Guns, Wood, and Tripods

Jared Watkins — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

What do these three things have in common? They were all in my car the other day as I set out to meet with various buyers for all three. If you hadn’t heard I’m going to be leaving Charlotte soon and heading for Seattle. After living in the south east for 25 years and here in Charlotte for about 13 of those it’s a pretty big deal. There are good reasons for doing it though… beyond just a change of scenery. I’ll be joining the Amazon Web Services team once I get moved. At first it will be in an operations role to help keep things running smoothly on their gigantic cloud platform and later.. who knows. They are fairly secretive about their internal goings-on.. and for good reason. You can just about count on one hand the number of companies or groups operating on the scale of Amazon. Most people who aren’t in the biz only associate Amazon with their web store but by current estimations the store (as big as it is) is only responsible for a small fraction of their revenue… much of the rest is coming from AWS which was first launched in 2002. From the standpoint of my career… a self taught, self proclaimed ‘linuxguy’ in Charlotte an opportunity like this doesn’t get much better.

So I’m selling off and otherwise getting rid of the stuff I don’t really need and packing the rest to head for the Pacific North West… to a city that, so far, I’ve spent a grand total of 36 hours in. I’ve done this before.. it was much the same when I moved to Charlotte all those years ago. Although that was right after finishing school and this time it means being too far from family to visit on the weekend whenever I want. That part is going to hard but I know they are behind me… and with ubiquitous video phones at least it’s easier to stay in touch.

I don’t know where I’ll be living in Seattle once I get there… that is still TBD but I’ll have plenty of time to sort that out. I will be renting my house in the Plaza Midwood section of Charlotte.. available in August. If you know anyone who is looking have them contact Jamison Reality at 704-846-3663 and ask about the house on Midwood Place.

If you are curious about the title of this posting… the ‘wood’ refers to some big pieces of rough sawn 8/4 cherry that I’d picked up years ago when I was doing woodworking. They were part of the same lot I used to make this table… but never got around to finding another project for them. They barely fit in my little hatchback but I was able to get them over to a local cabinet maker who bought them.

Jared has left the building!

Jared Watkins — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Well I haven’t left just yet… but as of the end of January I will no longer be in the employ of American City Business Journals. After nearly six years with this great company I have decided it’s time to take on some new challenges so as not to get too comfortable. So now I will be joining Mirapoint (maker of carrier grade email systems) as part of their Professional Services team. I will be staying in Charlotte for a while though as this is primarily a telecommuting position… I can do the work from just about anywhere with a good net connection and I’m considering several interesting ways to take advantage of this unique position.

I’m sending this to the friends and contacts I’ve made over the years… you can all continue to reach me at this address as I’m sure our paths will cross again. I will also be available for a small amount of consulting work as time allows

I’m also still interviewing for my replacement.. so if you know any solid linux people in Charlotte have them get in touch asap.

Career on The Infinite Unknown

Guns, Wood, and Tripods

Jared has left the building!