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So we had a plumber over to remove the tub in our “nasty” bathroom at the bottom of our house. This tub looked like someone had throw it away, then who ever was working on the bathroom before us had spotted it and decided to save a little money by using it. It was an old, ugly and nasty shade of yellow where the rest of the bathroom is mostly white. It was built onto a shoddy looking pedestal and was an all around gross installation. It didn’t help things when our cat decided to start pissing in it, but it didn’t exactly hurt things either.

So upon removal, we discovered a few things. The installers were not very good, it didn’t meet any sort of code and it was rotting out. Keep in mind, the tub was never, ever used. If it had ever been filled with water it probably would have collapsed through the mounting. The drain in the concrete is in a bit of a weird place, hence the pedestal instead of relocating it (expensive). These are the things I believe we can do to resolve this problem.

1. Replace with similar tub and shower assembly, but do it right. This will involve a reasonable amount of cement removal to relocate the drain to the proper place. It will also cost the most, probably between $5,000 and $6,000. Seems like a lot of money for something we’ll never use, but if it were to increase the sale price of the house or make it sell faster, it could be worth it.
2. Replace with full size shower stall, hopefully with the drain located closer to where the drain is now. In theory, less cement removal should be cheaper, but finding one of these 60″ shower only units is a little harder. Google only found me a couple and none of Lowes/Home Depot didn’t seem to have anything like it. Not sure how much it would cost, it might only be $500 or so cheaper.
3. Don’t replace with a shower or tub, perhaps with a big utility sink instead.

In any of the above cases, we are going to swap the side that the washer and dryer are on so that we can make the bedroom an official bedroom. Since the dryer, heater and water heater all draw air from that bedroom it isn’t legally allowed to be a bedroom. We humans like our oxygen, but so does fire. To solve it, we can flip the washer and dryer into the bathroom, wall (or door) off the heater and water heater and then ventilate the room they are in to the outside (can’t draw combustion air from the garage, gasoline fumes are very inflammable).

Last week, Mary Ann flew out to join me for a little over a week. We hoped to use that time to find a place to live and we accomplished our goal. We also got a few other minor things taken care of, like adding her to our bank account here and who knows what else. I had my birthday while she was here, part of the reason she joined me after I had only been here 4 days. Logically, it probably would have been better to come a week or so later… but it was nice to have her here on my birthday.

The place we found is called Birch Creek Apartments. It isn’t a new apartment complex, but it is decent. The grounds are pretty, well manicured and include a few fake streams and such. It isn’t the nicest we looked at, but it is in a great location about 5 miles from Facebook and about 3 miles from a clinic where Mary Ann hopes to get a job. It was one of the largest we found, at about 1060 square feet and it is a 2 bedroom and 2 bathroom, so when anyone comes to visit… they can have their own bathroom. The complex also has a “cabana” which one can rent for $60/night, so if someone visiting doesn’t want to say with us (or is just to many people), they can stay there cheaper than a hotel and be very close. It has a pool too. And it is pet friendly. Our move in date is April 25th, baring any unforeseen issues.

So today I accomplished a few things: I signed up for a PO Box in Palo Alto, went to CitiBank and finished creating an account and I started working for Facebook. Yes, today was my first day at Facebook and the only words I can use to describe it are “fucking awesome.”

There are a lot of things I am not allowed to talk about, but I believe I can say that the new hire orientation was very sweet. Unlike when I started at any other company, I am basically ready to go by the end of day one. Apparently this is rather new, but after the usual new hire spiel the IT guys showed up with all of our phones and all of our laptops, walked us through getting everything setup and fixed a few problems on the spot.

I got a Mac. Yup, I don’t have a PC. So far, I love it. I’m going to get VMware Fusion so that I can run some windows (rarely) and some Ubuntu.

And the benefits! They have breakfast, lunch and dinner catered! Dry cleaning is free (you pay taxes)! There are other things too, but I can’t recall them at the moment.

I’ve also got a temporary (few months) room about 0.5mi from Facebook, so I am walking to work. Have a look at my room!

So today I am officially announcing a huge change in our lives. On November 19th, less than a month after starting my new position at Nokia, I was contacted by a recruiter asking about a position in Palo Alto. I replied to him that I had just taken a new position and wasn’t really looking for a new one, but that I might be open to a once in a lifetime opportunity. He replied asking if I knew anyone that would be interested in an Operations Engineering type position with Facebook and of course I replied saying that was exactly the sort of once in a lifetime opportunity I was talking about.

He arranged for me to speak with a Facebook recruiter over the phone on November 29th. I guess I met any requirements he had, so a technical interview was arranged. This didn’t happen until December 11th, so things were proceeding at a relatively slow pace. After my first technical phone interview, they decided that they would like to do a second one. Normally, I believe they would have done an in person interview, but since I was so far away they wanted to do a 2nd before deciding to fly me out for an in person interview. This second phone interview happened pretty soon after the first, on December 17th.

A few days later I found out they were interested in doing an in person interview. With the holidays approaching, we decided that it would be better to wait until a week or so after. On January 11th, I had a 2 hour interview at their office in Palo Alto. On January 18th, they made me an offer and on the 22nd I accepted. My start date is February 25th and I fly out on the 23rd. Currently, I still don’t have a place to stay and am looking on craigslist for short term housing and might end up at an extended stay hotel type place.

Perhaps you’d like to hear a little more detail about our visit to Palo Alto and the interview? Mary Ann and I decided it would be useful for her to come with me, so she could explore the area for housing and potential places to work. We flew out the day before my interview, stayed two nights and then flew back. We drove around the Palo Alto area a lot and just sort of took it all in. We also went and had dinner with Bharat, our Gallery friend who lives in the area.

The interview itself was actually pretty fun. My recent interview at Nokia sort of made me realize something and also provided a situation I had never interviewed in before. Since I already had a job I liked (in both cases) and would be okay either way, I was able to just sort of let go and be myself. Of course, I was nervous as heck and probably sounded a bit silly, but at the same time I was able to be more myself. The technical portion went okay, there were many things I knew, some things I didn’t know and some things I figured out literally while we were talking about it. The two common things between my last two interviews was that when I didn’t know something, I believe I was plain that I wasn’t sure, but offered an educated guess. Then, I followed up with questions and actually cared about figuring it out or at the very least learning when I was totally unable to figure it out.

I’ve never moved across the country by myself, so this is proving a bit hard. I also have to deal with getting our house ready to sell, and of course selling it… in the worst selling market known to man. Our plan is for me to fly out, start my job and live some place temporary while we look for a place. Mary Ann is going to join me for about a week, helping me find some place, possibly interviewing at some vet clinics in the area and doing what ever else we need to do. Once we have a place, we’ll make the cross country drive in a big moving truck with our car on a trailer and the animals who knows where. Simultaneously, Mary Ann will have the task of cleaning, repairing and fixing up our house to the point it can be safely put on the market. Not a job I’d want to have. The last two weeks I am here are going to be a mad dash of my dad and I doing as much as possible.