chadwest.net » Work http://chadwest.net Weblog for Chad West Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:03:22 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Coming out of retirement… http://chadwest.net/2007/10/26/coming-out-of-retirement/ http://chadwest.net/2007/10/26/coming-out-of-retirement/#comments Fri, 26 Oct 2007 22:29:00 +0000 chad http://chadwest.net/2007/10/26/coming-out-of-retirement/ Back at the end of April I made the decision to get away from the software industry for a bit to invest in myself. Mind, body, and soul. I know how very Californian of me!

The past 6 months have been wonderful. I just finished up traveling throughout Europe for a few months. Logged a ton of time on my bicycle and at the gym getting into shape. Spent free time tooling around with various business ideas which had been kicking around my head for quite some time.

Most important of all. I was able to spend over a month with my family back in Rochester, NY. I haven’t had the opportunity to do this in quite some time and enjoyed it immensely. It was nice not to have to feel rushed, it gave me time to kick around my hometown and explore it a bit. For some reason I never did that when I lived there for the first 20+ years of my life…

Anyway, today I am happy to announce this has all come to an end. I have joined a few of my friends in starting a new company. Backblaze! We plan to make everyones lives a bit less stressful. Especially those who tend to be the ‘go to tech guy‘ of the family!

More about what we are doing in the following weeks…

Now playing: Pixies – Gigantic – Surfer Rosa & Come On Pilgrim

]]> http://chadwest.net/2007/10/26/coming-out-of-retirement/feed/ 4 To bigger and better things… http://chadwest.net/2006/02/22/to-bigger-and-better-things/ http://chadwest.net/2006/02/22/to-bigger-and-better-things/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2006 14:00:45 +0000 chad http://velomob.com/?p=168 About two weeks ago the announcement of our acquisition was made public. Even though this is great for us as a company, it is unfortunately a deal breaker for me. I have been contemplating a change of venue for a while now due to the 40 mile commute to Palo Alto each day. Now that we’ll be moving to Sunnyvale it would tack on another 10 miles via the 2801.

Thus my last day was this past Friday. I will be staying on for a couple of months to help with wrapping up a few projects, and to transition my load to some other poor fool. Good news is that the majority of this will be done from the comfort of my flat in the city.

Taking back the 2 hours I was wasting each day in my car, and using it to work on Feedflow is going to be huge. Not to mention the lowered level of stress should make me a little more pleasant to be around!

1. If you know the Bay Area traffic situation, one always makes the effort to avoid the 101 commute south of the 92. This stretch of road can turn into a parking lot rather quickly, and often does! It not recommended.

Now playing: Nirvana – Lithium

]]> http://chadwest.net/2006/02/22/to-bigger-and-better-things/feed/ 5 Elvis has left the building… http://chadwest.net/2004/05/28/elvis-has-left-the-building/ http://chadwest.net/2004/05/28/elvis-has-left-the-building/#comments Fri, 28 May 2004 23:33:27 +0000 chad http://velomob.com/?p=96 It’s amazing how quickly 5 years can go by. Today was my last day working for Virage, Inc., and I have to say it was a pretty decent experience. A lot has happened over that period of time; went though our IPO, struck by the down turn of the market and had to lay off a bunch of good people, all in the end to be acquired by Autonomy, Inc. All in all, it was a great time, but now I am ready for something new.

What’s new?! You ask… Well MailFrontier to be exact, but they’ll have wait a week while I take some time to relax and clear my head.

]]> http://chadwest.net/2004/05/28/elvis-has-left-the-building/feed/ 7 Lazy or Apathetic? http://chadwest.net/2003/07/21/lazy-or-apathetic/ http://chadwest.net/2003/07/21/lazy-or-apathetic/#comments Mon, 21 Jul 2003 17:34:27 +0000 chad http://velomob.com/?p=31 It’s bad either way you look at it!

Here are some questions I have been asking myself over and over again in the past couple of weeks:

  1. Why do so many engineers refuse to write up bug reports?
  2. How can an engineer develop software with out actually understanding the system?
  3. How can someone be okay with a failing system?

I promise to expand on this soon, but am in the midst of setting up my linux box.

]]> http://chadwest.net/2003/07/21/lazy-or-apathetic/feed/ 3 UI Hell… http://chadwest.net/2003/07/02/ui-hell/ http://chadwest.net/2003/07/02/ui-hell/#comments Wed, 02 Jul 2003 19:34:32 +0000 chad http://velomob.com/?p=25 Well I’m in the process of writing Struts actions, which to me is a pretty boring part of development. We have a UI developer on our team, which is a big plus, but I still have to make sure the data she needs is in the resulting XML. It’s so tedious…

At least I was smart enough to grab Thievery Corporation’s, The Richest Man in Babylon this morning. The smooth groves are keeping me pretty mellow…

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