Where is Nathan??

I actually lost this domain name a week ago. goDaddy sent me the notification the same day it expired. This is ironic because I had been in discussion with Elizabeth that same day about how I’ve been thinking of changing this site and purchasing a new domain name.

I’m afraid, dear friends, the blog is dead. As if you didn’t know already. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (to a lesser extent), browsing on a mobile device, RSS, and a myriad of other technologies in the current fauna of the Internet. The personal blog on a hosted domain is over.

Most of you knew this already. I’m really just staring the obvious. Ask yourself, how many blogs do you read? How many sites do you go to and read a person’s blog post? How are you reading this now? Did you type whereisnathan.com into your browser, or are you looking at a feed reader? According to my site stats and goggle analytics not many of you have actually come to this site. Don’t take this the wrong way, I don’t either. Because in the current technological climate, that’s relatively a lot of work. If I go to facebook I’m bombarded with what people are doing. And in short burst, not long drawn out posts. I personally have tried to keep up with a collection of friends blogs, but thier numbers are dwindling as well.

So besides the convinience factor. The over all purpose of this blog has been out dated. I started whereisnathan in 2003 just before I graduated as a way to allow friends and family to keep up with what I was doing. I found this particularly pertinant given that I was moving to China after graduation.

I kept up with the site while we were in Changsha, and a little during our year in Florida. It proved quite useful when we moved to New Orleans and were displaced by Katrina, and then acted as a travel blog when we went back to China.

At some point being in China no longer felt like “travel” and started feeling like “living”. At which point the blog started to stall out, because I’ve never felt that writing about my day to day grind was very exciting.

I tried to write about other topics like music, IT, entertainment in general but without a defined format that sort of sputtered to.

Anyway, I’m here to notify you that this site is on it’s way out. I have been colaborating with my brother (who also has a string of failed blog attempts) to create a new site that is not a blog (at least not the ramblings of our personal lives) but a site dedicated to a cause we both feel strongly about. The concept is still in it’s infantcy, so stand by.

To those who have stuck faithfully by throughout the years (Rex Trotter, I’m looking at you) I thank you and am humbled by your attention. This won’t be my last post, by just a notification that it’s on it’s way out.

Holidays are over but I’m still swamped with a project at work so this is the best I can do right now.

Things that have happened since last post:

**edit: this is why I should read previous post before I post again. oh well

>>Bought an iPhone
>>Took a 36 hour holiday to see my family (and some friends) in Arkansas
>>had excellent Christmas with Elizabeth’s side of the family and their friends
>>Jared (my dear brother) brought his family to see me and New York
>>I joined a gym but have yet to work out in it
>>installed Linux on my laptop … again
>>pigged out for Thanksgiving
>>Taught Jared how to make a Whiskey Sour (and several other drinks)
>>got to watch the ball drop on tv in the same city in which the ball was dropping
>>received a club shirt from my Cricket team in Nanjing (excellent Christmas day surprise!)
>>learned (and am still learning) a ton about jquery
>>got an old school shave and a haircut with my father-in-law on Christmas eve

crap. I need to go back to work now.

As the title implies, I have fallen behind in my posts. It happens. So let me catch all of you up.

October 24, 2009 :: Sleepy Hallow

In preparation for Halloween, we took a trip to the site of Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hallow. Sleepy Hallow is only 30 minutes away from Manhattan by train, so we hopped on the MTA north to Tarry Town.

We strolled around the quaint village of Tarry Town and then walked for about 30 minutes to the neighboring village of Sleepy Hallow. By the time we got to the Legends tour of the old Church yard it was pouring rain, which added to the creepiness of the event. There are actually several legends of ghost and ghouls and members of the community deceased. The headless horseman is by far the most famous, but he by no means has exclusive rights as the only haunt in town.

The tour of the church yard included witches, a zombie wedding party, and (for some reason) pirates. There was also a storyteller who was telling the story that gives the town its namesake. And as you make your way up the old country road you will come upon the specter himself, the headless horseman. Despite the horrible weather, it was a fantastic experience.

October 30, 2009 :: St. John the Divine Halloween Extravaganza

The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine was build in the high Gothic style of Northern France and is the Cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. Construction was started at the end of 1892, but it was never finished. Various phases of construction and renovation have been began and interrupted by World Wars, fires, and lack of funding and skilled laborers. The latest construction project ended in 1997 and after a fire in 2001 the Cathedral was reopened in 2008. In 2003, the New York City Council voted unanimously against landmark designation.With a history like this, it’s no wonder that the Cathedral looks to unusual events for its funding. The Halloween Extravaganza is such an event.

Every year on the night before Halloween the Cathedral hosts an event that includes the screening of a silent movie and the Procession of Ghouls, one of the most fascinating and spine-chilling displays I have ever seen. The silent movie is always one of three selections (The Phantom of the Opera (1928), Nosferatu (1922), and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1922)) and is accompanied the the Sanctuary’s Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ. And as if the ghoulish cellist in the foyer or being beguiled by a silent movie from the 20’s wasn’t enough to chill your blood, after the movie the high arcane arches are bathed in unfathomable light and a parade of impossible costumed creatures pours forth from the Quire and grips your mind in wonder!

All this unworldly entertainment for the unimaginable price of $20. I believe this will become an annual tradition for me.

November 13 – 15, 2009 :: Trip to DC

We had been promising Elizabeth’s dear brother that we would come and visit them in Washington since we arrived back in the United States. When we heard that the parnts were making a trip down there for Mathew’s birthday we decided to hop aboard the band wagon. I had never been to DC, and I will say it was a marvelous weekend. We took the Amtrack from Penn Station. Even after several years in China where traveling by rail is the norm, I am still taken by the romance of train travel. Unfortunatly train travel is nowhere near as affordable as it is in China (over a certain distance).

We stayed up half the first night just talking and catching up. On Saturday we went down to the mall and took in some museums (only part of one actually, but we walked by many with the promise of returning) and some monuments. I had seen the Lincoln memorial for my entire life on television but that had not prepared me for the majesty of that hallowed place.

Around dinner time it was time to partake of Washington’s night life. Mathew knew of some excellent spots we made reservations at Marvin. The wait time was some thing like two hours so Mathew and I had a drink at the bar upstairs while Elizabeth and Amanda finished up a little shopping. After they met us,  Mathew took us to the most amazing prohibition style speak-easy that turns out was owned by one of the members of Thievery Corporation.

The Gibson is thus far one of my favorite drinking establishments on the planet. It’s a cocktail drinkers paradise that observes certain rules to maintain the atmosphere. Only 48 people my be in the lounge at one time, there is no standing at the bar or in the salon, unless you have a reservation you may only have a table for 2 hours. They don’t serve beer. It was a marvelous time. The Marvin had a different feeling but was every bit as impressive.

We returned home on Sunday after stopping for a quick salad lunch.

November 26, 2009 :: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a fine affair. We had dinner at the Gordon residence with family and friends. Nothing exceptional happened, which is to say it was an perfectly agreeable time that was both delicious and relaxing. I also got to speak to most of the Stilwell family by phone. It was  an excellent, excellent day.

November 27, 2009 :: I bought an iPhone.

I’m still getting used to it. It has changed my life certainly, although not as much as I had assumed. Not yet anyway.

So, there you have it. That brings us to the Most Wonderful time, of the year. I haven’t been “home” for Christmas in 4 years, so I plan to revel in the Christmas Spirit this year. My plan is to have a Stilwell family extravaganza in Arkansas for Anna’s (my sister) graduation on the 19th, then back to New York to celebrate with the Gordons, and then my dear dear brother is planning to make the journey up to the Big Apple to ring in the New Year! It will be an ambrosial affair. Any who are so inclined, may feel free to make the trip and join in (don’t ask for a room, because I’m afraid mine are all full).

It has been a long and challenging few months. I would like to thank all my friends and family members who prayed for me, thought of me, encouraged me, offered advice and critique for these last few months. At long last I am once again a gainfully employed member of the workforce.

I had applied for a very promising position at the Spence School a few weeks back. I got a phone call and a sort of first round phone interview that I felt pretty good about it. I have to admit, I wanted the position so bad I wasn’t really pursuing anything else beside the freelance work I’ve been doing in the meantime. I was crushed to find out I didn’t get the position. After 3 months of rejection I was finding it harder each day to continue putting myself out there.

About the middle of last week, after a lot of praying and psyching myself back up, I decided I needed to change focus again. When I first got back to the States, I quickly realized that tech jobs didn’t really want to look at me. I had plenty of experience to work on a help desk, but no certifications. I didn’t have enough experience is any particular technology to work in a higher position in IT, and still no certifications. I decided to seize this opportunity for career change and get back to my roots and pursue something in the programming field. I was lucky enough to get the internship at Klickable and find out that this is something that I really wanted to do. But again, lacking experience I didn’t have many places to start.

I picked up a few freelance gigs doing design work, and that seemed to be going well although not paying a lot. So after I lost the Spence position my plan was to look for something to pay the bills (like working at Staples, Best Buy, McDonald’s, as a Janitor, whatever) while I focused on taking gigs and building a portfolio. So I went out to Craigslist with the intention of looking for gigs. When I got there I looked at the job postings, just out of curiosity. There seemed to be a decent of amount of entry level positions and paid internships. So, by last Friday I had applied for all of them.

I missed the call for some reason on Monday, but got the voicemail. A company called Blue World Inc wanted me to come in and interview for a position they had for a Web Developer / Jr. Programmer. I scheduled the interview for Tuesday morning and promptly made an appointment for a haircut. I thought the interview on Tuesday went very well, but was still surprised when they asked me to come back the next day for a second interview to talk with the technical staff I would be working with.

I got dressed up again and took the 2 train all the way down to Wall St for my 2 o’clock appointment at 90 Broad St. I was more nervous at the second interview. I suppose I didn’t really know what to expect for the first, but it looked like I had a real chance here and I didn’t want to blow it. The second interview went great. The more I learned about the company the more I wanted the job. The position seems perfect for where I am right now career-wise. It’s a small friendly group and there’s lots of opportunity for professional growth. They know their business and enjoy it. It seemed like a group that I wanted to be a part of. I spoke with the hiring manager just before I left the office and he asked me if I would accept the position if it was offered today, to which I replied “I would gladly accept the position and start tomorrow.” He told me I would have an answer by the end of the week and I left feeling very good about the whole thing.

I had just handed in my visitors badge and walked out the front door when I got a phone call. It was Blue World. In my excitement I think I may have hung up on them. I quickly redialed and asked if they had just called. It was Jim Brock, the President, and he asked if I had left the building. I told him I had, but I hadn’t gone far. He asked me to come back up to the office. I went back up and into Jim’s office and was immediately offered the position! It has all happened so fast my head was spinning. But we agreed that I would start Monday.

So rejoice, dear friends! I turns out I won’t starve in the streets of New York City! I now have a job I think I will enjoy, at a company with a promising future, in one of the coolest parts of Manhattan! Huzzah! Thank you for all your kind congratulatory tweets and facebook messages.

So when I heard Gossip were coming to New York I was pretty excited. I was excited to see friends I hadn’t seen in 4 or 5 years, but I was also excited to meet friends who have achieved a pretty enormous amount of stardom. I mean, I’ve never really been friends with Rock Stars until now, I wonder what it is like?

The show was great. It was the first time I had heard Apache Beat or MEN, and I was impressed by both (although in different ways). The Gossip played an incredible show if anyone had been hearing it for the first time, but for me it was incredible to see how similar it was to previous Gossip shows I’d seen 6 years ago. They still make inside jokes and give shout outs to friends and have conversations with people in the front row between songs.

After the show I met up with Nathan behind the venue. It was good to see him and talk about old times and old friends. I also got to meet some people that he had me along the way who now live in New York. He was DJing at a club called Butter and asked if Elizabeth and I wanted to come.

After Butter we went to a party where I caught up with Beth. I don’t know why I was surprised to find out the Beth is the same person she’s always been. But it was refreshing. We talked about my family and hers. We talked about the way things used to be, and about the way they are now. We also talked about how stupidly famous they had become and how crazy it all is.

Saturday night I met up with Nathan and friends again, and we spent most of the night in his hotel room talking and hanging out. It was one of the best weekends I’ve had in a long time.

[I didn't take many pictures, but here's a few]

The story of how I got a New York City driver’s license actually goes back to  Hangzhou, China circa March 2006 when my wallet was stolen on the bus. Inside that wallet was my Louisiana driver’s license. At the time I remember pondering when I would ever drive again. It turns out, I would borrow a car to drive to the store in Searcy, Arkanasas two years later. But that one instance is the only time I have driven a car since I moved to Hangzhou in 2006.

Then I moved to New York. Let me start out by saying I don’t need a driver’s license. I don’t own a car. But the truth is people look at you funny when they ask for ID and you give them a passport. Plus there’s also the possibility that if I travel to another part of the country to see somebody, they may not have the public transportation options that Manhattan has. So upon arriving to New York  I decided I wanted a license.

So if you find yourself moving to New York state and your Louisiana driver’s license has been stolen in a foriegn country 3 and a half years ago, here’s a handy guide to getting your license. *Warning: You may have to lie a little to accomplish this.

Get a duplicate Louisiana License

The great state of Louisiana does provide for the possibility that you may be outside of the state and lose your license AND you are unable to return to Louisiana to get it.

Step 1: Fill out “Temporarily Residing Out of State Application for Reconstructed Duplicate/Renewal License/ID Card” Form

You can find it here. Fill out the form with the address that is on your Louisiana license and your current address so they can mail you the replacement.

Step 2: Get a money order for $13.00 made payable to the Office of Motor Vehicles

The Louisiana department of Motor Vehicles does not accept personal checks or cash. They do accept certified check if that is cheaper or easier for you. My bank gives me money orders for free because they are awesome.

Step 3: Mail it to the Louisiana Department of Motor Vehicles and wait 1 – 3 weeks

Here’s the address:

Office of Motor Vehicles
Attention: Reconstructed License
P.O. Box 64886
Baton Rouge, La, 70896

The website will tell you to allow 7 – 10 days for your license, but mine took a little longer than that. I actually called them (1-877-368-5463) to ask them how it was going. I told my story to one of the lady’s on the phone who thought I was making a prank call. She passed me to another DMV person who told me that it was in the mail.

Step 4: Complete New York State Department of Motor Vehicles application form MV-44

You can download and print it out here (also available in Chinese and Spanish). Or you could wait until you get to the DMV and get the form and fill it out there. But let me seriously recommend doing anything you can to save time in the New York DMV.

Step 5: Go to your local DMV

If you live in Manhattan, don’t be confused. You can ONLY go to the Herald Square DMV.

Step 6: Get there as early as possible

They open at 8:30, you might consider arriving at 7:45.

Step 7: Wait in the first line

The first line is the main filter for all DMV traffic. After sucessfully traversing the majority of the first line, you will be approached by a DMV line stuart and she will ask you how they can server you today. After telling the stuart that you are there to exchange your out of state license, you will be asked to move to a second line. This line went pretty quickly for me, I think I was there for about 10 minutes.

Step 8: Wait in the Acceptable Out of State License exchange line

The second (and much longer) line gives you plenty of time to reflect on life, fill out the form you thought you were saving time by printing and filling out at home, complete the Sudokus you didn’t get to finish on the train,  jump the line and run to the bank downstairs to get cash because the DMV credit card machine broke, try to slip back into line without attracting too much notice because you know exactly how long those people have been waiting, hold the line for you wife/friend/partner in crime while they run to the bathroom, and then grow incredibly bored waiting in a line.  Estimated time : 1 hour.

Step 9: Wait for you number to be called

After completing the second line you will finally be called up to the counter to begin your paperwork process. There is a complex form of math that must be studied to understand what constitutes proof of identity/citizenship. But if you bring a passport and a social security card you can cover all of these requirements. If you don’t have a passport, you can read this 4 page document to figure it out.

Present the passport, the social security card, your Louisiana driver’s license, and your completed MV-44 form to the person behind the counter. When the person notices that your Louisiana license has only been recently issued and does not comply with the New York State rule that the license must have been issued more than 6 months ago, they will inform you that you need to contact the Louisiana Department of Motor Vehicles and aquire a letter from the department stating the original issue date and  printed on official letterhead. At this point you should point out that the issue date is slightly less than two months before the expiration date and “duplicate” is written in red letters across the top of the license. After they are completely unsympathetic and tell you there’s nothing they can do, you should recite the incantation “May I see your supervisor” which should clear up any further problems.

You will then be issued a number and instructed to wait until you see said number appear on the lighted board.

Step 10: Take an eye test and pay your money

After waiting an additional 30 minutes your number show appear on several lighted boards interspersed amongst the 24 service counters. Congratulations, you have made it to the final level!!! After submitting you paperwork for a second time, you will be asked to take a vision test that you can only fail if you are legally blind. You will then be required to pay $65.  You will then be issued a peice of paper with a barcode on it (and not a picture) to be used as a temporary license.

Step 11: Wait 2-3 weeks

After you have completed your trials and recieved your temporary license you will be informed that your license should come in the mail in two to three weeks.  It has been six days since I was at the DMV, so I still waiting to see how long it will be.

Step 12: See Update

I’m assuming that I will recieve my license in the mail and that will be the end of it, but who knows! That’s one of the great things about New York; taxes, fees, paperwork, hoops to jump through all come out of the blue and without warning. So I might have to fill out additional forms after I recieve my license, or appear in court to further prove my identity. So this adventure is still underway.

There you have it. Twelve simple steps to getting a driver’s license that you will only use once about once a year. If you have any further questions, please feel free to post them in the comments section.

Update:

I got my driver’s license in the mail yesterday (09.21.09) which means that it takes about a week. And despite my masochistic wish for more red tape, there are no further steps after you receive your license except to put it in your wallet and enjoy.

Yes, I am wearing a bow tie.

Update:

Attention ID Thieves:
I’ve had a change of address.

Well, it’s Labor Day weekend. That means summer is over. That means school is starting. And that’s exactly how I feel. Elizabeth had some sort of training this week at a campus different to the one she’ll be teaching at.  This caused her to wake up at 5:30 this week to get ready. So I started getting up at 5:30. Every day this week I wake up get a cup of coffee and immediately open my laptop and start working on flash tutorials or reading flash books.  This week has felt better because I’ve  been focusing on my real goal which is to become a developer again  (if I ever was to begin  with). Klickable needs an ActionScript developer, so I’ve been working as hard as I can to learn it as fast as I can.  I was talking to my dear brother this morning (who pleasantly called me out of the blue) and told him if feels as if I’d fallen down a rabbit hole and fallen out right after graduation, yet I’m six years older and six years more forgetful.  Looking at code is like flexing an atrophied muscle. Two things give me hope at this point; I had excellent teacher at Harding, and coding is like riding a bicycle. Except the bicycle is constantly changing color, size, the number of wheels it has, the direction it moves in and how to re-fill the tires.

So dear friends, just as the haze of culture shock is starting to solidify into a hard mass (New York is a very different culture than any other I’ve ever lived in). Tomorrow I will be 30 years of age. Even as a child I remember thinking how vast the space between 29 and 30 is.  Standing on the precipice of unquestionable adulthood. The space does seem vast indeed.

But I don’t fear 30. I am exuberant to have finally arrived. In your 20’s you are a clumsy impression of an adult. But in your 30’s, that’s when life begins. Everything up to this point has been training wheels. Tomorrow, the training wheels come off and life becomes a live fire exercise. Your 30’s are when you set the course for the rest of your life. I don’t know many who have decided at 45 to be something completely different (although I do know some).  But in your 30’s you are just wise enough to know some things and still young enough to do anything. It seems like a great time and I’m looking forward to it.

So the timing seems perfect. My 20’s have been a strange ride of running from hurricanes, moving constantly, adapting to cultures within cultures, being rich, being poor, being a teacher, a technician, a manager, a wicket keeper. But now, I have washed up on the beautiful shores of the United States, in a country that is my home, but a place that I know very little about to try and settle in and carve out a life for my family at the tail end of the worst recession in 70 years. But tomorrow begins my 30’s. The decade where I  will make my mark. With adaptability that has been forged in the fires of a vagabond lifestyle, I am ready for anything!

I’m probably not making any sense. To be honest with y’all, I’m sitting on the stoop of my brownstone where I’ve been for the last 2 hours because Elizabeth’s not home yet and I took the wrong set of keys to work. So really I’m writing this out of boredom. Or at least I started it out of boredom.

Oh yeah, PAX is this weekend. I really really really really wanted to go, but since I still don’t have a paying job it didn’t seem like a great idea to spend hundreds of dollars going to Seattle. The thing that finally swayed me not to go (besides the fact that I can’t afford it) is that there’s talk of a PAX east in March. I would have loved to see my friends in Seattle, but serving as an Enforcer at PAX east seems much more realistic. So to all of you who will put on the black this weekend, may peace favor your sword.

Well, Elizabeth’s  got to be home any minute now so I’m going to wrap this up. If she doesn’t show up in the next 20 or 30 minutes, I might post again. We’ll see how it goes.

I haven’t posted pictures for a while, so click on this lovely shot of the the upper west side and be taken to my severely underused picasa to see the rest of the album. We’ve been in Harlem for a week now, and I think it’s working out very well. We are in an almost perfect spot as far as transportation (the 2,3, 4, 5, 6, MTA North, and A, B, C, D  lines are all within about a 15 minute walk). Elizabeth and I both take the 2 which is 2 minutes from our front door. Our only complaint is that the dryer in our building is kind of crap.

Work is going ok, Elizabeth is getting settled in her classroom and I’m still doing volunteer time at Klickable. I’ve been trying to focus on building employable coding skills, but I’ve done several things from building cold call lists to re-cutting tutorial videos in final cut pro.

Ok, it’s Saturday and I’m a little brain dead because I was hanging out at a friend’s house last night eating pizza and playing Rock Band 2 until 3am. So I’m going to go take a nap. Enjoy some pictures.

Real quick before I go to bed, some of you may have heard that Elizabeth and I were looking at an apartment on the upper east side. Well forget that, it didn’t work out. We found another one, it’s in historic Harlem a stone’s throw from Bill Clinton’s office and a few blocks from the Apollo theatre. 53 West 127th Street, for those of you who want to google it.

I still don’t have a job, per se. But for the past week I’ve been “interning” at the Klickable office. I thought this would be an incredible opportunity to get my foot back into coding.  I’ve wanted to jump back over the fence from tech back to coding, but wasn’t really sure how to go about it until the guys (and gals) at the Klickable office asked me if I wanted to come in and do some extensive testing.  So I’ve been trying my hardest to break the Klickable staging website before the new features go live (hopefully next week!).  So I’m no longer sitting at home not doing anything, it’s progress.

I’m going to sleep now, I’ll try and post pictures soon.

I’ve been in New York City for 40 days. I’ve applied for 40 jobs. I don’t have one yet.

But there’s good news! Elizabeth got a job teaching at a daycare and today was her first day. And there’s more, we have an apartment and we’re set to move in on August 16th. It’s an alcove studio on the upper east side in a sweet neighborhood.  So things are coming together.

Most days I’ve been staying home and posting my resume or emailing cover letters, but today I got to do some beta testing on a very cool piece of software. It’s called Klickable. It’s basically hyperlinking video. You’re watching a video online, you wonder who that person is. You click him and it tells you. You wonder what kind of phone he using. You click the phone and you’re given a link to a place you can buy it. You like the shirt he’s wearing. Click it an find out what it is. Once I saw it, I was like “this makes so much sense, why didn’t somebody think of this sooner”.

You can immediately see the implications for marketing in a product like this, but Klickable is talking about a bigger picture. They described a Wikipedia like phenomenon where anyone could add Klickable elements to videos.  Do you recognize who that person is? Tag them. Do you know some trivia about a random object in a video? Tag it.

I can’t think of a single video application that wouldn’t be made better with this idea. Think of the possibilities for home video, training video, product placement in online television, product guides, how to videos.  I think it’s going to be huge.

I know that’s not much of an update for not saying anything in a month, but hopefully I’ll have more to talk about in the coming week and I should have pictures to post after we move into our new place.