Happy New Year!
Last night I went down to the Ferry Building with my older brother, my cousin, and a good friend. We had a blast ushering in the new year.
So I have a few new years resolutions for this year... Here are most of them:
1) Learn C
2) Learn C++
3) Get into Valleywag
4) Learn how to cook
5) Learn how to sail
6) College?
7) Travel to London, Copenhagen, Moscow, Bucharest and Paris
8) Spend a lot less time on the computer and a lot more time outdoors
That seems like a lot of resolutions, but a lot can be done in a year. Here's to 2008!
The holidays!
It's my favorite time of the year once again, and this time I get to be in the city for the holidays. I love walking through the city at Christmas time, everything is lit up, it's cold outside, and they've got the annual outdoor ice rink at Embarcadero Center [picture]. I went there last night and checked it out after getting off the ferry from Vallejo (was home this weekend).
I took a break from work around 7 and walked down Mission Street to Embarcadero by myself to go get a Christmas tree. It was so cool seeing all the decorations that people have put up for the holidays, and walking down Embarcadero at night next to the water with the Bay Bridge in front of you is stunning. I got to the place where they sell the trees on Embarcadero (only 3 blocks from my apartment), and picked one out pretty quickly. I need to get a camera so I can take pictures of it and post them... It's not a big tree, but after hauling it back to the apartment by myself, I was glad I didn't pick anything bigger.
I'm having a great time here in SF, work is awesome, roommates are great, and most of all... Christmas is in 15 days!
I need to take my camera back from James... grr!
I'm getting to love Tumblr, all the guys from Connected Ventures totally ruule. I'm going to put it up on sdpurtill.com pretty soon here.
Happy Holidays! (I'll probably write before Christmas, but no guarantees)
Ahh! My birthday is coming up…
I've never been a fan of celebrating my birthday, but I'm going to do something this year. I turn 19 on Thursday! Not sure what I'm going to do though. Any ideas?
I'm going to start blogging again, it's been a while since I sat down and wrote.
What I’ve learned so far
I moved to SF a few weeks ago (I think it's been a little over two now), and it's been a fun journey so far. A lot has happened, I've been way too busy to blog. I have some time right now. Which means that... my room is clean, laundry is done, dishes are done, bathroom is clean, work is done [well, put on hold], freelance is done, and I don't feel like reading right now. Speaking of reading, I finally subscribed to The Economist, Newsweek, Business Week, and the WSJ today. Anyways, let's get back to the point of this post:
What have I learned so far?
1) Living on my own is not as hard as everyone made it out to be
I thought I was going to be screwed, living on my own for the first time, especially since I skipped the transition that most kids make by going to college and having everything taken care of. But it's actually really not that hard. The list is pretty short of things you have to do... Laundry, dishes, bed, bathroom. Just keep things clean and live with awesome roommates (they're awesome, I assure you) and everything is a breeze. Plus having a job that pays all the bills so you don't have to worry about money is always a good thing.
2) People have a very false perception of San Francisco
I thought I was going to get jumped every time I walked outside at night time. I've gotten scared once when I was walking under a bridge at 11pm by myself, with my laptop in my backpack (which is so old it needs to get stolen so I have an excuse to buy a MacBook Pro). I was also told that San Francisco is the capital of gays and gayness. For everyone that told me that and made it sound like it was such a OMGZ TERRIBLE problem, you need to open your eyes to the human race because you are a little troglodyte. It's been a real eye opener for me, especially coming from Vacaville which has this truck-driving-i-am-mr-homophobic mentality.
3) Don't worry about who got _______ out/dirty, get it finished and move on
The most annoying thing I have found is when people find a dish/towel/fill in the blank left out and then start asking who left it out. STFU and just put it away, it takes way more time to interrogate everyone to find out who took it out than to just stop being a bitch and put it away. Need I say more?
4) TV is a waste of life
Enough said. I could go on a massive rant but I am refraining.
5) Video games are a waste of life
Unless the names of the video games are Grand Theft Auto or Gran Turismo
6) Yankees Suck Ass
Enough said... Boston FTW!
7) Rugby is an amazing sport
Bob and I drove around SF looking for a pub to watch the England/France match last Saturday, and all of them were packed (and charging $20/person!). So we went over to Kirill's and watched it there. I only got to catch the second half, but it was one of the most interesting/engaging events I have ever seen. The caveman on France is a beast!!
8) Not a big fan of "networking", but I guess I'm doing it...
I had this perception that "networking" meant going out and handing your business card to every schmuck at a Web 2.0 event. The "networking" that I am doing is by no means being done on a macro scale, I don't want to have a ton of people that barely know me. I want a strong network of people that know me very well, and I am slowly getting to know a lot of [very important] people in Silicon Valley.
9) Waking up isn't as hard as it used to be
My mom used to yell at me/pour water on me/punch me on the face (ok not really) for me to get out of bed. The reason? I was waking up to go to school, and school was boring as hell! I would have never thought, but I am generally getting to work around 8/8:30am (yes, I'm shocked). But why? Because work doesn't suck! It's fun to wake up in the morning, I have something to look forward to, I get to actually do something that matters.
10) In the time that I've sat down to write a blog post, a TV show has come to an end and I really have to cut it short to go to the gym and run (no weights, don't need strong arms to type 120 WPM hehe).
11) Oh, one more thing. Kirill beats me at everything, which I've found to be a good thing.
And our programmers are a billion times better at programming than me. And everyone is smarter than me, faster than me, etc etc. I'm SO glad you have no idea, I want to be a small fish in a big pond, because it makes me work my ass off so I can try to stay at the level of these guys.
This list could go on for so long, I've learned a lot and feel like I am adapting very well.
And if you're in town tomorrow, there's a big party for Mochi Media (we're on same floor). Hit me up, 415-367-5181.
Here I Come!
It's official... I have joined YouNoodle and I'm moving to San Francisco to work, and boy, am I excited!
I'm taking a gap year (or 10 hehe) from university to join the founding team of YouNoodle, a startup in San Francisco. I heard some advice the other day from Max Levchin on the GigaOm Show about how VCs invest their money. VCs don't invest in ideas, they invest in people. I feel the same way about the people I choose to work alongside; YouNoodle has put together a team of superstars who can execute like no one's business (think PayPal). I would do anything to work with these guys -- heck, I'd even work for free just to be around them (wouldn't be possible in SF though hehe). I will be starting as a Ruby on Rails engineer. I've had to learn Rails these last few weeks and let go of Django, but it has been so hard! I will also have a lot of input on the product and hopefully dabble in whatever else I can so I can learn everything possible.
So I'm 18 years old, moving to San Francisco... crazy, right? I know I'm not ready for everything that is going to happen in these next few months/years. Good -- you have to step outside of your comfort zone to do amazing things. It's sort of like what people says about having children -- there is never a "right" time to have kids, the best time is to start having them now. The same goes for startups; I would venture to say that there are no people in the world who are ready and prepared to start a startup, and that's the beauty of it -- you learn as you go, adapting to the situations and opportunities that arise. Though I am not one of the two co-founders of YouNoodle, I am already very attached with the product and the team behind it (my second startup family, MonVia counts as first :p).
I still intend on attending university after this, even though I don't know exactly how many months/years that will be. I have confirmed my deferment at Santa Clara, and I heard that I can be held on deferment there for up to five years. Please don't ask me when I am going to university or try to make me feel guilty for not being "normal". I'm not normal, get used to it. I also intend on trying to get into Stanford again (after being rejected last year), and will be applying to other schools (Oxford and MIT so far) for the Fall of 2009, but who knows what is going to happen from now until then. Maybe I'll end up going to Harvard in 10 years and then getting my MBA from Stanford right after, but seriously, I have no idea what my future holds at this point.
To all the friends I will make, the people I will meet, the experiences I will take with me, the knowledge I will attain, the good judgment that I will gain through the bad judgment that I will make, the amazing city of San Francisco, and everything else that I will get out of this journey... Here I come!
There are many ways to die, you have to find the one way to live.
In transition right now
I am making a big decision on what to do the next year/few years, and will be writing a post once these plans are solidified in the next 1-2 weeks. Until then, just finishing up my final freelance jobs and getting over being sick for the last 5 weeks.
The announcement will affect the future of ClassOwl as well. When better opportunities arise, sometimes it is a good thing to just let go. It will be hard, but what I am about to be a part of is going to be a crazy fun ride, I really can't wait.
Online recipes + Email + BlackBerry = good food
It's 1:05am and I'm starvinggg for some good food. So I went online and found a recipe (trying to get better at cooking these days, I'll paste recipe at bottom). But then I realized that my computer wasn't connected to a printer, and we don't have a network at my house or any of that super hi-tech crap (we're all just on my open wireless router, if you're in the neighborhood drop by and use it all you want). So anyways, I thought I would copy the text into a file, put it on a USB flash drive, take it over to "The Mother Ship" (stupid HP computer that everyone uses), and then print it from there -- that computer is connected to the family printer. But then I was like, no, that is too inefficient; there MUST be a better way.
And then it hit me. Paste the recipe into an email and then send it to yourself. My BlackBerry will pick it up! SWEET. So I do that, and now I'm cooking with a spatula in my right hand and my BlackBerry in my left.
They don't call them "CrackBerrys" for nothin'... :D
Ingredients for Chinese Onion Omelet Recipe
- 3 cups chopped, raw onion
- 1/2 tablespoon corn syrup
- 1/4 cup corn oil
- 1/8 teaspoon pepper
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 4 eggs
Instructions
- Put the corn oil in a medium-sized frying pan. Add the corn syrup and onion and cook until the onion is yellowed and tender, stirring often.
- Add the salt, pepper, and cornstarch.
- Beat the eggs lightly and add the hot onion mixture. Drop by generous tablespoons into a heated pan with corn oil.
- Fry first on one side, then the other like pancakes, and serve.
I love technology...
High School is out, reading 4-Hour Work Week
I have a post that is coming regarding my time in High School, it is kind of long so I am taking my time writing it. Anyways, just wanted to give my readers an update on what I've been up to.
Summer has started out lazily for me; I've finally caught up on all the sleep that I missed out on during the last 3 months when I was working on ClassOwl for 15 hours a day. If you've called me before 11am these last few days, sorry for missing your calls. No, I wasn't on a conference call, I was definitely sleeeeping. So I am caught up on Z's, and am gearing up to start working non-stop on ClassOwl once again.
We moved into a newer, bigger, nicer house about a week before school was out. That was interesting. I learned a lot about moving, the #1 thing that I learned was "Less Is More". As we were clearing out the garage, I realized how much crap you can compile over the years. We should have taken a dump truck instead of a UHAUL for half the stuff too; if it's in your garage, it is probably never going to be used. The only thing in my garage that I wanted to keep were my skis, and I'm going to get a new pair this year anyways.
My parents bought a nice TV for the first time in my life; a 46" Sharp Aquos LCD. We also got cable for the first time in our lives too, DirecTV.
I'm currently finishing up 2 freelance jobs, and starting 1 other. These are the last freelance jobs that I will be having in a while, I just took them so I could make enough money to not worry about working for the rest of summer.
My love for Django has only increased since I took a break from the crazy amounts of Python I was writing on ClassOwl every night. It's hard for me to not recommend Django to someone looking for a beautiful web framework. Recently I've been writing custom Middleware classes just for fun.
I also picked up a book at Borders a few days ago, The 4-Hour Work Week, thanks to Scoble's recommendation. It is making me think a lot and re-evaluate the way I think about retiring. Why slave your whole life for 40-45 years and then retire at the end? He talks about how the "New Rich" are taking mini-retirements throughout their lives and enjoying the world a lot more than saving it all for the end. He also talks a lot about cutting all the BS; meetings that waste time, checking email too much, responding to everyone's whims, etc. There are very few real emergencies that ever happen, people just make everything out to be an "emergency".
It's cool because before reading this, I thought that always being available was the greatest thing. But making yourself unavailable to everyone will help you to be much more efficient and effective in whatever you do. I am almost about to stop reading my feeds in Google Reader, but that would be oh-so-hard to let go of!
So there's a little update of what has been going on. Check out my Facebook to see all the pictures because I document all my adventures now.
New Camera… Tons of pics
James and I were tired of not having any pictures of all the places and adventures we go on... So we just said screw it and went to Best Buy and bought a camera. It's the Canon PowerShot SD1000, and it is awesome!
So now we're taking pictures of everything we do and everywhere we go. And all my pictures go straight to Facebook.
Pictures from the Giants game last night
Have a great weekend!