New job starts tomorrow. I’m excited. Let’s see what happens.

Two years ago in [this](http://www.baudburn.com/blog/archives/000021.html) post about the beginning of grad school I said, “All in all I have a good feeling about all of this.” My initial feelings couldn’t have been more right. I’m sitting here in my now empty room thinking about just how great the last two years have been. Leaving Austin to come back to grad school was a hard decision to make at the time, but couldn’t have been a better one. The last two years of my life have ranked among the best I can remember except for the lack of my barbara.

Looking back at all the people I’ve been fortunate enough to meet and the adventures I’ve had makes me feel like a lucky man. I’ll miss you all. I’ll miss the random road trips with you, Dan. I’ll miss salmon cooking on the grill, crazy parties with crazy people at your house, and all the great discussion on everything from life to real estate to spirituality with you, Sean. I’ll miss the great talks and witty remarks that you constantly spit, Dr. J. I’ll miss living with you and seeing firsthand how great a marriage can be, Jeff & McCall. I’ll miss cuban sandwiches, concerts, and acting like we’re 6 years old with you Kerry. I’ll miss obsessive CD buying and 2 am taco cabana runs with you, James. I’ll miss all of you phreaknic/se2600 geeks. I’ll miss so many things it’s hard to put them all down.

I have so many things to look forward to though. My new job will be great, Austin has many things to offer me, the love of my life will be near by.

So here I am, another chapter in my story closed, but a new one is about to begin. Thank you everyone, for making these two years so wonderful.

*warning: The following entry is a little disjointed. It is more of a stream of consciousness style entry so beware crazy tangents. *

This has been a true whirlwind week for me. Some of you know a bit about what has been going on in my life in the last two weeks, some of you do not, so here goes.

With my masters degree wrapping up, I have been considering the correct course of action for the next few years of my life. Shall I continue on to get my PhD, or go back into “the real world” and work? If I get my PhD, I’ll be in school for another two years (sweet!), but I’ll be forced to live far from Barbara for that time as well. We have been together for a long time now (about 5.5 years), and a large majority of that time(3-4.5 years depending on how you slice it) has been spent with each other on the phone, not in person. I think it’s been long enough. In a perfect world I could have it all, but something has to give and for now, I’ll take my masters and run. It is too bad though.

With that in mind, I started posting my resume online to a few places and heard very little response for a while. At first I was upset because it felt like no one was interested in my background/qualifications, but then one day about two weeks ago, things started going crazy. It started raining head hunters offering to represent me for different jobs. Many of them were not in Dallas, where B is, so I flat out turned them down despite there being many interesting opportunities in the lot.

While flipping through the days batch of emails/phone messages about jobs early last week one popped up that intrigued me. The company is called [Molecular Imprints](http://www.molecularimprints.com). They are a nano-tech company. They make lithography tools for creating nano-size structures. This includes the production of Integrated Circuits. My background matched what they were looking for very closely (except that they were looking for someone with 10 years of experience). Like with all good things there was a catch: this job was in Austin not Dallas. I toyed with the idea for a while and decided it couldn’t hurt to respond to this one.

Here’s where it got crazy. Next thing I know, I’m interviewing over the phone. Three or four hours after we hang up, I get a call asking me when I could take a flight down to austin for an interview. I schedule the flight for Tuesday.

Now for the breakdown of this week to date:
Saturday: Birthday party for Nox’s wife Rachel in the early evening. Swimming, food, and good times were had by all. Thanks Nox! After that, I ran over to the cool french ladies house (Joclyne) to arrive at a huge (150 people or so) party for DJ Carry’s Bday. Good times had by all. I got to spend a few minutes with a friend of mine from JTown (Danielle) whom I coaxed into coming out. Party goes on into the night, I go home around 3 am.

Sunday: Waste time during the day, hang out with Sean and Carry some because I’m delaying making slides for my thesis defense. Talk to barbara until late in the night and finally put together the slides sometime Monday morning early.

Monday: Thesis defense! Dr. Weller is late because he’s stressed about personal things. He arrives and I give my defense. Things go very well. I get a few difficult questions, but nothing I can’t handle. Thesis over, I pass, all my professors congratulate me.

Tuesday: Fly out to Austin. Have trouble getting the car that they rented for me because I’m not 25. Have to rent my own damn car. They will reimburse me later. Meet up with Diego at Hula Hut. Have a great time talking with one of the few friends I have in that area. Find my hotel and go to sleep.

Wednesday: 7 Interviews, 45 minutes a piece. 6 are technical. I think I do pretty well over all. Looks interesting. Fly back to Nashville.

Thursday: 9 am, get an offer from them. They need to know if I want it pretty quickly. I decide to verbally accept.

Friday: Here I am. Contract in hand. I feel happy that it’s worked out, but nervous about leaving academia. If only this job were in Dallas, all would be well with the cosmos.

So that’s it. Now you know what a whirlwind tour this last week has been for me. Chaos, total Chaos. Where am I going? As NPH says, “Where ever god takes me”.

I don’t talk about Barbara very often on my blog. There is no particular reason for this, I just like to keep the majority of our experiences private. I thought this evening I would share a few thoughts on why I feel lucky to have Barbara.

I want to start with a quote from 1984, one of my favorite books. This quote was recently pointed out to me by (Dan)[http://bastardface.blogspot.com] and it resonated deeply with me.

>He wondered vaguely whether in the abolished past it had been a normal experience to lie in bed like this, in the cool of a summer evening, a man and a woman with no clothes on, making love when they chose, talking of what they chose, not feeling any compulsion to get up, simply lying there and listening to peaceful sounds outside. **Surely there could never have been a time when that seemed ordinary?**

As most of you know, Barbara and I live very far apart and only get to visit once a month at most. This quote is particularly poignant because of this situation. The sad truth is that it’s been years since we’ve been able to just lay around doing nothing. We spend so little time together that when we do, it’s a big event leaving little time for this type of interaction. I look forward to the day we can spend a day or two doing absolutely nothing. In fact, strange as it sounds, I often dream of the day when I can take Barbara for granted. What I mean by that is the day when sleeping together is no longer a big deal, but the norm. What a great day that will be.

Ok, digression over.

Reasons Barbara (is/will) be the best (fiancee/wife) ever:

1. She loves me - OK, this is obvious. She loves and supports me unconditionally. I see this actualized constantly, but a particularly recent experience comes to mind. I have been struggling with what to do in my professional life recently. Do I continue my PhD, or do I take my masters and go to work? When I consult Barbara, she does not encourage me to quit and move to Dallas, she instead simply asks me, “What do you want to do?”. Draw your own conclusions, but I feel lucky that my chosen lady wants what’s best for me, despite the significant challenges that the decision to stay could present.

2. She’s no pushover - This girl is feisty at times, and I love it. Sure I give her a hard time when she gets worked up, but she has absolutely *zero* tolerance for injustice and importantly is willing to speak up and say something, even if it’s difficult to say. Simply put, Barbara doesn’t put up with shit from anyone. I remember a time when we were out to eat and the hostess was being really rude to us. I wasn’t going to say anything, but Barbara wasn’t having any of her ‘tude. I love that about her.

3. She’s gentle - Sure I just spent the last two paragraphs saying that she’s hard, but that’s not right at all. She’s very gentle and caring. She loves to take care of me and constantly is thinking about what I need. I’m trying to do the same for her, but right now I’m just not as good at it as she is. Doh!

4. She’s smart - She is Barbara Chen, M.D. or “Dr. Chen” (said in an obnoxious tone), so clearly she’s book smart. That being said she also has an impressive amount of common sense. She knows just what to do to handle any situation.

5. She’s beautiful - I don’t just mean physically beautiful, though she doesn’t have any problems in that department.

This list could go on, but I think I’ve got the point across sufficiently. I love her, she is special, and I am very lucky.

This weekend I visited Barbara in Dallas. There isn’t too much to report because it was really low key. We did meet a very cool 68 pound boxer/rot mix named Winter. She was cute, and if I was in the market for a dog, I’d have taken her.

Thats pretty much it for now. There are some other things that I need to discuss, but this is not the venue for it at this time. That is all.

NSREC is over. I had a great time. Meeting people who exist as only names (from references) in your head is a strange experience.

Dan has left for Japan. Congrats to him. My social landscape will now be totally different. I’ll see him again, but until then I’ll remember:

>Road trips - Every weekend for months, we would go to chicago, atlanta, or somewhere else. Thanks Dan, for all the good times.

>Japanese - One day I’ll be able to speak it. Until then I’ll have to just secretly hate the fact that he has learned a language that I wish I knew

>Capoeira - Even through our Nashville group fell apart (in my mind), I’ll remember the times when we would randomly break into ginga in a parking lot.

>BT - One of the best shows ever. I’ll remember partying with Dan and the zomie cheerleaders.

>Sneaking into the Vandy Gym - We did this more than a few times. It’s cheaper for me to go in then pass my card under the door than it is to have him pay for admittance!

There are too many other things to mention, but suffice it to say, Dan has affected my life. Have fun in Japan, Dan. I’ll be over to visit soon.

In other news,

[/me bangs head against desk.](http://www.angelfire.com/rings/judy_patch/) I don’t mind if you don’t know much about computers. I like to teach people about them, but wow.

Not too much to report. Had a good time. Drank a bit at the social, got to know a few people better. In the evening it was out to two different bars.. One was an upscale jazz club of sorts and the other was a ghetto hip-hop club. They were quite juxtaposed, but I had a good time. Day 3 is just beginning.

Sorry to say, it was another great day. I’m going to have to think of some deep moral question to pose to all the readers out there because I’ve been reporting on how great things are recently. There seems to be a trend here.

The day started with registration (The swag this year was a backpack similar to last year’s [phreaknic](www.phreaknic.info) gifts, but inferior because it doesn’t have baudburn embroidered on it. The mornings talks were quite good. I listened to Scott Thompson, a former head honcho of technology at intel talk about the future of CMOS technology. **HBMS Reference** I can’t go into the details **/HBMS Reference**, but suffice it to say that I enjoyed that talk. The second talk was given by Robert Baumann of Texas Instruments.

Lunch was nothing to write home about, but it wasn’t horrible, which happens to be the same feelings I have towards the lectures of the afternoon.

After the last lecture, I Anu wanted to see the waterfront, so I took her down that way to take a look. I was familiar with the area because of my run the first night. After a walk around, we came back to the hotel because Anu and the rest of the Vandy crew were going to the space needle. I opted out because frankly, I don’t like doing the touristy crap that no local does.

I started by going to the [Dahlia Lounge](http://www.tomdouglas.com/dahlia/) a beautiful upscale restaurant downtown. This place was swank. It’s run by Tom Douglas, a rather well known chef in these parts, and with good reason. I had a lemon-scallion crabcake dish served with an avocado hollandaise sauce with an assortment of grape tomatoes, sauteed spinach, squash, and jicama. It was very good. While there I talked to a few people at the bar including a german guy who works for hotels.com and the bartender who gave me some ideas for local coffee shops to check out.

Leaving the lounge, I headed over to Rebar, a strange alternative type club where I saw some sort of Napolean Dynamite meets the soundtrack from Life Aquatic band play at the art opening for a lady who paints mildly grotesque images of large ladies in various states of undress. The crowed at that place was strange to say the least. I talked to the artist for a few minutes as well as one of her friends who pointed me to my final destination for the night, a cool local coffee shop called [bauhaus](http://seattle.citysearch.com/profile/10798083/). I had one of the best mocha’s of my life there while reading some of the local literature including [The Stranger](http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Home) and some local fetish/conspiracy theory magazine called the Sinner.

And all that leads me back to the lobby here where I’m able to get the limited Internet access I need to bring these reports to you.

So that’s the scoop from Seattle for today. Now it’s time to sleep so I can be awake tomorrow.

What a day, what a day. it’s been a while since I last posted, but that’s because I was preparing for the annual [NSREC](http://www.nsrec.com) conference which starts tomorrow morning. I’m posting this from the Sheraton hotel in downtown Seatle. Getting here was quite the adventure.

Here goes a quick recap:

Getting on the plane went as planned. I was able to take three carryon items (My backpack, my luggage, and my NSREC poster in a tube) because I didn’t ask for permission. Note to self: when it comes to matters of policy, do first and let them tell you you can’t later is the best course of action.

The trip started to go south as soon as we took off. Shortly after taking our drink orders, the attendent started asking for any doctors or nurses on the plane. Someone was sick and laid out on the floor in the back of the plane. 2 hours and no drinks or bathroom breaks later, the captain told us we were turning around and flying 137 miles back to rapid city, South Dakota because the guy needed to get to a hospital.

We landed and got the guy off the plane. No big deal, I was fine with that, time to get back on the plane and go on. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out that way. Instead, we had to get the field mechanic to come look at our plane. Our plane was too heavy to land at the field we were at so we needed to get rid of some fuel and get special permission. This took some time and was where all hell broke loose. There was an unfortunate number of small children sitting all around me and they started whining, kicking, yelling, and screaming. It was terrible. That being said, I wanted to do the same, but sadly, it is less socially acceptable for me to do something like that. I could go into the details of the bad parenting I saw, but it’s really not worth it. Suffice it to say that bad parents make bad kids.

We finally got back in the air and made it to Seattle. Made it to the hotel, changed into my running clothes and ran around town for about 40 minutes. The best way to get to know a new city is to go running around it’s downtown area. I checked out the sights, figured out that there are a ton of hills there (which exhausted me), and saw the waterfront. It was beautiful. After that, I came back, cleaned up, and started looking for a place to eat.

After talking to a few people I ended up at a little lounge like place called Cutter which had a sushi sign in the window. I ordered the 10 piece sashimi plate which was freaking great. The nice waitress had the chef give me extra hamachi (yellowtail) because the cuts they had today were the best. The plate was amazing, the cuts were thick and I was a happy camper. Desert was (upon suggestion), a wild berry bread pudding dish. Quite unlike any I have ever had, it was a pile of bread pieces with blueberries and strawberries all over it, drizzled in a strawberry-orange sauce. On top of that was a slice of vanilla ice cream. It was brilliant.

I’m totally beat now. Its only 11:45 here, but it’s 1:45 in my time zone. Time for me to crash. Hopefully I won’t have nightmares about screaming children.

I know, I know. I’m a member of the cult of Jobs, but I ran into [this speech](http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html) given by Steve Jobs at the Commencement for Stanford University June 12, 2005.

I’m going to pluck out the parts that I found to be particularly memorable or useful to me and then I will include the full text at the end for my own future reference. To anyone that cares, I can’t recommend reading the full speech any more. It serves not only as excellent and inspirational advice, but also as an example of what a good speech should feel like: concise but packing a punch.

Here goes:

>”you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

To get the context of this quote, you really need to read the first part of the story. What I find inspirational about the story is that he is encouraging us to go out and do random things, even if they are seemingly unrelated. Later on, you can “Connect the dots” and tie the things you know together. This will make you stronger and more unique.

>”I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

>”Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

This really cuts to the heart of many conversations I’ve had with many people. We would all do well to pay attention and heed this advice. I know I’m trying.

>”When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

>Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Probably the best piece of advice in the whole thing.

>”Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

>”Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

I was going to expound upon these quotes, but honestly they really speak for themselves. Read the full text below and reflect. That is all.

Full text archived [here](http://www.baudburn.com/files/SteveJobsCommencement.txt).