Friday, 5/9/2008 Home [ About Me ] Delight Reading   Writing

I've been living in Seattle, WA since 1996 and have no plans to leave any time soon. I'm surrounded by water and trees and mountains and the rain keeps the vegetation lush and the streets clean. I've made some great friends and live comfortably here. I never imagined I'd leave California, but I'm very happy here.    I've began working in the high-tech sector when I moved to Seattle in 1996, and it was quite a ride. I spent the first 5 years working for a startup dotcom (first we were "TechWave" then "ShopNow.com" and then "Network Commerce") . . . went from 15 people to 650, went public, doubled in price, and then BOOM. A long fall from a market cap of over a billion, to a million, to what is currently $130,000. I moved on. They filed for bankruptcy in Fall 2002. But looking back, I had a great time, learned a ton, did some fantastic resume-building, partied in Maui with the Pointer Sisters playing us a private concert, made contacts, and I would do it all again in a heartbeat.    In May 2001, I started workting for another startup: Civia Media Group. We made interactive touchscreens for public spaces--sort of halfway between television and the Internet, and I had a good time while it lasted. It was a cool product, very futuristic, but a cool product does not a successful company make. This product has evolved under several different companies, and I imagine it will continue to survive. I actually worked on the original prototype when I was at TechWave (see how contacts pay off later?). Civia's offices were in Fisher Plaza, right across the street from the Space Needle, and home to our local Channel 4, KOMO. The news helicopter was parked right overhead. Very cool and high-tech. But funding dried up quickly, and I was purged in the fourth round of layoffs in March 2002.    In May 2002, I took a job at the University of Washington as the "Web Computing Specialist" for the Graduate School. My job was to streamline process, reduce paperwork, etc., by building and maintaining web-based tools that staff, students, and faculty can use to access and update data. It was rewarding to be making people's jobs easier, and to be working for an orginization that's committed to something other than quarterly profits. The mission was clear, and there was plenty of work for me. I loved being on campus again, and I even had an office of my own. Four walls, a door, and a window -- the good life, to be sure. I stayed for 3 years.    In May 2005, I was wooed back into the private/corporate sector by the good people of Tommy Bahama. Yes, their corporate headquarters are here in Seattle. It's a good gig and I'm still able to bike commute. I'm straddling a diverse range of technologies and platforms, from PHP and J2EE/JSP sites running on Linux, .NET applications running on Windows, to stuff I can't even tell you about here, but I'll eventually add to my resume :)    What, life beyond work? -- Yes, I've been trying that on for size, and find it suits me. In my spare time, I've been doing some drumming--nothing serious, but it's consistent--and playing tennis. I also have some other projects... I joined Parent Trust's Board of Directors in 2001, which is a cool opportunity to get some experience while supporting a worthy cause... I also do website work for a handful of friends and customers, some of which is detailed on my Web Development page.    In 2000, I bought a house, and got married. It was an incredible year. We bought the house in March, and spent 4 months remodeling it: 6-7 hours every weekday, and another 20-30 over the weekends. It was grueling, but we're quite happy now that we're done, and it was great learning experience. Before-and-after pictures are online; take a tour: [before] | [after]. Actually, the "after" pictures were taken a month before we finished--we did complete the upstairs :) In the summer of 2002, we found a new house, and put the first house up for sale. But the market only favored us as buyers, and while we're very happy in our new home (pictures coming soon), we had to rent out our old one. Hopefully in a year or so, we'll have a better run. For now, things are tight, but we're getting by and making the best of it. But then we sold it in 2004 as the market smiled upon us :)

J1999-2008 Darryl Laferte