we had a custom build of “muttng”, mutt “next generation”, a now long-dead fork of mutt which contains lots of super-hot extra features. I decided it was time to make my mutt “whole again”, so what follows are the steps for getting an awesome mutt configuration on Debian Linux.

So first off, I thought I would have to apply all these crazy patches and things, and build my own mutt package. Gladly, this is not the case. Most of the muttng patches have now been applied to the original mutt source. Also, to my joyful surprise, most (if not all) of the patches that weren’t merged in are available in Debian by installing the “mutt-patched” in addition to (or instead of) “mutt”. This includes the much-loved “sidebar patch”, among others.

After I got that figured out, I got to just muck with my .muttrc file. The docs I referenced are available here and the wiki is here. Now for your configuring pleasure, here is an “anonymized” version of my configuration, I hope it has some helpful ideas for you seasoned mutt users out there.