Citizens on patrol

Summer is an exciting time for Seattleites. It’s the one time of the year when it’s not cloudy all the time. (And with the clouds usually comes rain, for which Seattle is infamous, although I feel obligated to mention that the rain here is almost always imperceptibly light, like mist, and that Seattle gets less precipitation annually than most cities on the East Coast.)

Ahem. Anyway, the summer event that every Seattleite looks forward to is Seafair. Seafair is actually a series of events, including a parade and some boat races and stuff. There may be more, but that’s all I’ve heard about.

Well, I didn’t just hear about the parade… I was there to see it. It went down my street on July 30. Yes, that makes two parades down my street in little more than a month. This parade was different from the Pride Parade in that it was in the evening and seemed to be a bigger production (although it was shorter). Also, Drew Carey was the Grand Marshal for some reason. (I actually met him in 2005. If you remember that, you’ve been reading this blog since at least 2005!)

The following weekend was the boat thing, and everyone was super pumped about the Blue Angels doing a show as part of that. (It was actually pretty funny to see how excited everyone was.) They had been practicing near my work for a few days, and then I snagged a couple of pictures of them flying past my apartment after putting on their show. I didn’t see any of the day’s festivities in person, but I watched them on TV.

That’s not all I’ve been up to; I’ve been doing more to get involved in my neighborhood, Belltown. I can’t remember where I first heard about Belltown Citizens on Patrol, but I’ve been following them on Facebook, and yesterday they posted an announcement saying that they’d be going out for a walk that evening. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I figured it would be a good way to become more familiar with the neighborhood and help make it a little nicer.

It turned out that it was mostly people my parents’ age and older who were taking part; there were about 15 of us in all. We put on bright yellow vests and walked around the neighborhood, looking for signs of crime and vandalism. Nobody saw anything, though, so it was more of a goodwill thing. You’re supposed to greet everyone you see, and plenty of people wanted to talk to us. We also had a videographer and someone from the Seattle P-I in tow.

Also, some superheroes accompanied us. They were led by a masked man who goes by the name of Phoenix Jones. (Here’s a recent article about him and his fellow superheroes.) They also patrol the streets for crime, so they figured they could come and help. After our walk, which only lasted an hour, Phoenix recorded a video for his fans with all of us standing in the background. (Evidently, he disguises his identity online by typing in all caps.)

The Citizens on Patrol have their walks every week, so it might become a routine for me. If only I could get people my own age to come along…

For the nerds: Cool but obscure Unix tools. (Via waxy.org)

The lost year

People have long known me as a guy who plays the guitar and is into music and things like that. For a long time, it’s been a part of who I am.

I’m also a freak when it comes to remembering dates. I got my first guitar ten years ago today, on August 13, 2001. It was a Hohner acoustic that my parents bought for me, almost on a whim, when we were visiting my aunt in Gainesville, Florida. It was a beginner’s guitar—the case cost more than it—but, having started a band with my friends, I practiced a lot and would get three more guitars within the next two years.

I wrote songs, but we never performed them as a group. (I can’t remember exactly why, but I think the others just weren’t interested in playing them. We couldn’t agree on anything. It’s a red flag when five people can’t agree on one of several hundred names.) We broke up, but I kept writing songs.

One year, I backed up my friend in our school’s talent show, and the following year, I wanted to perform one of my own songs with one of my other friends. During our audition, the teacher who was organizing the show interrupted us mid-song. She asked me, the singer, whether I had written it. I said yes. She said I should try singing it in a lower key. Instead, I didn’t come back.

As I entered college, my songwriting output slowed down. No longer was I free to crank up my amps as loud as I pleased. (Mom and Dad, thanks so much.) I was living in dorm rooms with strangers and, later, in an apartment with strangers (for the record, a terrible way to save money). By my junior year, I was playing the guitar maybe once every few weeks, and finally, about a year ago, I stopped. I just had other things to do in the way of schoolwork, and with graduation looming, I knew that I was never going to be a rock star.

Every day for years and years, whenever I’ve heard a good song, I’ve thought about being on stage again and performing it. What if I had played my own song in the talent show? I had dreams of recording an album with my band. What if we had shaped up and actually done that? I’ve asked myself those questions, and I’ve also doubted myself. I do try to sing higher than I’m actually capable of, and my voice is whiny. I’ve never been a virtuoso at the guitar, either. You’d see me play some chords, rarely deviating from a particular rhythm, or maybe a simple solo. I’ve always had some ambition, but never enough to put any of those roadblocks out of the way.

But now that I’m an adult and I have no roommates to annoy (only neighbors), I thought I’d get back into it today, ten years on. To my relief, it was like riding a bicycle. I was just as mediocre as I had ever been.

It’s still my hope someday to record an album. I don’t think I could handle all the starving-artist stuff that goes with really being in a band, but I’d just like to get my best songs out there with the treatment they deserve. I don’t care if I have to eat the costs of producing the album, either. I just want to meet some people who are easy to work with and fun to play with so we can make some great music together. And they’d better not tell me I’m singing too high.

The transition

Whenever I spend time with Kate, I spend five or ten posts writing all about what we did. Not this last time. As you may recall, I only devoted two posts to her visit. In particular, I barely mentioned our last few days together at all, so I’d like to fix that now.

Monday, May 30, was Memorial Day. It was my last day before I was due to start my new job, and Kate and I were still in Olympia. We were due to meet up with the guy who had given us a ride there a few days earlier, so we met him in the Subway parking lot where he had dropped us off. Kate wanted to sit next to me, so I asked the guy if I could sit in the back with her. The thought clearly made him uneasy. He started to explain that he used to be a taxi driver. I understood and took the passenger’s seat so I could chat with him. Whenever I’m traveling with Kate, I make enough small talk for both of us. She doesn’t mind because it’s not really her thing.

He gave us a ride back to my temporary apartment in Seattle, where we hung out for the rest of the day. We decided to order delivery from an Italian restaurant called Primo. It was only down the street, but I was feeling supremely lazy, so delivery it was. The food was really good, so it was worth it. I had pesto gnocchi, and Kate got a pesto chicken sandwich. That’s good stuff.

Tuesday, May 31, was my first day at work. I’ve mentioned how that day was, so I don’t have much to add about it. I met Kate downtown after I got out, and we looked for a place to have dinner. After a fairly exhaustive search, we ended up eating at an excellent place called Petra Mediterranean Bistro. It was a little pricey, it was worth it. The place was quiet and intimate, and the food and the service were great. (The portions were good too; I took Kate’s leftovers with me to work the next day as my lunch.)

Afterwards, we went across the street so Kate could have some coffee. Then we took a walk by the waterfront, and by then, it was getting late. We made it to the Space Needle not long before it closed because our City Pass tickets were about to expire. Unfortunately, this was the only time Kate and I went to the Space Needle, but I’m glad we went at least once. The view at night is beautiful.

After work on Wednesday, June 1, I again met Kate downtown, this time at the Levi’s Store on 6th Avenue. She was going to buy jeans for herself and her friends (they’re much cheaper here than they are in Russia), and the store was having a sale, so it turned out that it would only cost about $5 to get another pair. So, Kate bought a pair for me. We spent a good deal of time making sure that I got the exact style I wanted in the size I needed. I’m loath to try on clothes in a store, but it’s important for something that you’re going to wear a lot. I realized how loose all of my old jeans are. The ones Kate got me are tighter than I’m used to, but it seems like they’re the proper size.

After that, we went back to the apartment, and Kate made a Russian dish called French meat. It’s basically meat, cheese, tomatoes, and pasta. (I’m not sure if that’s the official way to make French meat, as I’d never heard of it before, but that’s how she served it, anyway.) Kate is a talented cook, so it was very nice. She also made banana nut muffins.

Thursday, June 2, was the last day of Kate’s visit. I met her at a restaurant during my lunch break. She had all her bags (it must have taken her forever to walk around with everything), and she was going right to the airport after that. I had decided on an apartment, so while we were waiting for our food, I darted across the street to the apartment complex to start the paperwork, which had to be done that day. I came back in time to get my food, and then it was time to say goodbye to Kate.

I haven’t thought about these days for a while—I guess I thought they weren’t as interesting as the rest of her visit—but I realize now that they were some of my favorites. Of course, any day with Kate is one of my favorite days, and I’m really missing her now as I think back on them. I’m happier than I used to be before I met her, and she genuinely cares about me and makes me a better person. I hope we’ll be able to see each other again soon.

My friend Reid Ewing, whom you may know from TV’s Modern Family, is starring in a new YouTube series called Reid-ing. Check out Episode 1, “It’s Free,” and Episode 2, “Free Fish.” (Watch his South Florida roots show through as he mentions manatees getting hit by boats and calls the aquarium a “seaquarium“).

On the media

In real apartments—outside of college towns—many utilities are not automatically provided, so you have to have them set up (and pay for them) yourself if you want them. Of course, the first thing I thought of when moving in to my own place was Internet access.

I don’t know if I’m just missing something obvious, but there seems to be no easy way to find out which ISPs serve your area. (The National Broadband Map website was inaccessible while I was doing my research.) Based on the information I was able to cobble together, Comcast and Qwest (which I guess is becoming CenturyLink) were the two main choices.

Comcast was the ISP at my temporary apartment, and their service wasn’t terrible, but one time I was having a hard time sending about 4 GiB of my photos and videos to Kate by BitTorrent. Turns out Comcast prevents seeding of torrents whether the content is authorized by the copyright holder or not. That, along with the many, many bad things I’ve heard about them over the years (maybe they were blocking the National Broadband Map too…), drove me into the arms of Qwest.

Well, I won’t say I’m in love with Qwest, but their service has been consistently good. My download speed is nominally 12 Mbps but actually around 10.2 Mbps (exactly as expected—the fine print says that their service may be up to 15% slower than advertised). The upload speed is 768 Kbps, which I guess is relatively slow, but it’s been fine so far.

I’m not known for watching a lot of TV. If I had gone with Comcast, I might have gotten basic cable. But Qwest’s TV offerings consist of reselling DirecTV packages, and I opine that satellite TV blows, so I decided to get an antenna. At first I thought I was being cool and/or subversive by going the old-fashioned route, but I guess it’s more common than I thought. I still think it’s kind of cool, though.

I have this old TV that used to belong to my roommate, so I needed a digital-to-analog converter box. My dad happened to have one unopened in the original box, so he sent it to me. It’s made by Coby, which totally isn’t a rip-off of Sony. The thing works great, though. As for the antenna, I had to do a fair amount of research. Based on my situation—I’m in a high-rise in the middle of a city, with broadcast towers nearby but in different directions—I chose an omnidirectional, unamplified, indoor antenna.

Although it took a bit of searching, they do exist. It turns out that none other than RCA has a whole line of omnidirectional indoor antennas, so it was just a matter of picking out the best unamplified one. That turned out to be the ANT1600, which I ordered from Amazon (full disclosure: I work for Amazon [although the opinions expressed here are mine alone {and I kind of just wanted to brag about it (sorry)}]). Scroll down a bit on the Amazon page, and you’ll see a matrix of features for the whole product line.

Turns out I get a total of 26 channels over the air. Well, actually, 26 subchannels from 10 distinct stations. I’ll just call them channels because they’re all pretty distinct from one another. For example, the local ABC station broadcasts its regular ABC stuff on channel 4.1 and another whole channel called This TV on 4.2. I’m counting them as two here.

Minus the foreign-language, religious, infomercial-only, and duplicate channels (all of which I’ve set my converter box to exclude), I get 14 channels. They include affiliates of ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, the CW, and Fox, as well as those stations’ secondary feeds (such as This TV) that play old movies, classic TV shows, weather forecasts, and obscure sports. Not bad, considering I only paid $34 one time for the antenna.

The antenna has a discreet, flat design that makes it easy to reorient. Despite the manufacturer’s claims, I do have to move it to get reception of some channels that are farther away or blocked by buildings, but not by too much. I have a direct line of sight to seven of the channels, and I believe I’ve found the sweet spot for getting six others. (Thirteen out of fourteen ain’t bad, especially when the fourteenth is the CW.) All of the broadcast towers are 1-2 miles away from me, except for that of KCPQ (Fox), which is 22 miles away.

So, what’s the effect of all this? I watch a lot more TV than I used to, which is to say, I watch some TV. I guess I want to get my money’s worth from my antenna. And besides, I don’t watch totally vapid stuff. I like Jeopardy!, some of the old movies, and PBS’s history and travel shows. I also watch the local news quite a bit. I’ve found it’s a good way to get acquainted with the area and to find out how to pronounce some of these crazy place names. (Snohomish? Issaquah? Puyallup?)

Speaking of which, today’s link: “If you watch Jeopardy backwards, it’s a show about three people paying alot [sic] of money to get bad answers on [sic] their stupid questions.”

DMV

The very letters strike fear and/or loathing into the hearts of millions: DMV.

Here in Washington, it’s not actually called the Department of Motor Vehicles, but rather the Department of Licensing. The idea is the same, though: wait forever in a long line to be treated rudely by people who don’t care about you and give you a hard time. That’s what people seem to think of, anyway.

There are actually a couple of DOL offices in Seattle, each having its own working hours and offering a different set of services. I wanted to get a plain old ID card, not a driver’s license, and I wanted to do it on the weekend, so I was left having to go to a branch waaaay out at the edge of the city limits. I trekked out there the Saturday before last.

I had never been to that part of the city, and I was surprised by how suburban it was. I was also surprised by how many people were at the DOL, although I shouldn’t have been. The place was pretty large, but it was mostly filled with chairs arranged in rows like the most boring movie theater in the world. I was worried that they wouldn’t call me before they closed. I was there a total of three hours just to get an ID card.

An explanation for those who are looking at me funny: Before I graduated, my friend Andrea was willing to teach me to drive, but I stubbornly refused to take her up on that offer. Now I realize that it was a mistake, or maybe not. I don’t know. I probably should have done it, I guess, although it wouldn’t have made me want to get a car now. I guess I could have taken an exam to get a permit, but I just don’t care.

Anyway, I filled out a couple of forms, answered a few questions (I confirmed that I was a twin [are they worried that identical twins will trade licenses?] and consented to having “Organ Donor” on my ID card [the first time I've had a chance to do so since volunteering with an organ donation awareness group in college]), and then they took my picture and printed a temporary ID card on paper. I thought it was weird because when I got my last ID in Florida, they made the actual card right there and gave it to me. But oh well.

I was sitting down for a late lunch at a restaurant across the street when I realized that my last name had been misspelled. I went back to the DOL just before they were due to close for the day and pointed out my situation. I had to go through the process all over again, but it didn’t take that long since there was hardly anyone left by that point. And fortunately, the picture was better the second time. Also, I returned to the restaurant.

On my way back home from that ordeal, I stopped at the Seattle Central Library to pick up a library card. I had already filled out an application for it online, so that was a quick process. I hadn’t been in the library before, so I hung around for a while to check it out. It looks like a cool place to spend a few hours, but I guess it reflects poorly on me that I was most interested in the DVDs. It didn’t look like they had a lot of them, but maybe I’ll go back and look again.

A few days later, I got my actual state ID card in the mail. It’ll take some getting used to. Every state’s IDs look fake except for your state’s, just like every country’s money looks fake besides yours. (Cue barrage of incredulous comments to the contrary complaining how I’m supposedly xenophobic and unenlightened. Jeez, people.)

And now, a history/geography lesson: The Difference Between the United Kingdom, Great Britain, and England Explained.

Everyday people

Since I’ve been living in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood, I’ve been reading community blogs like BelltownPeople (a.k.a. Belltown People, belltownpeople) to find out what’s going on around here. Last Wednesday, Jesse and Trina, the people behind the blog, held a meeting for readers, neighborhood residents, and pretty much everybody who wanted to come.

The meeting was held in a basement of a hostel that wasn’t far from my apartment. Nothing could be too far away since this isn’t a huge neighborhood, but it was particularly close. There was free pizza and beer, and I was one of the first people to show. There were plenty of subjects for pre-meeting chatter, such as hobbies (I guess blogging is my main hobby these days since that’s what I talked about).

Eventually, about six or eight people had come, and something like an official meeting began. Jesse wanted to know how BelltownPeople could be improved. If I hadn’t gone to the meeting, I wouldn’t have known that everyone is free to sign up and write posts for the blog, so I volunteered that that aspect should be more prominent on the site. I didn’t even know that the blog had multiple authors, so I suggested that each article have a photo of the author near the byline. Yes, I’m quite often a blog skimmer, and as a joke I was going to insert a nonsense phrase into this sentence to see if anyone would catch it, but I think everyone would and I would never live it down. I am not clever enough to make that work. I mean, you are all too smart.

Anyway, there was also some discussion about the neighborhood, like restaurants closing, sidewalks not getting fixed, and those sorts of things. Jesse also asked each of us to share a Belltown moment we had had. Several people explained why they believe it’s a good place to raise children, pointing out that great places for a day out with kids are in walking distance whereas they would be too far away if you lived in the suburbs. Others compared urban Belltown favorably to the clean, “censored” suburban neighborhoods.

I hadn’t been in the neighborhood long enough to really get a feel for it, so I just explained why I chose to live there. I had been researching neighborhoods near Amazon’s headquarters, and the Walk Score website, first featured in the World of Stuff post of January 23, 2008, indicated that Belltown was the most walkable. From there, I did more research and liked what I saw. (My current address has a Walk Score of 97/100, which is typical for Belltown. My last place had a Walk Score of 5, and the new formula revises it downward to 1.)

Jesse said that as a newcomer, I could provide a unique perspective for BelltownPeople, so he invited me to share my thoughts. I suppose I will once I have enough to write about.

It was good to go out and meet people in the neighborhood. I’m looking forward to the next meeting, not to mention any other opportunities to go out and socialize in a setting that’s not awkward for me. I walk to work; I walk to the grocery store; I hardly have any social outings to walk to. Yet.

Time to answer an Ask Jordon question.

Kate: Do you think it’s worth celebrating Valentine’s Day if you’re in a relationship? Are there people who feel unhappy this day? What about you?

I don’t know whether it’s worth it to celebrate Valentine’s Day; I don’t have enough experience. But in my experience, plenty of people are unhappy are about it. It seems that it’s often because they wish they had a girlfriend or boyfriend and are jealous of people who do. Maybe they’re even the majority, but it’s possible that they’re just the loudest people. I used to be like that, but I haven’t been for the past couple of years.

The BBC reports on a French house that’s recently been opened to the public after just sittin’ around for a hundred years.

Birthday post

Here it is, the requisite birthday blog post.

Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t a bummer to go to work on my birthday. Everybody has to do it at some point. And besides, I got a lot of work done, and nobody bothered me. That’s because I hardly told anyone it was my birthday. That helps.

I’m past the age where I want a lot of things for my birthday, but I have gotten some good gifts this year. My favorite was a carton of strawberries that Kate ordered for me from an online grocery delivery service. It was a delicious surprise, and I’m sure it will continue to be because I haven’t eaten them all yet.

What I’ve done for most of the last few birthdays is go out to dinner with my friends. So I figured I’d go out to dinner with the people I invited to my housewarming/Fourth of July party last week, but I didn’t know where we should go. A couple of them suggested this Japanese place called Wann, where they could get a Microsoft employee discount for a party of up to six.

As it turned out, there were fewer than six of us; four, to be exact. But I had a good time, and I think everyone else did too. We ended up splitting everything we ordered, so it was fun to try different things.

Well, that does it for now. Have to get ready for work tomorrow.

Declaration of independence

I always knew that when I had my own place, I’d like to have company often. And when I was first moving in to my new apartment, I was told that I’d be able to see the city’s Fourth of July fireworks show. So, I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone by having a housewarming party on the Fourth of July. Not only would it allow me some social interaction, but it would also give me something to look forward to as I got settled in. And I guess it would be my first social event as a real adult—a declaration of independence, if you will. Will you? No? Okay.

I spent much of that weekend getting my place in order. I invited everyone I knew in Seattle, mostly Microsofties and Amazonians I had gone to school with. Yes, I’m not totally alone here in my new city; I actually know more people here than I thought. Some of them are only here as interns during the summer, but maybe they’ll come back after they graduate.

I have low expectations when it comes to RSVPs. My birthday is in the summer (tomorrow, actually), and when I was a teenager, the turnout for my birthday parties was usually dismal. So you can imagine how pleased I was that most of the people I invited were able to make it. A few friends of friends also came over, so I got to meet new people. Perhaps of interest to World of Stuff readers is that I invited Daniel, a longtime reader who’s currently an intern at Microsoft. It was good to finally meet him!

So, what was it like? Well, there was plenty of food; I had bought some chips and soda, but I asked people to bring some more snacks also. I’m still eating (and drinking) the leftovers. For soda, I chose Coke because everybody likes Coke, and I also got Mountain Dew because it’s a stereotypical favorite of nerds, presumably for the caffeine content. One of my guests had the same reasoning and brought the same drinks. Great minds.

I wanted to make it clear to everyone that this wasn’t going to be a party in the college (or, presumably, high school, although I wouldn’t know) sense of the word. No loud music, excess drinking, vomiting, or anything like that. I was not disappointed. Everyone behaved responsibly, even though there was beer. Hooray for being adults.

We mostly just chatted in a big group, at first on my balcony, and then in my living room, and then back to the balcony to watch the fireworks. We had a good view of the show, and we were so close that I could start to smell the fireworks by the end of it. After the fireworks, we went back to my living room to continue the conversation until people started leaving one by one. Daniel crashed here because his transportation options at night were fairly limited.

So, will we do it again? A couple of people told me they hoped so, and I invited everyone to dinner tomorrow night for my birthday.

Plus, we’ll have an even better view of the fireworks on New Year’s Eve. They launch them from the Space Needle.

Here’s a high-speed video in slow motion. It looks like time is standing still. (Via The Presurfer)

Pride parade

Last weekend (not the most recent one, but the one before that… does the English language have a better way to handle this, or are we stuck?) was my first weekend in my new apartment, and that Sunday was a gorgeous day. Best of all, the Space Needle, which I could see quite clearly from my oversized windows, was flying the rainbow flag. Indeed, it was the day of the Seattle Pride Parade, which would be going down my street.

There had been this whole big thing about the owners of the Space Needle wanting $50,000 in exchange for flying the pride flag, and I think some money was collected, but anyway, something happened and they decided to hoist it up. So that was a great thing to see in the morning. I was pondering whether I should watch the parade from my window or from the street when I got a text from my friend Mark. He said he was at my apartment building visiting other people and invited me to join them.

There was a whole get-together going on, and Mark was one of many guests. They had this fancy brunch buffet and everything, complete with mimosas or whatever alcoholic beverages people drink before noon. When it came time for the parade to start, some of us went down to the street to watch. There were a lot of people already there, so one of the other guests had gone ahead and saved us a spot.

I had only been to a few parades before, and none on this scale. There were LGBT groups, corporate groups, church groups, musical groups… you name it. Amazon had a group marching in the parade, and so did Microsoft. Members of Seattle Atheists were dressed as pirates and had a giant Flying Spaghetti Monster, and Mark ran into the street to be touched by its noodly appendage.

Speaking of noodly appendages, I guess it was bad of me to assume that there would be a lot of overt sexuality in the parade. There wasn’t, really, except for the naked bicyclists. I wonder how they were allowed to be naked outside. Some of them didn’t even have body paint… I think. I was looking at their faces.

Throughout the parade, there was a lot of noise—cheering, applauding, and so on—but not a word needed to be spoken. That really made an emotional impact on me, the fact that a large group of people could celebrate without words. Everybody seemed to have the same idea in mind.

I have a retort for anyone who might wonder why many LGBT people express their pride so publicly: “I believe they’ll keep on doing it as long as you keep trying to make them feel ashamed.” Fortunately, I haven’t had to use it yet, and I hope I never will, but there’s still a long way to go. And the fact that the parade was on a Sunday morning: irony at its deliciousest. (Well, it’s not really irony, I guess.)

Here are some photos of the parade from someone who must have been standing right next to me.

This link is a little late for the Fourth of July, but watch an British teenager show off his knowledge of American history.

Amazin’

I work at Amazon.com (but I don’t represent the company here, and the opinions expressed are not necessarily theirs… just in case you weren’t sure about that). I’ve been there for almost a month now, and I know you guys are probably pretty curious to know what it’s like. Even if you’re not, I’ll tell you.

First, a little background: Amazon is headquartered here in Seattle, but it’s grown so fast in its short life that it has office space in buildings around the city. A few years ago, Amazon decided to build its own campus in South Lake Union, a formerly industrial neighborhood close to downtown that’s on its way back to being cool for the first time in, like, forever. Those plans have finally come to fruition, and most people are working in the new campus now. (It’s an urban campus, so it’s really just a set of buildings among some other unrelated buildings and they call it a campus. It’s not like the sprawling suburban campuses like Microsoft and Google have.)

Anyway, my first date was May 31, and I was due to attend New Hire Orientation in the morning. A whole bunch of us new people had an ice breaker about Amazon trivia and got information about health benefits and pretty standard stuff like that. One of the guys in my session had also come from the University of Florida, but with a master’s degree. He said he recognized me, but I didn’t recognize him. I hate when that happens. Each of us also got an ORCA card paid for by Amazon, so we can use most of the region’s public transportation on their dime.

When New Hire Orientation was over, I met my supervisor. It was lunchtime. Since more and more people are working in South Lake Union these days, especially with Amazon moving in, a number of restaurants have sprung up to cater to the weekday lunch crowd. Near the building where I work, an enterprising local restaurateur has set up three new restaurants, so we went to one of them for a quick bite. My supervisor told me about the kind of stuff I’d be working on and asked me about myself. I was pretty nervous, it being my first day and all, but I didn’t collapse into a heap or anything.

I had chosen to work in Retail Systems, so within that area I was assigned to a team that’s working on software to manage inventory orders. My supervisor leads the team but isn’t detached from it; he’s a member of the team like everyone else. At first it was kind of intimidating being around so many adults all the time, but everyone’s cool. I’m not the only young and new person on the team, either. An intern started at the same time as I did, and another one joined us last week. If I had to guess without counting, I’d say there are about ten of us at this point. We probably won’t get too many more people because Amazon likes to have what it calls “two-pizza teams.” It seems like a good rule of thumb.

So, what’s a typical day like for me? I can get in whenever I want; I don’t even have to clock in or clock out. (As long as you’re doing your work, they don’t mind.) Actually, I like to leave my apartment between 7:40 and 7:45 so I can make it to my desk at 8:00 AM. And then I work on software, mostly fixing bugs or adding features I’ve been asked to add. I like to take an hour for lunch, and I usually eat at one of the restaurants within a few blocks of my building. Then, if I have time left over and the weather is nice, I go to Lake Union Park and just sit and watch the seaplanes, sailboats, geese, or whatever else happens to be hanging around. I can’t believe the park is less than a year old; it’s a real treasure.

In the afternoon, it’s back to coding. Some afternoons, I guess about every week or two, a band or author will come to Amazon to plug their latest album or book, respectively, so I figure that’s a fun thing to look forward to. (I’ve been to one so far: The Airborne Toxic Event gave an intimate performance and even had an opening act.) But invariably, at 4:30, my team has its daily stand-up, where everyone fills everyone else in on what they’ve done during the day and what they plan on doing next. I think other teams do this in the morning, but we do it in the afternoon so we can teleconference with one of our teammates who works in Amazon’s Beijing office. And with that, my day at work is over, so I walk back to my apartment, where I arrive 15 to 20 minutes later.

I’m loving it so far, especially because I got my first paycheck today. Yes, I get paid monthly. The check (well, direct deposit) includes half of my signing bonus (the other half comes in a year). It’s been kind of a tough month for me since moving-related expenses were draining me dry. But I don’t have to worry about that anymore.

If you have any other questions about what it’s like to work at Amazon, fire away!

And on an unrelated note, the answer to a question you’ve been wondering about: When did prisoners start dressing in orange?