The Brad Hole

Thursday around noon, we'll be loading up my car and making the drive out to San Jose. Beth has detailed that in her blog so I won't repeat any of that here.

What I will say is that this is going to be a hard trip to make. The biggest downside to taking the job at Apple is having to relocate, and for me it's a huge downside. It's no exaggeration to say that it was very nearly the deal-killer for me. Only by sitting down and making lists and crunching numbers did we reach the eventuality that it was doable, and even then there are really a lot of sacrifices that make me uncomfortable in the short term.

For one, I'll be separated from Beth for roughly a year and a half. Sure, we'll make frequent trips to visit (hopefully once a month) but until she graduates from ASU in Dec. 08 and we can sell our house in Phoenix, it's going to be very painful. I'll also not get to see our dogs for most of that time, unless I'm back in Phoenix visiting. I'll miss a year and a half of watching them grow up - and tear things up - in this house.

I'll miss my friends here in Phoenix, most of whom I've known for 15-20 years. We've got a rotating monthly poker game that is as much fun for the social aspects of getting together as it is for the poker. This is a group of guys I've known since roughly freshman year of college some 18 years ago, and one guy i've known since high school. It's hard to quantify how much this sort of thing weighs in a decision to relocate, but I do know that I was glad when I moved back to Phoenix from Austin and this was one of the primary reasons why.

I'm going to miss working with the guys at Aspyr, a number of whom I've known for 8-10 years. In fact I heard today that one of the colleagues I'd worked with previously and of whom I think highly will be joining Aspyr. I was remarking to another colleague yesterday about our porting library and how it is, by comparison to a lot of code we see, very clean, reasonably well commented and formatted and fairly easy to work with all things considered. I've gotten used to working in Xcode after leaving CodeWarrior behind for good a few years ago. I'd be a little nervous about using other, more basic, tools.

I used to remark that while it's nice working from home, it can be a little lonely at times. I've definitely moved past that, and having 2 dogs and 2 cats running around frankly is more companionship than I really want. ;-) So I'm a little nervous about being back in an office. Beth remarked the other day that I'll no longer be able to fart indiscriminately -- sometimes it's the simple things in life.

I'll be living in a "corporate apartment" that's fully furnished for up to 30 days once I arrive. I have roughly that much time to find an apartment (or god forbid, a roommate). Housing is expensive out there - ridiculously so - that maintaining our mortgage on the house here while also having an apartment out there is going to cause some belt tightening in the short term.

Then I get to come back out to Phoenix, load up a small truck full of stuff and do a mini-move. One logistic I haven't quite nailed down are my computers. What do I leave here and what do I take with me? I've got my e-mail and all my "personal" stuff on this Mac mini, but it's also hosting our websites and blogs. I could take it with me, but there's no guarantee I'll have an internet to plug it into in the corporate place. So I think I'll leave it here for now and move it once I get my own place. I've got a Macbook, but it's Aspyr's and so is going back along with a PowerMac G5 that, frankly, has just collected dust for the past year. That leaves me with an Intel iMac that I got as part of signing up for Apple's Intel developer kit way back when. It has a camera built-in, so it seems like the best bet; I'll get to do video chats with Beth which should help with being apart.

And so it goes. I'm excited to be working for Apple, of course, and I'm cautiously optimistic that this will all work out. There's only one way to find out though!