Black Nativity

Seattle isn’t exactly known for the size of its black population.  Nonetheless, The Black Nativity is a long standing tradition in the city.  Embarrassingly, despite knowing of it for several years, I hadn’t gone to see it; until this year.

Performed at The Moore Theater, The Black Nativity is quite a show.  The first act reenacts the birth of Christ with song and dance with a top notch cast of performance artists.  In my humble opinion, the second act is where the show really shines.  The setting is your typical black church with a vocal and opinionated improvising choir.  The music ranged from gospel, to blues, to soul.  As an added treat, the performance I attended featured BeBe Winans, a gospel singer I grew up listening to.  Now having seen the show, I can proudly say that it is a wonderful Seattle tradition indeed.

Happy Holidays!

SURF

Recently, I’ve become a member of SURF.  SURF (stands for Start Up Really Fast) describes itself as an incubator.  I tend to think of tech incubators as programs, such as Y Combinator, where startups are given advisers and ran through a program to prepare them to seek investors.  SURF is more of a community center for tech types in Seattle.  It offers drop in and rentable office space.  Further, representatives of local relevant professional services (venture, accounting, insurance, and legal) often offer educational sessions and discounted services.  But like I said, it really is working to be a community center for techies in Seattle.  Several times per week, various groups hold meetings on relevant technologies (e.g. Rails,  mobile, and Big Data).  And, just wondering around the space creates numerous opportunities to find help debugging an issue or brainstorming.

SURF is beginning to get a lot of attention around the city.  Recently, Mayor McGinn stopped by to talk to members.  Also, SURF founder, Seaton Gras was named one of Geekwire’s newsmakers of the year.  It is a great group to be involved with.

Links
Geekwire: http://www.geekwire.com/2012/newsmakers-2012-seaton-gras-surf-incubator/

Ferrari Autocross

If you've spent a little time reading my blog, you probably have realized I'm kinda into Porsches.  But it doesn't mean I can't admire Ferrari's as well.  Recently I had the chance to actually do an Autocross event in a Ferrari!  Check it out:

Jumbotron

I image that during the creation of the new Dallas Cowboys stadium there was a meeting where someone made a suggestion.  This suggested ended with a statement that went something like, ‘and yeah, I know this idea is a bit much and probably isn’t the best use of money.  But I thought it was cool, so I figured I’d bring it up.  I totally understand if you guys say no’.  Everyone in the meeting sits silent for a brief moment before laughter erupts.  Cowboys own, Jerry Jones responds, ‘Hell yeah we’re going to do it.  Shoot, let’s build two!  You know we don’t have no budget.  We’re building the best football stadium evar!!!’  Afterwards, he’d do something hella Texan, like shoot two six shooters up in the air, grab his overside belt buckle, or scream, ‘Yee haa!’.  That’s how I imagine it.

My point is JerryWorld is insane.  It holds over 100,000 people.  It’s got an IT infrastructure to give all these people free wi-fi.  Then, there’s the jumbotron.  Much like the Grand Canyon, it’s hard to describe using just words.  I could tell you that it is some 160 feet long, but that still won’t really convey the magnitude of it.  The best I can come up with is, remember that guy in college who got a big screen tv for his dorm room?  And it was waaay too big for the space available.  So everyone kind of disliked watching movies there because they were sitting too close?  In Cowboys stadium, if you stand behind the worst nose-bleed seats in the house, you’ll still have that feeling looking at the jumbotron.

I went to Cowboys stadium to watch my Chicago Bears beat down the Dallas Cowboys on Monday Night Football.  A very interesting aspect of this was that approximately 1/3 of the fans in attendances were actually Bears fans.  Apparently it is common for so many opposing fans to make the trip to see the stadium that the Cowboys lose their home field advantage.

Joining me on the trip were a bunch of longtime friends from undergrad; one a Cowboys fan,  one living Chicago but moving to Dallas, on just gambling on the game.  In addition to a great game, it was a great time hanging out with old friends.

Brewing Beer

Last month I went a beer tasting festival. But why stop there?  Something else I wanted to do for a while is brew my own beer.  Coinidentally, ended up with a colleague who had a full on brewery in a shed behind his house; but no one to help him with the process.  So, I jumped at the opportunity.

Apparently, there are two types of beer brewing: extract and all-grain.  Extract brewing is where you start with pre-processed malt extract.  Extract is what is used in the home brewing kits readily available at retail stores.  I think this is really what I had in mind when I thought of brewing my own beer.  But, I guess if you have you have your own beer shed, you've already decided to step your game up.

All-grain brewing is definitely more involved.  You go through the process of making the malt extract.  You start by milling the grain, then cook the cracked grain in water (known as mashing or steeping), then rinse this mix and collect the run off (known as sparging).  Ths run-off is known as wort and is essentially the extract you would begin with in the extract brewing process.  You then boil this mix and let it sit for two weeks.  And voilà you've got your own beer!

It is a pretty cool hobby.  It takes a full day to go through the full process.  There are only a handfull of times when you are really busy moving the mix between one phase and the next.  The majority of the time is spent monitoring temperatures and waiting for a particular cooking process to complete.  We filled the down time by grilling, talking about sports and technology, and sampling the last batch.  Not a bad way to spend a late-summer day in the northwest.

Seattle International Beerfest

Another great thing about the Northwest is its great beers!  Portland is consistently ranked as the number one city in the country for microbrews.  Seattle doesn’t do too bad either; hovering around the top 5.  Every year, Seattle hosts the Seattle International Beerfest.  Here, attendees can sample the works of local as well as international microbrewers.  Not a bad way to spend a midsummer day in Seattle.  True to form, my favorite beer of the day came from Hopworks Urban Brewery in Portland.

Links
Seattle International Beerfest: http://seattlebeerfest.com/index.php
Hopworks: http://hopworksbeer.com/

930 Solutions

In 2012, I went after and achieved one of my lifetime goals: to start my own business.

My goal is actually to create two companies.  The first company is a one that is a 1 man consulting firm that can consistently cover my cost of living.  The second company is where I will focus my creative energies on creating mobile and web apps that I believe will cover a niche market need.  In an ideal world, company one would fund me while company two becomes a reality.  But this post is really about company one.

After two years a great up-and-coming consulting firm, and several years at various software companies, I felt that my experience in industry was solid and that if I wanted to achieve the goal, I needed to start taking steps toward it.  After doing some research, I realized that being in independent software developer wasn’t really that hard.  You needed someone willing to pay you for your services and the usual corporate registrations. 

As a software developer, I am fortunate to be in a good market. Though I realized that it took about two months to finalize the terms of my deal, I did end up with two options for clients.

The usual corporate registrations are where things are still a bit of a learning experience.  I’ve managed to set up health care and a 401k for all of my ‘employees’.  Further, I am incorporated and am paying taxes at the federal level down.  But taxes are still about as clear as mud to me.  At the federal level you write a check for what you *think* your taxes will be every quarter and settle up at the end of the year.  Hopefully, I won’t be too far off.  Moreover, I hope that then I will finally see the benefits of all the deductions you get as a corporation; because I am very familiar with the fees.

The next challenge for me will be to build out a pipeline of opportunities.  To be able to successfully line up clients such that I stay in contact when I am too busy to work for them and am effective about lining up my next gig.  My father always tells me that, ‘the last two people to be let go at any company are the guy who makes the widgets and the guy who sells them.’  My career has been based on making widgets, so it is going to take some personal growth to sell them as well.

But there is a lot of fun to be had in starting a company.  First, there was the branding exercise.  I decided to go with ‘930 Solutions’ as the name of my company as an homage to an aspirational engineering project.  That said, my friends have come up with a lot of alternative meetings (‘won’t show up until 930 PM’, ‘it won’t be done until 9:30 PM’ , ‘no matter where we are in the course of the project, after I have solved problem #930 under this corporation, I am retiring’, etc).  It is also pretty nice to dodge corporate politics and just be responsible for providing quality work.  And of course the greater influence you have on the path of your career is exhilarating.

As great as this experience has been, I am already off to my next adventure.  A friend of mine has recruited me to lead the development efforts of an early stage start-up.  Hopefully this experience will make me a more well-rounded member of the team.