27 May 2003 ianmacd   » (Master)

Everyone seems to have a weblog these days, which makes me curious how many people Advogato has lost over the last year or so, as people decide to host their own diary amongst links to the fast and fatuous.

Given that I can't seem to drum up any regularity to my postings here, I don't think a blog for me would really be worth the effort of setting it up in the first place.

For anyone who cares, here's a brief update.

I'm still working for Google, coming up on two years of employment now. The company has grown 400% in number of employees in that time, which effectively means I work for a very different company now than the one I started at two years ago. It's been an interesting, if not particularly rewarding experience.

Recently, Google acquired Blogger, an event of some significance to many, but something quite meaningless to me.

Sarah and I are off to Hawaii in a couple of weeks for our third trip to the islands. This time, we're visiting the eponymous island, also known as the Big Island. I can't wait to go to Volcanoes National Park. It's only for a long weekend, but I can't wait.

July will see me fly to Canada to attend the Ottawa Linux Symposium, which I haven't been to since 2000. That'll be a lot of fun. Sarah will be joining me later in the week.

That'll be quite a romantic trip in a sense, as I spent a month in Ottawa in the summer of 2000, when Linuxcare packed me off to their Canadian office when I couldn't stay in the US any longer on my visa-waiver.

Our much vaunted return to The Netherlands has been put on hold, as I sacrifice the short-term comfort of living in a sane society in order to vest in more stock. The hope is of an eventual pay-off that will guarantee some long-term happiness. It goes well against the grain and I feel like a whore, it must be said, but if the pundits are right, this strategy might just pay dividends in the long run. I certainly don't intend to sacrifice my ideals for a cash gamble ever again.

I really can't say when we'll leave the US and return to Amsterdam, but it's definitely still the long-term plan.

I've been very busy with Kerberos V and LDAP coding in recent weeks. This has seen me pull my rusty C skills out of the cupboard, which has been surprisingly rewarding and revitalised my interest in the language.

I've eaten way too much food lately and purchased far too many DVDs. America rubs off on you if you're not careful.

It's hard to imagine I left Linuxcare some two years ago. I have such nice memories of the place, that my departure seems much more recent.

It's even harder to believe that it was five whole years ago that I started work at Sonera (then Telecom Finland) in De Meern in The Netherlands. That's undoubtedly the most important and most fun job I've ever had. Talk about being in the right place at the right time. Man, I wish I could go back in time and experience some of those times again.

Well, I don't have much else to say for myself at the moment. Nothing "adventurous and revolutionary" looks likely to happen any time soon. I live in suburban hell and numb the pain with material acquisition, a kind of socially encouraged heroin. Oh well, nothing is forever.

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