I got myself down to SOMA to go to a justin.tv tech-talk. Sure, they were talking about OAuth (which is pretty much a nice standard for authenticating to share data on the web) but of much more interest was who “they” are. But let’s back up.

The point of my going down there was to answer the question Dad asked me at Thanksgiving:

“Where do you want to work?”

I hadn’t really thought about it in the sense outside of “depends on who wants me”. It started to grow on me, and when I heard about this talk through Karen through Facebook, I found an outlet. Over time, it’s gotten in my head that, (a) there are a lot of tech startups in the City, (b) they do either cool or lame things, or some of each (depending on the startup) and (c) the lifestyle is vaguely like being a pirate: you have a small crew of dedicated folks; much riskier life, but also more rewarding in other ways.

So I figured I’d test the waters.

I found myself chatting after the talk with some of the people I’ve read about in tech blogs and whatnot; people who do crazy and interesting things. I rode back on the BART with a similar sort of buzzing feeling as when I first visited Berkeley as an eighth-grader, and it lasted all afternoon. I may not know exactly with who yet, but I think I’m starting to figure that I’m understanding where I want to work. Or at least how it should feel.

On the other side of the coin, I’m flying up to Seattle in a few days to be shown around Amazon. Amazon strikes me positively in other ways — the benefits of a bigger, more established place. My take on their “corporate culture” as I can see it from here is that it’s roughly a looser, friendlier Microsoft; though part of the goal of going up there is getting a very solid read on it, and what exactly they’d want me to do. They may really surprise me, and I may come back really jazzed.

But now they’ve definitely got that buzzing feeling I got from the cool kids* in the City to compete with. Which is good for all parties involved; if I really want to work at Amazon, I’ll know.

The rest of Thursday was cool in that I helped a friend-of-a-dancing-friend with his computer troubles for an hour or so; and for my time, he helped me brush up my piano skills and showed me how to improv some blues — cause this is what he does for a living. I’ve yet to record myself, but it sounds pretty good when I plunk on my keyboard here.

And then I went to 920, as always. All in one day!

*I say “kids” — I was probably the youngest one there, but the vast majority were 20-something, so I didn’t feel out of place at all.

Like a leper above the Serengeti

Never mind the real lyrics are “Like Olympus” — I heard it as “Like a leopard” given the Africa theme… but this case of a bad mishearing was public and hilarious.

(this post dedicated to Katie-in-Cape-Town)

I built the playlist the night before — good thing too; making selections on the fly is hard. Heck, I still was changing the order every few songs or so.

My DJ cred is rising — I did it wholly from the swing collection I’ve been building for weeks from torrents and whatnot — I ripped one of the standard CDs just in case, but ended up not using it.

However, these formed the majority of the playlist. The real cred came from putting some of my own spin in — my hits and misses that weren’t “standard” swing songs. And I had more hits than misses, so I have something of an ear for it.

The breakdown:

Hits:

• Little Richard – Tutti Frutti — People were surprised, but excited, the dancing worked well and it was generally fun
• Queen – Crazy Little Thing Called Love — Everyone knew the song; It just happens to work well for swing
• The Beach Boys – Fun Fun Fun — There was a general excited cheer and it turned into a swingin’ beach party for two minutes
• Van Morrison – Brown-Eyed Girl — I was a little shy about this one (after a miss or two) but after encouragement by onlookers, I played it, and it totally rocked. Totally worked for swing too.

Misses:

• Blondie – Sunday Girl — It’s a swaying sort of song, thought it would work — it was only mediocre though, so it counts as a miss
• Norman Greenbaum – Spirit In The Sky — Too blues-y. Awesome song though, so it passed, but only just. Another near-miss
• The Seatbelts – Car 24 — James called it “Elevator Music” – and he’s totally right, it didn’t work at all. Full booch on my part

I didn’t get to try The New Pornographers – All For Swinging You Around because I opted against it. May try later, or may discover that it’s just a bad idea.

Overarching lesson: Go with standard swing tracks or danceable classic rock that people know, and it’s hard to go wrong.

Overall, the general energy of the day was high, which was good. The peaks in energy were on my hits though, so that rocked.

If I do it again next week, I’ll do a similar list, mixed differently, change up the energy levels, and pick some more personal flavor with a better understanding of what really works.

DJ Barak in the hizzouse.