Saskatchewan Plates

Ghosts n Stuff by Deadmau5

Well it’s probably fair to say that 2010 will not win the award for most prolifically blogged year of my life, though maybe I can pick up the slack in the second half of the year (it’s unacceptable that we’re almost at the midpoint of 2010 already by the way).

Lots of things are now on the record books: A trip to Toronto involved a much needed reunion with Gee, Trish, and some other Waterloo faces, a launch of the product that I’ve been working on for the last six months and some very crazy days at the conference we launched at, and a trip to Vegas with Terri for Ringo’s bachelor party. Mix in a handful of concerts, hikes, bar nights, and hockey games and you have a pretty high level recap of the last few months.

What else can I update you about? I’ve finally re-tuned the banjo, but it’ll need a couple more weeks of love before I find myself jamming. I’ve got a growing queue of embarrassingly nerdy books that need reading so I can clear them off my night stand. I’ve been failing at cooking for myself often enough, but I’ve been succeeding at taking a liking to wine, thanks in part to Cloe and Jenna’s various wine recommendations.

As far as travels go, I’m just in the process of booking summer and fall. Saskatoon trip is rapidly approaching of course, though I hope to precede it with a camping trip to Yosemite. I’ve got a trip to Portland in July, a possible Vancouver trip in August, a Vancouver Island trip in September, and hopefully a return trip to Sydney either in September or October. I’d like to mix in another trip to New York at some point this summer as well.

I’ve also ended up with too much shit. I’m considering moving to the Mission to be closer to Diana/Jake/Matt/Greg/Zach/Simon/etc, but I’m pretty sure I’ll have to downsize if I do. I think Rockband’s going to have to go. Maybe you too DJ Roomba. I think the N64 is safe… for now.

But the weather in SF has been great, for reference, see the pictures of our epic frisbee game at Ft. Mason this weekend. I’m looking forward to a lot more of that now that work has slowed down and summer has picked up.

I’m somewhere over the Pacific between Sydney and Vancouver. It’s almost 4am PST now. I’ve tried to sleep, but lack of medication has made it ineffective. I also realize my sleep techniques are incredibly juvenile. Definitely not impressing any ladies.

To pass some of the time, I’ve watched every good movie on top, three of which included George Clooney. Pro tip: never watch George Clooney movies back to back or else you won’t be able to separate the plots in your mind. It’s weird not be able to draw the line between Up In The Air and Men Who Stare at Goats (neither of which were that good). Someone recommended Up In The Air to me specifically at one point. I’m not sure why. Maybe they knew my weakness for non-happy endings or maybe they just thought I’d identify with George Clooney’s character (thanks a lot). Then I switched gears to get my romantic comedy on with Couples Retreat and The Invention of Lying, both of which were pretty mediocre despite all star casts. But not all was lost as Fantastic Mr. Fox (Clooney number three) was most excellent. Damn you Wes Anderson for continuing to make me identify with other hipsters everywhere.

I’ll also admit that I got a little misty during the opening scenes of Star Trek despite having seen it what is probably close to ten times now. I blame the second bottle of airplane red wine.

Oh yeah, context. I’m flying back from Sydney after spending a week there for work. Sydney’s an absolutely beautiful city. I’d love to spend more time there exploring. Very nice people, great weather, beautiful location. I plan to get back at some point in the not too distant future. But that’s adding to my growing list of unscheduled travel plans (Vancouver Island, BC Interior, Saskatoon, Toronto, Halifax, Seattle, Portland, Vegas, Ireland, South America, Zurich – holler if any sound enticing).

Before Sydney was a 48 hour trip to Cabo. And before that was four days in Austin. Both trips were absurd in a number of ways and both trips make me miss traveling with friends. Sydney was great, but it was more solo than I’d like. Also, needless to say, I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight.

Before the trip, there’s the last three months which has not been well documented on this blog. You didn’t miss too much though as they’ve been hectic with work. The next two are expected to be worse to the point where I’m officially grounded upon my arrival back in San Francisco later today.

Work is an interesting beast in its own right. It’s going much better than I could have imagined, even since Christmas. But as always, San Francisco could be treating me better. I briefly revisited the idea of an office switch to Tokyo or even Sydney, but I quickly realized that being separated from my primary support group by an additional six hour time difference is unworkable. I’ve actually been spending a fair amount more time chatting over IM with various folks back home(s) that have been unwittingly been keeping me sane. Hopefully when May wraps up and work calms down, I can take my social life in San Francisco a little more seriously. Or at the very least, schedule some of those flights.

Let me poke a hole in my tough, plaid-accented, male exterior for a second to lay a truth out there: I’m lonely.

I can think of all sorts of potential contributors: First time living on my own, move to the city has left me disconnected from my regular coworker social group, new role has involved a lot less travel, new role hasn’t really generated a lot of new friends, lack of any meaningful relationship with a significant other, general “winter” doldrums, the fact that 2009 was a shitty year for music, new reliance on public transit, I’m just making this up as I go along now.

The hardest part of coming out and admitting that to myself is that I really don’t have a plan for how to rectify the situation. I’ve got lots of suggestions such as classes, meetups, online dating, and so on. This all feels so incredibly foreign though. Making new friends is one thing when you’re forced into a situation where everyone else is at the same disadvantage. It’s much harder when it’s just you and that’s a wall I’m having a hard time breaking through.

Not sure what I’ll do, but I do know something will need to change. In the meantime, I’m two weeks out from a return trip home for the holidays, which I’m notably excited for. Hard to argue with an instant (if temporary) fix for all the problems listed above.

The Tragically Hip – Wheat Kings

I listened to a lot of The Tragically Hip growing up. Not because I liked them, but because my dad did. I personally wasn’t a fan of the band until I left Saskatoon. Now I argue that Up To Here is one of the greatest Canadian Rock albums of all time. It’s also completely impossible to listen to Wheat Kings without being thrust back into warm summer nights in Saskatoon. I thought I was an isolated case, but I’m happy to see Jer afflicted with the same condition.

It doesn’t stop at The Hip either. I’ve watched a couple of jPod reruns during my recover this weekend, a show that’s particularly heavy on the CanCon. I get shivers watching the end of the first episode, kids in toques overlaid wandering around a snowy Vancouver with Stars. I’m so Canadian it hurts.

On the wisdom tooth front, I’m up to white bread and pasta and I’m looking less like Lennie Small everyday. Getting one tooth out wasn’t that hard, but I think I’ll have to hold off on getting any future teeth out until I have a girlfriend around. What’s the point of being out of commission for an entire weekend when there’s no one around to take care of you?

Not much else to update on. Work’s a little ugh right now, but it’s t-minus a month til the Christmas holiday so I should be able to make it through.

I wish I was more like Ted Mosby.

I’m back in San Francisco after my third trip to Vegas this year/ever, second in a month. It’s excessive I know, but also a really unlikely pairing. I’m not much of a clubber, I don’t gamble particularly well, and I’ve never taken in a show, but I always have a damn good time – something I can directly attribute to the clutch crew of collaborators I’ve had on all of these trips.

This time was no different.

I boarded my flight back to SF this afternoon with a notably strong feeling of euphoria. It’s easy to attribute it to the tail end of a Craps adrenaline high, but I want to also call out the full weekend without any worry about work surrounded by a few amazing friends. In my mind, the euphoria was a result of the stress-happiness ratio swinging back into black with authority.

Of course like any index, it will be back into the red eventually, probably very soon as Friday is my appointment with the wisdom tooth fairy. But, to keep the financial metaphor going, I’m going to have to be more proactive about investing in this area going forward. It felt damn good to be that happy, though a little bittersweet to realize I may be feeling a little bit more blah on average than I thought.

In any case, if anyone else is making the trek to Vegas and wants to add a +1 to their Ocean’s X, you give me notice and I’ll be there. And, if you look at most of my travel: the epic BC road trip of 2005, the epic dominican trip of 2008, the epic east coast road trip of 2008, Greece, Japan/China/Taiwan, and even all the little trips to the lake – I can conclusively say that I love traveling, as long as I’m doing it with awesome people.

(Cue sappiness for Dave) And thankfully, I have no shortage of awesome people to call on.

Edit: Somewhat related and also awesome:

Today was a mixed bag of emotions.

Step one: Sell the car – I actually lucked out and found a buyer within the company so I didn’t have to go through the hassle of craigslisting. On my final drive down to the valley, the vars aligned and my ipod generated one last classic top-down playlist. It included Justice (the first CD I ever played in the car), some road-trip Karaoke favorites like Sublime, the Two Koreas, and Corb Lund, and, while Don’t Stop Believing would have been a great ending song, the ipod chose Let it Die by Feist to pull into the parking lot one last time.

And like that, it belonged to someone else, keys and all. It’s a remarkable feeling to trade a sleek, designed marvel of technology for a thin slip of paper with a series of numbers printed on it.

Step two: Have a number of efforts at work fall through simultaneously – To a certain extent, I’m still trying to find my role on my new team. And, while I’ve been trying to stretch my legs a bit lately, a number of my proposals got blasted down in the span of a few hours, which left me reevaluating what I thought my role was.

Step three: Have hard work on my previous role pay off – Nice to hear that you’ve made an impact, which is impressive at a company that moves so fast that it’s hard to keep up let alone leave a mark.

Step four: Night plans fall through – Traffic and public transit conspire to scrap plans on the town, and with no feasible plan B I stayed in to…

Step five: Re-live childhood by playing old SNES games – I dug out the classics: Mario Kart, Super Mario RPG, Earthbound, Zelda. I definitely did not play through all of them. But they all triggered flashbacks to simpler times.

Therefore, emotional rollercoaster.

I would like to say I’m going to have time to decompress, but I think I’ll be in the office Saturday and then helping out with recruiting Sunday. And next weekend is a return trip to Vegas, which should be the end of travel until the return trip to the frozen tundra to celebrate the calendricly related births of both Christ and myself.

I’m hanging around the office a little later than planned on a Friday afternoon waiting for Tina and Tal to get their butts in gear and come pick me up. A few hours from now, we’ll be sitting around a bonfire somewhere near Big Sur over what will probably end up being the only camping trip of 2009. That’s a sad fact as it was a gorgeous summer of which I am guilty of not taking advantage.

Last week, we headed up past The Sac to do a little white water rafting. I’m not sure why I haven’t done it before, it was an absolute blast (We did the tunnel chute, a class IV right into a man made tunnel – evidently it’s famous). We’ve got plans to do the north fork which is a little shorter but a lot more intense, but again, probably not until next year.

Motorcycle should open up a few roadtrip opportunities as Deryk, Alex, and Kevin have all expressed some interest on hitting the road with their bikes as well. I’ll need to make a purchase before that, and I’ll need to actually sell the S2000 before that.

Other very hot news: I have tickets to see !!! tomorrow night! I’m pumped! I didn’t even know they were touring so it was a great catch on Tina’s part. It’s been a long time since Kenshi and I were randomly driving around KW to serendipitously catch “Is this thing on?” on the community radio.

Speaking of segues, I will be in KW next weekend and the early part of the week to help up with recruiting. Thankfully, that’ll give me some extra time to hang out with the locals (which seem to be Gee and Trish), stop by Ethel’s for some tacos, drink a beer on the patio at the Huether, and take in the sweet dank smell of the MC building.

Alright, ride is still not here and I’m starting to stress. I’m going to call this anyway, gota get the hot dogs out the fridge.

Dear Dave,

As far as I can tell, you’re the only one that still reads my ramblings. That’s no reason for me to let it wither and die though. My actual excuse this time around is that I was tackling the move up to San Francisco, which, I am happy to report, is complete. I have retired the Mountain View tag.

I’m all moved in to my very own one bedroom apartment. I’ve done quite a few location changes over the last few years, but what’s notable about this one is that I am, for the very first time, living without roommates. The entire apartment is my own. Turns out living on your own is quite a bit different.

For example, my computer is now in my living room next to my couch. This marks the first time I haven’t had a computer in my room since going to university. In fact, since university – all my life really, my room has served as my storage place for all my things: computer, desk, books, CDs/DVDs, luggage, winter gear, storage boxes, on and on. My bedroom was where I would spend my time, where I’d hang out. Now my bedroom has my bed and my clothes. Only activities that involve one of those two things happen in my bedroom.

I hear your scoffs, but I argue this is an end of an era. The bedroom has gone from being the hub of my entire life, to just another room on the other side of a door. I can’t help but feel that my bedroom somehow resents me a little now; maybe it feels like I’ve sold out. Suddenly I can afford my own apartment to myself and I don’t have any time for it anymore, except when it’s convenient for me to sleep. I tried to find other things for my bedroom to do, but I could only come up with my banjo. A harsh consolation prize for giving up the relationship we once had. Now I’m partying with my living room and kitchen all day, while my bedroom just watches through the open doorway, hoping that one of us will pay attention to it, maybe invite it to join.

Other than my slightly awkward relationship with my new bedroom, the rest of my apartment is great. Lots of room, lots of light, awesome location, room for the car (though it costs a bit extra). I’ve made a few additional housing purchases to stock it up: shelves, filing cabinet, dishes, glasses, cutlery, etc. It feels like it’s really coming together. Internet comes Monday which will make a big difference as well. The task I’m still struggling with is art. I’d like to have something inspired on my walls. This means no movie posters and I should probably hold off on putting the records back up. I’ve been meaning to check out Etsy for material. Maybe I’ll commission Keeley to put something together.

With the move done, selling the car comes next. I expect travel to slow a bit as well, but short term I have a rafting trip, a camping trip, a trip to Waterloo, and two trips to Vegas booked between now and the end of November. Aiming to do Christmas back in Saskatoon, but if anyone can suggest a warmer destination, I’m all ears.

No girls yet, but I have faith!

Warning: This week was largely designed by Google to convert me from an co-opintern to a full-time employee post-grad. It is absolutely ridiculous and in no way represents the majority of my internship. Nonetheless, it is an unbelievable story worth telling, and it’s an explanation as to the last week’s radio silence.

Friday, August 10th
Andy and I rented a car and pick up Graeme from work. After a quick stop at Frys to piss away more paycheque, we headed up to the city to gather our camping gear, plus beer and hotdogs. We hit the road bound for our camp site at Lake Tahoe. The road to Tahoe from San Francisco goes right through Sacramento and that was the only place we got stuck in traffic on the way out. The radio sucks in Sacramento and there’s a bunch of G units driving walmart prized, fast and the furious prop cars. I saw a two tone bright blue and bright yellow Ford Taurus with 20″ rims. Locals refer to it as “The Sac”, I assume because of how much it sucks.

After a pitch black section climbing the hills of Tahoe, we made it to our campsite and met up with the rest of Andy’s crew from work. It happened by complete coincidence that the Perseid meteor shower was peaking that weekend as well. We all sat around the dying camp fire, with beers in hand, Andy playing the guitar, watching meteors. There were quite a few. At one point Andy took off to the can, we all sat staring up at the sky when a super bright meteorite appeared. It was so long that everyone had time to see it, and then all over a sudden it turned brilliant blue and streaked down behind the trees. It must of broken the atmosphere and landed somewhere within a few kms as it was almost ground level when the light eventually died behind the trees. It was the most fantastic meteorite I’ve ever seen in my life and unfortunately Andy missed it. We called him Andy “Missed the comit” Beltrano for the rest of the weekend. Harsh, but hilarious.

Saturday, August 11th
We woke up hung over and dirty. I miss camping. Another lot in the campground was evidently very pissed at our late night shenanigans the evening before. As they drove out of the camp site they yelled out of their window “You bunch of queers”. It blows my mind that adults in even in this part of the US consider that offensive.

We headed into town to gas up the cars and inflate the innertubes. Andy and three others headed for a hike while the rest of us went to raft down the river. We had three inner tubes which we lashed together with rope and put our cooler full of beer into the middle. The river is largely lazy but does include some smaller rapid sections which we rolled over with ease. There are sections where it is so shallow that people simply beach their boats and stand/sit in the water nursing beers. We decided to press on. Just before the end, there was a deceivingly large section of rapids which we had become to cocky to think we needed to avoid. This resulted in three of the members of our raft being thrown overboard, one of which jumped onto another raft passing by to catch up. I, being the athletic outdoorsman I am, stayed sufficiently buoyant to make it to the dock. We headed back to the cars, battered, bruised, and very sun burnt. At the campsite, we lounged the evening away cooking various items over the fire and drinking what was left of the beer. More music and meteorites followed, but the majority of the group turned in much earlier thanks to the long day.

Sunday, August 13th
In the morning, we packed up and headed back into town for some photo opportunities and ice cream before hitting the road. The drive home was mostly uneventful thanks to the extra hour and a half we spent stuck in bumper to bumper traffic in “The Sac”. I’m surprised the rest of California hasn’t pitched in to build a massive by-pass road.

We turned in early as there was a special intern offsite planned early the next morning.

[start google related events]

Monday, August 13th
Diana picked Graeme and I up at home at just after 5am. We had to make it into Mountain View to meet the rest of the APM interns at 6:30am, with a stop at Krispey Kreame on the way. We made it, with the help of some Journey and met the rest of the crew. Google had also flown the three APM Interns from New York and the lone one from London. When we had all gathered together, our host handed us airplane tickets and said, “We’re going to Disneyland.”

At the airport, we rushed through security and made a break for the airplane lounge. We pounded beers at 7:15 am (picture to come) before then running back to catch our plane. It was going to be a great day.

Disneyland was ridiculous. I had not been since I was a little wanker, and even then it was raining and miserable so I don’t have a very good image of the place in my mind. But this time around, it was sunny, hot and I was surrounded with a great gang. There was relatively little argument over what people wanted to do and the groups split naturally. We managed to get a hang of the Disney “Fast Pass” system enough to make it on a ton of rides and the majority of the rollercoasters. We also made it over to California Adventure to ride the Tower of Terror and ride “California Screamin’”, my first real Rollercoaster. I was hooked.

After a long day, we reluctantly dragged ourselves back to the shuttle and to the airport, where everyone in our group was flagged for an “extra security check”. The system down here is so broken. We flew back to San Jose, got shuttled back to Mountain View and then drove back to San Francisco. I crashed as soon as hit the bed.

Tuesday, August 14th
The only thing that was remarkable about the 14th in comparison to the rest of the week was that I actually got work done.

Wednesday, August 15th
A half day of work. I was running around all day trying to orchestra a goodbye present for our hosts as thanks for putting up with us for the summer. At 5pm, we hopped on buses up to pier 39 for the Intern-wide boat cruise. They fed us great meals and floated us around the bay, past Alcatraz, by Sausalito, underneath the Golden Gate bridge before returning back to the dock. All the while they had drinks and dancing which I largely avoided solely on the fact that I could see ~3 girls in the crowd of around 200. Engineers and APMs are different types.

Thursday, August 16th
Another half day of work. At 6pm Graeme and I caught the shuttle back to the city to see “Avenue Q” at the Orpheum. The musical is essentially a spoof on Seasame Street, where the actors are wearing normal clothes but with Muppets on their hands. The theme is much more adult oriented with songs like “Everyone’s a little bit racist” and “The Internet is for Porn”. It was unbelievably funny including a puppet sex scene that put the Team America attempt to shame.

Friday, August 17th
We got to work early to do laundry and go out for breakfast before hoping back on the buses to head to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk amusement park. Where we were yet again, treated to free food, beer, and swag (including a tres awesome Google beach towel), as well as unlimited rides, mini golf, and laser tag. We all ended up taking the late bus back as we road the two roller coasters over and over. I’m so infatuated with rollercoasters now. We also played an intense game of minigolf including some casual beer drinking.

After we returned back to work, we gathered together for one of the last meal with the handful of APMs whos last day it was. We then headed to the theatre next door to watch “Superbad”. I’m still on the fence on how great it was, but it definitely made me miss the great house parties of highschool, an event I’d really like to revive in my last year at Waterloo.

We headed back into the city with the crew, all got changed and cleaned up and then headed back out. First stop, Hobson’s rum house for Mojitos and Strong fruit punches. Then we caught a cab down to the Mission to find a dance club for my two guests I had promised to take out dancing. We eventually found a great place with a rooftop bar where I sat sipping rum and cokes and looking out at the SF skyline. After last call, a few of us went and got late night mexican and chatted with a group of other interns from stanford before heading home and crashing. There were drunk people scattered all over the floor of our apartment, 6 in total.

Saturday, August 18th
We got a last minute call from Diana to meet her and a couple of the other APM hosts for brunch back in the Mission. Graeme, Amanda and I did a series of two minute showers before catching a ride back down. I had a most excellent french toast and then we went over to Adam, another APM host’s place for beer-pong with homemade cider where Graeme and I absolutely cleaned up. As it was another warm beautiful day, we finished up outside and headed inside for an intense game of Carcassonne (a strategy boardgame somewhat like Settlers) before finally heading back to the city. Graeme, Amanda, and I ordered in Dominos and watched Entourage until everyone was ready to crash. Amanda went home and we passed out.

I know. Long post. I just needed to record this for myself. If anyone read it all, you’ll understand why I didn’t really have time to write it as I went. But damn, what a great week.

As my LA born and raised boss put it. I had an invite to the premiere of The Bourne Ultimatum in LA on July 25th, not exactly what I originally expected from my internship.

We booked our flights a week in advance, but when we went to print off the boarding passes, Southwest red flagged me. This meant I had to make it to the San Jose international airport about two hours before everyone else to clear my good name. The running joke for the rest of the day was that I was a Canadian spy sent to discover the secrets of some silly American thing.

The 25th came and I caught my cab to San Jose where I was temporarily confused by the incredibly unintuitive layout of their terminal. It turned out that there was a different “Sean Lynch” on the US no-fly list and they had to confirm that I was not him. Ironically, they had not been concerned about this when I flew into the states from Canada, it was the flying inside the states the threw them off. A beer at the terminal once the rest of the party arrived and we were off.

Landing in LA, we met up with another member of our team that happened to be in the area and then was whisked away in our slightly too small limo to our hotel, The Standard – which is always written upside down. I have a pencil from The Standard that says “$*#& Me” on it. It looked like every trendy hotel in CSI.

We ate at the hotel restaurant (over-priced, under-good) and then hopped back into the limo to the premiere where the star gazing fans that prematurely snapped pictures of my stepping out were extremely disappointed. I was rocking my red Google t-shirt with red sneakers to match, pee eye em pee. We even walked down the red carpet where I learned just how ingrained the class system is.

On the left side of the carpet was the movie and premiere sponsor posters, on the right was the press/media/camera-y guys. There was a velvet rope that ran the length of the carpet down the middle. Pseudo important people like me walk down the left side so that famous people like Matt Damon can talk to the media on the right.

We got our tickets lounged around and looked for famous people until the movie started. I think I saw Pauly Shore, not sure. The big cast was there, though they were quite busy talking to the press. We found our seats, free popcorn and drinks (in super-size rather than dainty sizes) , and waited for the movie to begin.

The crowd was unusual. Every time Matt Damon/Bourne successfully fucked up a person or persons, the crowd would cheer. I’m not sure whether this was because they were kissing ass, but it was certainly enjoyable. The movie itself? I think I liked Bond and Die Hard better.

We headed to the after party next, which consisted of a lot of people, a lot of free food/drinks and weird TV screens playing random “spy-esque” content like radar screens. The famous people were there, but I was not nearly as star struck as I assumed I would have been. Eventually, we ended up heading back to the hotel bar for mojito nightcaps and headed off to bed. This was all on a Wednesday.

Thursday I woke up around 11 (the hotel check out time was 2pm – others should follow). The rest of the team had already caught their respective flights back, but I had scheduled the day off to hang around with my very LA friend Andrew Boryski.

We stopped off for lunch where we sat and discussed relationships, the prominence and awesomeness of Canadians in the states, online shoe shopping, and other manly pursuits. The place was largely empty so the waitress paid special attention to us under the guise of us being Canucks. We were happy to play along.

For the rest of the day, Andrew toured me around town. He took me down the famous streets and past the landmarks. Through the rich neighbourhoods and the less rich ones. I saw the Hollywood sign from mulholland drive, the front gate of the playboy mansion and of Bel air (sans prince), and more Bentleys than I could imagine. All the while, chatting with one of the all stars of the Saskatoon line up.

Unfortunately, by 5pm we had to go separate ways as Abo dropped me off at Burbank airport and I headed back to San Jose, just in time to catch the train up to Mountain View for drinks on Deepa’s 21st.

All in all a hectic, mid-week vacation of an event I will likely never repeat for the rest of my life.