Into the Woods

Many of you know that I spent the last four weeks of my life exploring a new opportunity with a startup company. My role was going to be lead developer of one of three small startups within the Top Ten Media Corp. I would be building a system whereby bloggers and other internet users could offer their writings, photographs, songs and videos for commercial licensing. The idea struck me as huge the first I heard of it. It could easily become viral, and take on a huge amount of popularity. The guys at Top Ten were really cool and made me very excited about the job, and laid out a reasonable, but not an overwhelmingly large offer. The decision was quite consuming, and it made it difficult to enjoy my ski weekend. In fact, I had decided at one point to take the offer, figuring out exactly how I was going to break the news to IBM, and plan the transition, only to wake up the next morning with a clear understanding that it was the wrong move. Many factors that I won’t get into here pushed me to that conclusion, and in the end I decided to stay at my current position as a senior software engineer at IBM’s Cambridge Advanced Internet Technology Lab. We have many cool projects going on, mainly the new release of our Semantic Web application middleware stack. We have many cool apps, demos and prototypes coming down the road, and I’ll be excited to blog about them as I am able. I’ve done a lot of interviewing and job searching over the past year; some more successful than others. I’ve realized that I have it very good here at IBM, and that a truly interesting,fullfilling and secure job is hard to find. I’ve also learned that interviewing and looking for the next step destroys focus and hampers productivity, and I’m excited to settle down and realize our Semantic Web vision with my buddies Lee, Wing, Matt, Sean, Rouben and the rest.
This past weekend was my first full weekend at Killington. The new ski house is very cool. It’s larger than my previous Killington houses, though it is a bit further away: an 8 minute drive to the mountain instead of 5. Anyway, the winter has not been entirely cooperative so far, and even though Killington’s snowmaking efforts have been heroic and they received a foot of new snow over the past week, they still have precious little terrain open, relative to the number of people eager to jumpstart their ski seasons. So, the trails were very crowded. Luckily, I was able to motivate very early on Saturday morning, and get to the lifts by 8:00am. I had some fantastic runs before the crowds came out. The snow was soft, and in some places untracked. I stayed out until 3:30 because I was really enjoying myself and I was skiing with a friend who had purchased a day pass for an ungodly sum, and I wanted him to get his money’s worth. This year at the house, most of the members are my good friends, as was my design. So every waking hour is spent joking, skiing, drinking, eating, hot tubbing, and just shooting the sh*t with your best buddies. One of the highlights of the weekend was everybody vegging out to five episodes of Entourage Season 2 after a hard day on the slopes.
Because of the crowds, I was involved in four different collisions. The first was with Aiden, who was perhaps a bit out of control, and clipped the back of my skis as I was carving across the trail. He got the worst of it, and clicked out of one ski and took a tumble. I was unscathed. The second, some snowboarder couldn’t stop and bounced off of me. The third, some kid was skiing toward me on a flat section where trails merge. I went to the right as you are supposed to, but he went to his left, and we collided. He went down hard, losing most of his stuff. I, for some reason, was left standing, feeling bad, but not overly appologetic. The forth was the worst. I was stopped in the middle of a wide beginner trail, that was steep enough that you could still get some speed if you wanted to. Some racer-type kid lost his edge, and plowed into me from the side at mach 10. I had my pole in the ground so it took most of the blow and bent in a huge arc. If that hadn’t happened he might have done something similar to my ACL. Anyway, I went down a little. If I’d stood him up, I probably would have really injured one or both of us. Still..he lost his gear, and looked rather foolish..so..all in all, I claim to be 4-0 on the weekend…