Today is my last day at Symantec after nearly 7 years. I’ve had one of the best experiences of my life working for this company and I’m sad to leave it behind but new opportunity awaits at The Wall Street Journal where I will be working on their digital team. Symantec has been the common thread that tied together living in Minneapolis, San Francisco, and now New York. That along with working as an engineer, going back to business school, becoming a product manager and traveling to all ends of the world. I would never have dreamed that I would have so many great opportunities with a single company straight out of college. I’m looking forward to what is ahead and I’ll be starting at WSJ next week.
Tag Archives: New York
Not in NY Anymore
NY Music
Not sure how to take this. It seems to show that NY finds out about hip bands at the same time as the rest of the country but gets way more obsessed about them? Also it seems like new yorkers are more in to first albums than bands that have follow up albums (Green Day, Muse).
Brooklyn
It’s been 3 weeks since I left the warm confines of San Francisco for New York. I’m quickly falling in to the duality of loving both places but Brooklyn felt much more quickly like home than SF once did. Something about the pace of every day life here feels more normal. San Francisco was surrounded with amazing people but there was also tons of weird randomness in the city that I never understood. The huge homeless population, general public nudity or random encounters with strangers were such a jarring thing for a midwest boy to get use to – even with all the previous travel and relocations in my life. It was exciting at first but you slowly begin to tune it out. I knew within the first few days in New York that this was gone and I would be happy for it since you become slightly soul-less when you ignore massive amounts of the public population or problems where you live. I do miss it in some stockholm-syndrome type way though. I always had good stories about ass-less chaps, the next great trick to get some spare change out of you, or just the general crazy-happiness that San Francisco people seem to employ. The result has been that I prefer living in New York but there is a piece of me left in San Francisco (and Minneapolis). That mainly seems to be the food and the magical excitement/adventure that SF seems to have in the air. It is bizarre to say but New York is magical too but in a more practical way (better). If you could somehow fold SF in to Brooklyn (it would fit great next to Park Slope) then I would be in heaven. You could just float back and forth at will. And throw Minneapolis in (minus the winters) + old friends while you’re at it.
Cutest part of the NY marathon
This went on for awhile and after 30min they laid down in the same spot
Custom shirts
Last Friday when I was in New York I had some custom shirts made. Based on several recommendations and some internet research I went to Carl Goldberg where he runs a shop called Cego. The place was buried at the top of a building on 5th ave with rolls upon rolls of fabric strewn everywhere. I had somewhat of an idea on what I wanted but after seeing the selection I was a little overwhelmed. The main reason I was doing custom shirts was for the perfect fit not fabric selection but I killed nearly an hour just going through all the choices. That day I had worn a Banana Republic shirt I’ve liked for two seasons and it had been tailored to fit reasonably well. So I was shocked when he immediately identified the year and location of my shirt without looking at the tag or asking me. He also pointed out everything that was wrong with the shirt and said I could gain 20 lbs to make it fit right. I love no bullshit New Yorkers (hard to find) but I didn’t need selling, I was coming to him since I haven’t been able to find the perfect shirt. Carl himself was disheveled with coffee stains on his shirt and a suit that had never touched an iron. Somehow I had expected he would look much more put together but I took comfort in the fact that he didn’t give a rats ass about how he looked. Like all of his passion was wrapped up in what he was creating for others. His assistant was done up in a custom shirt and pants so you could at least see some of his work in action walking around. Continue reading
Temp New York office for rest of the week
Flip Video
I’m absolutely in love with this simple little camera. After hauling my laptop in to a bar in Boulder I read about this camera on the intraweb. It records 30min of video, no menu/settings, just on/off, record, play and delete buttons. When you’re done it has a flip out USB that shows up as a portable hard drive on your computer. Made shooting video in Austin and New York way easier this weekend and should be a great little gadget for Europe in May. Here’s a sample video of me playing with Katie’s cat:
Symantec Roadshow: New York
Sunday afternoon I flew out to New York to do a planning session with some guys from work. Timing worked out well since Rex was out here to meet with some of his colleagues from Italy. We watched the Giants/Packers game Sunday night which was entertaining to be pulling for the Packers in the center of New York. There were definitely more Packer fans than Giant fans but of course the handful of Giant fans were very vocal. Sergio, one of the guys from Italy, even wore his Packers scarf like it was a non-American football match. What a lousy game they played though. The theme seemed to be just how sloppy everyone played, 3 attempts to win the game with a field goal, possibly Favre’s last pass being an interception, missed calls, etc. Oh well. Not much exciting to really talk about since Monday and today were spent holed up in a conference room. The New York office is in a nice location, just a few blocks from Time Square where I’m staying and we’ve got the whole 17th floor. Most of the guys I know from here work from home so they don’t come in unless someone is visiting. We all went out for dinner last night at this sushi place which was fantastic. It’s hard to do sushi with people from work since usually someone ends up not liking it but we were all on the same page. There are a couple of people back in Minneapolis that are in to sushi too but we’ve never been able to do it for dinner (just a quick Byerly’s run during lunch). Speaking of lunch, I’m grabbing some with Katie before heading down to Orlando which will be fun. I wish I had more time here to see everyone but I at least got to see some. I’ll conclude by pointing out it’s 74 in Orlando right now and 1 degree in Minneapolis according to iGoogle. Work picked a really good time to send me off to do training in Florida/California. I’ve got a busy afternoon of traveling so I gotta run but hopefully I’ll have some entertaining stories with the travels.
Lollapalooza
Man what a weekend. This is going to be a long post reviewing the festival, so set some time aside if you want to read it or skim for the bands that are bold below. Wednesday night I went down to Chicago, flying first class thanks to work upgrading my frequent flyer status to “Silver Elite” on Northwest. I’m definitely going to try and fly as much as I can before the end of February to try and get enough miles to have Elite status for another year. Flying first class is really sweet. Anyways, I got in Wednesday night driving around with Pat trying to find a place that was open to eat. A lot of people go to bars on Wednesday night in Chicago since a lot of people were drinking but the kitchens were closed. Resorting to Wendy’s we went back and crashed at Pat’s place. Thursday we met up with Dave for lunch at Qdoba and then I hung out at the 311 building next to the Sears Tower since Pat had to work and I had a paper to write. I forgot how much I love hanging out at a coffee shop when I’m on the computer. Something about people watching is just really entertaining to me, not in a creepy way. Continue reading