my life, as far as i know.

saw scissor sisters at the warfield tonight. good show. i still can’t hear audio at normal volumes.

long story. that’s a sun e10k in the hallway at work. it was such a symbolic posession for a company doing bioinformatic computing. but none of the IT staff ever had the right vision. the machine was misused and grossly underused. but i was lucky enough to learn how to run it.

anyways, i’ve decided to change scenery. starting october 16th, i will be working for a different company. my focus will be similar, but the equipment and software used will all be diffierent.

let me back up a little bit. when i moved to california, i started my professional career as a unix systems administrator. i was hired by a contracting firm. i was out on various contracts got great exposure to a variety of environments over the course of seven years. then i felt the hurt of the tech downturn. i was unemployed for a while. i was back on a gig i wasn’t too enthused about. that time, i looked for a new place. i quit contracting and went full time at a scientific company. i’ve been there for four years.

why am i making this change again?

that’s the most easy and difficult question to answer.

on my way home from work today i was thinking about how to answer that. of course this isn’t the first time. i certainly knew the answer when i started looking for jobs elsewhere. i had some answers when people who were interviewing me asked. and i had little to offer when my own employer asked me. now, composing this blog post, i’m at a loss.

the easy answer now is it feels right for me and that’s really all the answer i need. i have control over my own life. leaving my current employer both hurts and feels good. hurts, in the matter where i’m leaving some coworkers and a director i respect and enjoy working with. feels good in that my new commute will be half, the department seems more healthy, and the company looks stable.

every place has its good points and the bad. this new place will have its own matters-of-suck but will have some good points too.

i can say easily now, that job hunting sucks. most unix IT jobs are held by exclusive searches and headhunters. and they are all getting in the ballpark of 15% commission. they hold all the open jobs. and they all use the internet to find people jobs. why else would they take my reinvented, evolved resume and turn it into a list of keywords and product names. a lot of headhunting is likely off-shored too, as evident by getting lots of VOIP-like caller-id calls, some of which had such poor voice quality I could not make out information left in my voicemail box. another hint that these head searches are search engine based, is the fact that I mention a partciular product as a minor point on my resume. I was getting job offers where the crucial experience required was that product. If a human had actually read my resume, they would have overlooked it.

this job hunt has been an emotional experience for me. this year has really be emotional. dad. burning man. layoffs.

i have reserved some personal time for myself between jobs, but it will not be enough.

so for now, i will finish this post. put on journey and turn up the volume. and finish the last of this valrhona dark bitter chocolate.

i need to go out with my camera and have some fun.

dry aged new york steak, seasoned with french herbs and course sea salt and worcestershire sauce. hand cut fries, with fresh rosemary (from the backyard) and salt. and 2000 heitz cabernet.

probably our most perfect meal yet, in terms of taste, presentation, and portion size.

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one time.. at burning man camp..

when we first arrived it was dark and we had no idea what we were doing. we knew the intersection we were supposed to be at. we slowly navigated the roads.. there were people milling around at 4am, just hours after the gate officially opened.

we found our intersection. we didn’t recognize anything.. ok, we didn’t know what to look for. we parked and looked around. we eventually found the tea temple sign, which reads nunquam dormio. must be the spot. we drove slowly into the camp site, marked off by rolls of carpet and pieces of wood. we parked and slept in the van that night. in the morning (only two hours later) we’d find our campmate mark and things fell quickly into place.

these pink flamingos are what we used to mark off our own site within the camp. by the end of the week, they weren’t looking so pink. in fact, most of our posessions were losing their color and becoming covered in dust.

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this is another shot of the playa floor. there are tracks everywhere, in every depth and shape. the most identifiable tracks were those made by a steam locomotive.

on saturday, the day of the burn, ryan and i were out on the playa exploring. we found the temple of hope. it was a huge white wooden memorial temple. there were signs and scrawls all over it. people remembering lost ones and writing message to them. after reading for a few minutes, i started to tear up. i wanted to distance myself.

ryan and i walked off.. and i kept thinking about the temple and how sad it was. i wanted to go back. it took a while to find a working sharpie to use. i wanted to let my dad know i made it to burning man and that i was thinking of him. i wrote:

love from bm 2006. miss you dad. love, jason

the temple was burned down sunday night.

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if you search on the web for barbie death camp and wine bistro you will find plenty of pictures. this is one of the burning man camps i didn’t want to pass up and shoot. we talked with someone at the camp - the owner brews his own wine. they served so much last year, that to avoid dealing with all the bottles and canisters, they brought the wine in a pressurized cannister. yes, wine on tap. we had the red. where else can you try home brewed wine and marvel at hundreds of disfigured barbie dolls in bondage?

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this is one of the first pictures i shot in black rock city. it took a while to get over how strange the terrain is. a month before burning man, the place was under water.

as the ground gets trampled on, the top layer breaks and forms super fine dust, which eventually gets everywhere (including inside your plastic bins inside your tent). somehow the dust got to our sausage, which was double-wrapped in paper in a cooler in the tent. after a bad dust storm, the ground is again different. it was fun to go out on the playa and ride bikes over un-broken top layer.

those science fiction movies that have scenes of the distant, post-apocalyptic future.. you know, where everybody is dirty, there are tribal dances going on, any lighting is neon and multicolored. people are driving weird barren vehicles and constantly drinking.

that’s what the playa is like at night.

we arrived at the site around 3am on monday morning. we had been part of a caravan along the entire 100+ miles from reno to gerlach. the lake bed was so weird. grey, hard, with wicked cracks and dust everywhere. at the entrance gate we were identified as virgins (newcomers) and asked to worship “eurotrash” the guy greeting us before we entered. we were soon our our way to our campsite. i knew the coordinants, but it was already 4am by the time we made it in all the way. we found the camp sign and parked. we slept for about two hours that night, in the front seats of our rented minivan. i was nearly too excited to sleep.

in the morning we found mark, one of the core camp guys, and everything just fell into place.

everything about the site is foreign. the weather, the terrain, and sites and smells, and the sounds. the funny thing is, most everybody we met was from san francisco.

today, taking a warm shower at home felt like a day at the spa.

it was my first shower in a week. it took three shampoos to feel good about my hair. it felt so good.

i have a few days to relax and unwind (rewind?), so don’t expect much from me for at least a week.

ryan and i talked about which of our friends we could imagine out on the playa. B, you were missed and talked about - i will be all over organizing for next year!

i have seen plenty of fire, danger, nudity, and dust for quite a while. and i am already thinking about going next year.

for now, we are back from burning man.