Life is awesome, busy with work and my lovely family. And I like to be busy.

Yay, I've been wondering what you've been up to, donatocarrisi! o_O

I married, got two kids, got a good job only ten minutes away from my hometown, bought a nice house and am currently renovating said house.

I worked as a software developer for 8 years, now I'm doing my PhD while working as a university lecturer Got a really nice flat with my girlfriend.

That's all normal.

Including the BMW. But, Jesus Christ, man, why would you do that to yourself?

I still think that the wrench puzzle in the original version of TODOA was pretty damn clever, even though everyone hated it. Even you, Grismath!

I'm a systems analyst + tech lead in the Bay Area. Nothing my company does has anything to do with advertising. I have a wife and son. I am one of 5 people on the peninsula who hasn't bought a BMW. That's all of the important stuff.

I don't do much after work. Between working, an open concept office, and taking Caltrain, I'm too burnt out on people to handle the crowds at the surprisingly few things that are worth doing here. Plus, with the awful traffic and worse civil engineering, a baby's gonna be fed up by the time you get there (let alone enjoy it and get home). So, well, whatever.

Can you not telecommute Jon? Everything about SF sounds like a nightmare.

I'm really hoping I find somewhere to go in ~4 years that's not SF or its neighbors. On the plus side, most work in my field is still at universities or a few big tech companies, so it'll be "easy" to find somewhere to postdoc that's not in SF or Boston. On the down side, if I want to enter industry in my field, I'm afraid it's going to have to be something in SF, unless I can swing a position at MS in Washington, which I would love to return to (Washington, never been at MS before).

Don't get me wrong, I actually LIKE the Bay Area. I have a blast whenever I get a weekday off. After rush hours it's easy to get around, even on public transit, and the sites and restaurants are tenably busy.

The Bay Area isn't really the problem - the problem is a lack of balance, and it's entirely the fault of businesses. It isn't isolated to Silicon Valley, it's everywhere. There's a lot I could complain about in this area, but the biggest thing is that employers and investors ghettoize. I don't know why, but they do. Every company sets up in the same place as the rest of their industry, where they all keep the same core business hours, and all compete for the same pool of workers. The result is predictably stupid. It is simply impossible to have enough of any private service or public good to satisfy the massive daily and weekly demand spikes you get in cities that are majority white collar dual income households.

Believe it or not, the problem's not even as bad as the last city I lived. At least here there aren't restaurants shutting down because they can't physically seat enough weekend customers to make up for the rest of the week.

I work for a startup multimedia company. Since I'm the only official employee I do most everything there from editing, creating motion graphics, and running a camera. I'm married, still in school, and try to draw and paint on my free time. Life is good, and going back here every once in a while is an interesting glimpse at a place that offered me a broader world-view than I grew up with. It also sucks reading my earliest posts and seeing how esoteric and weird I was trying to be all the time. Sorry about that.

You and me both, brother.

Holy ****, THREE kids?

I'm never gonna see that junk now.

Life is fine. I don't think we ever met, but my posts were usually awful. But hello!

never give up hope... keep the dreams alive

I have a 25-45 minute commute and there's no convenient bus line because Seattle (perhaps until recently) hates public transit.
I wanted a car that would be comfortable, that had all the parking features, and would allow me to cut in front of passive/distracted WA drivers and zip away.
I gave in, and I'm sure a minivan is next.

I didn't realize you lived in the Bay Area. Your post in another thread about "if you had a dime for..." various situations makes a lot more sense. The struggle is real.

Zloc: I don't know what your field is, but there are plenty of tech jobs for people with advanced degrees in Seattle outside Microsoft. e.g. Amazon
What is your field of study?

Recently promoted to "principal software engineer" at an ad tech company. I actually used to work at a security company that was acquired by this ad tech company; never wanted to work in anything to do with advertising (I use ad blockers and never see ads outside of work). I'm basically in charge of this fairly large-scale system that screens all
the ads that flow through our exchange for malware or other undesirable behavior (popups, forced full-page redirects, scams, auto-play audio/video, etc.).

I live across the Puget Sound from Seattle and commuted for years (2h each way on a ferry, 1h of which was on a ferry). A couple of years ago they started letting me work from home 4 days per week (or more) so it's been fantastic since then. They pay well and have a very generous vacation/time-off policy. Since I recently passed 5 years at the company they actually gave me a month off this summer!

I spend my free time mountain biking, wakeboarding, wakesurfing, and hiking.

Everyone probably already knows since it happened 10 years ago but I'm married, have 2 step-kids (one graduated college and the other recently joined the air force) and one 10 year old son of my own.

I'd say overall I'm happy but always trying to figure out a way to work less and play more. No BMWs for us, though, we have a subaru and a toyota.

Congratulations on the promotion!

Sounds like things are going well. We also have the Northwest de rigeur Subaru Outback. Ours is plastered with bumper stickers and bird poop and is due to be one of those stalled cars on the side of the road any day now.

I do work in quantum information. Most of the groups I've seen have been at national labs, Google and MS research (edit- also IBM), or startups trying to cash in on "quantum" "machine learning" buzzwords.

Finding a job outside the typical tech cities is possible, it just probably means exiting my field of research if I go to industry. Might not be the worst thing depending on how I feel at the end of my program, but it's still too early to know for certain how things will go

There's always D-Wave.

Edit: Vancouver isn't a real tech city, they just call themselves one.

^^lol (I assume this was a joke?)

it says quantum so it must factor numbers instantly and rob ur bank account! HOW CAN I GET IT!?!?!

It solves one problem! Maybe faster than a normal computer, who knows?

Brian, since our boys are the same age, has yours discovered Pokeman Go yet? I seem to be dodging that bullet for now but I'm sure he'll find out soon enough.

Pokemon Go is kickass, it's getting me in better shape too.

That's really sad.

I see that Pokemon Go **** all over NYC. Kids, teenagers, adults (sometimes buzzed) playing that while wandering into busy streets and going into random stores/bars looking like entry level-Ghostbusters with PKE meters

i'm waiting for businesses to start posting "no pokemon go" signs

That and "I've been saying Nintendo should have abandoned the hardware market for the healthier app gaming space (my proof: Angry Birds and Candy Crush) and I was right!!!" posted everywhere

I've had a large number of guys my age coming into my store for the sole purpose of finding Pokemon. It's really annoying. They need to make a way for businesses to establish a No Pokemon zone.

There already is a way to do that. It's called a Faraday cage.

YOU SHOULD TOTALLY HIT ON THEM, VINNY

I suggest Big. Chainsaw. Hands. BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ