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Ever since my man vs boat experience, I have been a bit reluctant to ride a bike in Vancouver. I figure I need to face my fears and get out there.

I bought a bike and started bike commuting. I might be the only person dumb enough to take a bike from Vancouver to downtown Portland, but I have never been much for fitting in. Actually, I do not ride the entire 11 miles. I grab the Yellow Line in North Portland.

I get a Tri-met pass for work, so minus the cost of the bike, my commute is now free. Woohoo.

Going over the Interstate Bridge in the rain, wind, and dark is less than my favorite activity in the world. Otherwise, I enjoy my commute better than sitting in traffic.

Next step, move back to Portland.

Many of you probably watched the Super Bowl last Sunday. You also probably watched the commercials. To throw out some shameless self promotion, I had the pleasure of being apart of one of those ads. Ok, it was not me directly. Although I do enjoy Doritos and not wearing my Dockers.

In the third quarter Google had an ad. You can watch it below. They called it Parisian Love. Between seconds 36 and 40 search of ‘AA 120′ is made (a flight number). This referenced my employer, FlightStats.

There has been a ton of chatter in our office the last couple days, but in general we are all really excited. One of our marketing people said he would never be able to top an accidental Super Bowl ad appearance – career over.

I do have to say it is nice working for a team and product with such high credentials.

One of the perks of working at Conducive is a free parking pass. Parking Management Company (PMC) is kind enough to organize the logistics of this sweet deal. PMC has about 300 locations in Portland, Salem, and Vancouver which I can now use anytime I want.

I found a problem though. After looking and looking, I could not find a map of the locations. If my normal lot is full, I could not find an alternative easily without skimming the list. On the weekends, I want to find a location close to the weekend activity of choice. So, I made a map. I hope somebody out there finds this as helpful as I think it will be for me.

View PMC Parking Map in a larger map

It looks like 2009 is going to end soon. I thought I would reflect on what has happened to me over this last year. Although not a complete list, here we go:

• One of my best friends passed away
• I worked 16 hours on my birthday
• Took family trips to the San Juan Islands, Arizona, and Wisonsin
• Lost my job and got a new one
• Dreamed about owning a house and new car

As far as years go, this one was ‘meh’. Good-bye 2009.

Yep, that is right. I got a job. I started, well, yesterday.

I am now a Software Engineer at Conducive Technology. Conducive, among other things, runs FlightStats.com which tracks flight data (arrival time, status, delays, etc).

I will be on the web/API/Web Service team, creating and maintaining the tools and various user facing apps. The other half of the team works on the data collection/validation process.

Conducive is a small company; I am about number 18 with options to add maybe five next year. It is located right downtown Portland. I am pretty excited about my options here.

Pros

• They are profitable, VC backed, stable, and an industry leader.
• I love product development (as opposed to service development) – always have. I am just more passionate about what I am creating.
• Flight Stats is a pretty big site. Page views and hits are measured in the many millions. This is a huge upgrade from many thousands. By this time next year, that number will be close to 50mm.
• In addition to having many visitors, the site is planned to go into multiple international markets.
• Much less structure allows me to have flex hours and making my own hours really.

Cons

• The commute to downtown Portland is about four times longer than the 20 blocks I did before. We will see how this goes.
• I am now an engineer where I had been an architect for the last year and a half. This I saw coming. When I moved into my architect position, I knew I would not be able to maintain it if I left Formos. Nobody would hire somebody so young into an architect spot, rather one needs to be promoted to it.
• Being an engineer and at a product based company, there will be little client facing interaction. This had been a large portion of my work at Formos.

With five weeks of doing nothing, I am very eager to get back to it. Here we go.