2002: Just returned from Australia. Thanksgiving in Redmond, WA. Very unsure at the time as to what to do next. Learned VB .NET, started thinking about how to get a job at Microsoft. Began to watch my savings drift towards zero; began looking for work locally [which happened a few weeks later, thanks Dave!].
2001: On sabbatical. Thanksgiving in London. Spent my days mostly hiking at Almaden Quicksilver park and writing. Not a productive month by any means. Spent two plus weeks in Europe with Dan; high point perhaps dinner in Córdoba, or the bear night in Cologne. Started to feel like I was wasting my life and that we should be getting along to Australia soon. Very strange times.
2000: Working at Netscape; recent promotion to Manager, Communicator QA. Thanksgiving presumably in Los Angeles. Dot com boom definitely off its bloom; stock down. I had left the Mozilla project & had become the poster child of mcom.bad-attitude at this point.
1999: The height of the dot com bubble. Money seemingly in endless supply if only you cashed in your options. [Hint: I didn't.] The big re-org long past, concentrated on shipping Netscape 6. Busy busy busy.
1998: Working on Netscape Communicator 4.0x; getting ready to go to Moldova for Christmas. Earning nearly double my FileMaker salary, working with amazingly cool people, thriving in the thick of the whole dot com frenzy. Heady times. Kept checking my stock, wondering if I could maybe afford a new car next year...
1997: Lead QA engineer for FileMaker Pro Server. First Thanksgiving in our new house in San José. Finally started earning enough money to travel more than once every few years; celebrated by going to Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, and Cologne with my friend Mike Ramsey. Dan was too busy working on Internet Explorer to come with.
1996: FileMaker QA engineer, presumably. Very angry and irritable at the time, largely due to a sense that everyone was doing better in their careers than I was. Not a fun person to be around.
1995: Working as a technical trainer at FileMaker, teaching FileMaker courses to developers, tech support, and customers. Seemed like a great job for me, but I was still disappointed that I wasn't as good as Dan - I couldn't actually do QA yet. Dan and I had started living together in May of 1995 but were still only roommates - we had separate beds. This changed when we moved to Mountain View from San Francisco.
1994: Working in Claris tech support queues. Learning to dread phrases like "I'm having trouble printing labels." Very happy not to be working retail, though. Loved the idea of only working weekdays. Had just moved to Belmont with
sinnabor and danlmarmot - it was the New Age Three-Way Love Thing, except that we weren't sleeping with each other. In retrospect, it would've been even more fun that way.1993: Pre-Marmot. Living at 245 John Street, Oakland. Dating a guy named Joe, I think, who had come in to CompUSA to buy a IIvx earlier in the year. [He eventually bought a Centris 650 instead.] Working as the Mac department manager at CompUSA, San Bruno. $9 an hour or so, bad hours, but I still love working with the public.
1992: Living in the unheated garage at John Street. Had my first real date with a bear on Election Day. Got to go home with the guy, but did not have sex. Got scabies, though. Recently graduated Cal with a double major in English and German; working at CompUSA for about $6 an hour. My first real job.
1991: Living at 1890 Arch Street, Berkeley. Dating Mark. Getting ready to go to Europe over New Year's. Working at Bear Bytes, the software store in the ASUC at Cal. Broke most of the time, but my parents did pay my rent. Thanks!
1990: Living with Annalee in a different apartment at Arch Street. Dating a guy named Joe, who is a Trekker grad student. Actually, I think he'd broken up with me at this point. Vaguely remember going on a diet for the first time in my life about now; was about to place a personal ad in the East Bay Express and meet Mark.
1989: Living in Tübingen, Germany. Finally lost my virginity this year, to a bear named Roland. I was too scared to go on a second date, though. What a waste. Ah, regret. Roland is still one of the most handsome men I've ever met.
1988: Living on Shattuck Avenue, in a rented room. Voted for Dukakis. Lamest victory party EVER held in El Cerrito. Met
cbertsch that semester - I think - in French and German classes on campus. Easily one of the best things ever to happen to me.1987: Living in Cheney Hall, Berkeley, with a San Diegan golfer. Not especially happy about things. I had finally come out and joined the undergrad gay men's support group only to find my worst fears about homosexuality were true: all gay men were undesirable bitchy twinks who wouldn't even talk to me, much less hook me up with any bears they happened to know. This was profoundly disappointing.
1986: Living in Senior Hall, RLS, Pebble Beach. Computer at the time: Leading Edge Model D. Working on getting a medical exemption for my beard [which is against school rules]. My Dad gets it for me. Yay Dad! Definitely interested in sleeping with Bob H., the history teacher, but figured all that could wait until I got to college.
1985: Living in Essen, Germany with the Dostal family as an exchange student - couldn't have asked for a better year abroad. Had started smoking Roth-Händle cigarettes. Best friend named Olaf. First memory of using the word 'bear' in a gay context - used it to describe myself to two women in Cologne while were were in a gay bar [they were feminists and didn't like drinking in straight bars, they claimed]. Little did I know that the Kölner Bartmänner [Bears of Cologne] had already been meeting for five years at the time. Wish I'd have met them then but as a sixteen year old kid, can you really expect that adults would want to take you home?
1984: 10th grade. I don't remember much of anything before 10th grade.
