The weather here did make a difference in my relocation from California. I spent my childhood in the midwest, and while I don’t miss the hot sticky summers, I liked the summer rain. I missed the change in the air, the thunder rolling across the fields, and the way everything smelled after it was over.[1]

My first Fan Week was in 2006. It was taking a long time to unpack my things, so I had the fan but not the cover. The first time I ran it, the cord from the venetian blinds got caught in the blades. Etc.

Anyway, Amazon.com treats their employees pretty well. New hires are stored in facilities like the Shelby, which is a pretty decent apartment building. I think I like living in the city. The biggest problem is the rental prices. Belltown is a historic party zone just minutes from downtown Seattle, the Space Needle, a dozen Starbucks, and an extremely cramped RiteAid pharmacy. I looked at renting a studio in the Shelby and they wanted $945 for 430 square feet. That’s less than the surface area of an ironed-out Sharpei.

We’re still trying to figure out what my day-to-day role is — most teams in my organization don’t have a specialized HTML/CSS person, so I’m going to cross-train with the software engineers on our projects. A major tool for this will be code reviews … hopefully I can share some knowledge without turning into the Markup Nazi. (“No more TABLEs for you — 1 year!”)

Will write more later … this weblog will be the main way of staying in touch with everybody.