dgoodwin's blog

Spent this weekend finishing off the unpacking and cleaning and finally got around to taking some photos of the new place.

The move was, a little tiring to say the least. We took ownership on Wednesday and then spent Thursday and Friday finishing off the packing and getting in as much cleaning as we could. Friday night we moved a load of huge awkward stuff in 13 cm of wet snow and had some fun with a king mattress that just wouldn't fit up the stairs. (until we realized it could be bent) Saturday was actually quite beautiful after the snow and we had a pile of friends and family show up to help out with the big move that was all over in about three hours. All said the big move day was actually the easiest of the three. Sunday it was back to the old place to clean which we weren't nearly as well prepared for as we were for the moving. 7 hours, one brutal inspection, and one flat tire later, we were out and done with almost all of our damage deposit. Would have been a joyous moment were it not for the flat tire on the drive back.

Setting in great and loving the new place. Lots of space, sunshine, walking trails on all sides, a fireplace, and most of all quiet. We've been living right on top of traffic for almost 10 years, now we can't tell a difference if the windows are opened or closed.

Today marks the long awaited closing date for our townhouse, we should have the keys in our possession within an hour and will be making a micro-move over to the new place tonight and probably staying there from here on out. Should have phone and internet hooked up tomorrow so we may be around online intermittently via laptop/n800. Office and main computer won't be setup until early next week so mostly MIA until then.

Reachable by cell, hopefully email, and hopefully phone within a day or two. See most of you next week and our beloved moving volunteers on Saturday. Cheers!

I recall my 2005 end of year blog post being none too optimistic about what was a rather mundane and at times difficult year. 2006 was certainly anything but mundane and in all ways but one, a very good year for us.

Name:

Devan Goodwin

Contact:

e-mail: dgoodwin@dangerouslyinc.com
im: dgoodwin@jabber.org

Age:

27

Occupation:

Software Engineer w/ Red Hat

Location:

Halifax, Canada

Interests:

Software design, test driven and agile development, open source software, video games, cycling.

Operating System of Choice:

Fedora Linux

Editor of Choice:

Vim

TV:

• Seinfeld
• Arrested Development
• Home Movies
• The Venture Brothers

Music:

Ambient (Boards of Canada, Patchwork, Moby, Marumari), Jazz (Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, John Coltrane), Hip-hop (Buck 65, Sage Francis, DJ Krush, DJ Shadow, K-OS), Reggae.

Movies:

• Rear Window (1954)
• Rounders (1998)
• Antitrust (2001)
• Casablanca (1942)
• Office Space (1999)

Books:

• Test Driven Development (Kent Beck)
• Refactoring (Martin Fowler)
• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (Martin Fowler)
• Small Stakes Hold-Em (Ed Miller)
• More Than A Carpenter (Josh McDowell)

This past September a good friend and coworker I sat beside for the past three years took his own life very suddenly. Tonight we had to say good-bye with an informal memorial service of his family and friends from throughout his life. I've known very few people who've passed away in my lifetime, but this is by far the most sudden and difficult to come to grips with. While both physically and mentally ill in the months leading up to his passing, absolutely no one expected or was prepared for what would happen.

Gathering the people who knew him and sharing stories of his talent, character, and amazing sense of humor seems like a fitting tribute. Personally, my favorite memory was returning from my first performance review to find he'd organized a farewell message signed by most of the development team on the white board behind my desk.