jacob.marttinen

I’m due for an update, but Reykjavík is calling so I’ll keep this brief.

Ben and I made a quick trip to Ottawa that first weekend off. We stayed at Franklin’s place (in his parents’ amazing house) and enjoyed a seriously chill weekend. Diefenbunker (Canadian Cold War museum) was a highlight, probably the most fun I’ve had in a museum. Pictures are on flickr.

Us boys (Karl, Rob, Rahul, and I) made a trip down to Detroit the next weekend for Alicia and Richard’s wedding. The ceremony was nice (and humourous, in typical Alicia fashion), it was cool seeing a bit more of downtown Detroit, and we cycled exhaustion and rejuvenation through beach volleyball and hot–tubbing. Pictures are on flickr.

I filled my weeks with work and errands. I implemented Remember Me for WM, did some networking in Karl’s shop, finished up my Canadian taxes, sorted through and minimized all of my possessions, and did some trip planning.

I’m done school but life doesn’t feel too different; perhaps it’s because I’ve yet to find even a few moments of free time. There are no free weekends in sight (F1 in Montréal, weddings, convocation, Elder’s, Seattle, etc.), and if this is the real–world I have no reason to complain. Still, I’m cherishing every moment of solitude that I’m coming across in this beautiful country of Iceland.

As is probably clear from my lack of updates over the latter half of the term, I started to feel the pangs of a lack of motivation and some serious IDGAF as 4B rolled on. It’s not that the term was spectacularly busy; no, my schoolwork load was silly light, leaving me with plenty of time to dedicate to contract work for the WM team. I even had enough time to enjoy a few road trips and adventures.

Aaron and I made a fairly spontaneous trip to Minnesota over Reading Week. We left at 11:30pm on the Friday, drove through a huge snowstorm, and made it just in time for Heidi Hiivala’s wedding. I enjoyed my week, especially getting caught up with Lamar, Alicia, Nick, Charlie, Tonja, and the rest of the crew. We spent most of our days in Duluth, with a few days down in MSP for good measure. Aaron and I stopped in Chicago for a few days on the way home to meet up with Karl, Bonnie, and Brooke. Even with the wintry windy city weather, it was a great time. Check out the pictures on flickr.

Lamar and Dale made the trek to Canada a few weeks later. Although Dale was familiar Canadian culture (having lived here for the first half of his life), it was rather humourous watching Lamar go through some Canadian culture shock. Meetings in Detroit were a weeks later, made especially nice by appearances from Peterdenny, Marko, Åshild, Travis & Dannilee + Holden, and a surprise showing from Tonja.

Life in Waterloo wasn’t too boring either. There was a serious performance streak, with Darude, Zedd, and Sigur Rós three weekends in a row. Anna was visiting Kory for a few weeks from Germany; it was nice seeing her again. Ben and I finally made it to the tour of the Observatory in the Physics building. There was the usual relaxing with the guys: Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and Top Gear on Monday nights; way too much pizza and cookies; exploration of campus and the city; and an almost unfair amount of laughter. And even though our season was over after the first round of playoffs, volleyball was a great time.

But through all that, I couldn’t focus. I immensely enjoy coding for Work Market but I struggled to get into the groove of working remotely. My courses this term were interesting—and dare I say fun?—but my motivation for homework was embarrassingly low. Perhaps it was the early guarantee of an amazing job, maybe I was getting a little sick of school, or perhaps I was just going through a little NYC withdrawal. I pulled many an all–nighter, and things looked bleak at times (especially after my two–week no–show with WM), but the promise of summer pulled me through.

I finished my last exam (CS456 – Networks) this past weekend, and the boys helped me move my stuff to the parents’ place on Sunday. The realization that my Waterloo chapter has come to a close hasn’t yet fully hit, and I’m certain I’ll have more thoughts as the weeks of freedom pass. Until then, I’ll be spending my time in coffee shops, coding away and planning adventure.

Rush of memories.

The days fly by way too fast when life is good; we’re somehow already hallway through my last term of school! I’m living on campus this term—MKV, 404E—and it’s better than I was expecting. There’s a decent kitchen and living room, cozy bedrooms, no hassle of monthly bills, and some amazing roommates: Roman, Mickey, and Rahul.

Roman Zimine (4B CS) is a Russian/Korean dude. He’s on the quieter side, but he’s smart (he’ll be heading to VMWare this summer), makes awesome food out of nothing, and is improving ridiculously fast at volleyball.

Mickey Laguta is an awesome (Latvian) dude, 3A Civil Engineering. Always happy and smiling, he makes life in this little apartment easy. From drumming and DJing to coming home and making blanket forts, I’m glad to know Mickey.

Finally, Rahul Prabhakar. He’s in 4B CS but I met him for the first time at Peek in NYC (even though we apparently had a bunch of classes together). We get along as good as anyone can, adventuring and talking about anything and everything. Hopefully he’ll end up coming to Seattle with me this fall!

Together, we form an interesting group. There’s continually laughter filling the apartment, we cook food together, work out together,  play volleyball together, and relax together. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of guys!

I fill my days with work and school. I’m still working part–time for Work Market and getting tons done (assign/re–assign assignments, reports history, assigned user filter, and plenty of other fun stuff). And even though I’m taking my full five courses, school this term really is a breeze: ENGL119 (Communications in Mathematics and Computer Science) really is a bird course—the fact that it can replace the ELPE says all you need to know; HIST200 (History and Film, online) doesn’t offer much resistance either, with readings, watching historical films, discussion boards, and no lectures; REC280 (Introduction to Tourism) is the last of my bird courses, and 100% of marks coming from four non–cumulative multiple–choice tests makes it the easiest of all; CS348 (Introduction to Database Management) is lightweight and a lot of fun, helping me get some theoretical knowledge on data manipulation; and CS456 (Computer Networks) is helping remove that big black box that is networking. All–in–all a pretty light term, but it’s my most enjoyable term yet.

Other than the daily routine, life has been busy. Rahul and I headed up to the Sault for meetings (Jan 18–20) with a van full of guys (Karl, Rob, Travis, Aaron, and Landon) and had a great time. There was a crazy amount of snow and some seriously frigid temperatures, but the hotel had an awesome hot tub and we got to see some seriously amazing people. Hopefully we’ll be seeing everyone again in Chicago in a few weeks!

I also headed to meetings in Barrie the weekend of Jan 25–27. It was a relaxing time, but the best part was being (Travis and Dannilee’s baby) Holden Iver’s Godfather!

Karl and Rob came down for the Saturday after meetings, and we toured campus, had dinner at Ennio’s, played ping–pong and foosball, and got hooked on Shameless. Then Kory and Jeff made the trek down last weekend. It was a pretty chill time, mostly spent catching up with the guys (Matt, Tommy, Greg, Mitch, Dustin, Ben, and Calvin). Kory also gave me my Christmas present: a foosball shirt from Hamburg, an epic henley from Scotch & Soda, and some German chocolates. Thanks, dude!

Bringing us up to Reading Week, schoolwork has made the past few days fly by. I finally made it through all the meetings, midterms (DB and Networks), labs (Networks), and readings, and now I get the fun of a bit of a Reading Week adventure with Aaron. We’ll see where we end up!

A must–read piece on life and death:
http://tightwind.net/2013/02/one-second/

This inspiring short film is one of the most staggeringly beautiful things I’ve seen in a long time.

The larger our past gets, the smaller our present feels.

My time in New York was over after my last—short—week at Work Market. I definitely loved my time in the Big Apple, but I don’t think I would have enjoyed it nearly as much without a set deadline for leaving. New York is a great city, but it’s nowhere near as amazing as Toronto. And I guess we’ll have to see how Seattle treats me this fall!

I headed down to Peter’s place in Maryland after work in Thursday for our road trip to Christmas meetings in Detroit. Peter, his girlfriend Tonja, Jessica Pettit and I left the next morning (in Bill Denny’s new BMW 335d!), hit a snowstorm for most of the drive, and rolled into town around midnight.

The next few days were some of the best of my life, spent visiting with some long–unseen family and catching up with tons of old friends as well as plenty of new ones. We filled the mornings/evenings with church meetings and spent the days/nights adventuring with some of my favourite people; we explored downtown Detroit one day (and got invited into some homeless people’s “cave,” thanks to Karl’s singing!), another was a lazy day wandering Ann Arbor with some great coffee in the middle of a snow storm. The weekend—sadly—had to end some time, and Peter, Tonja, Rob, and I headed up to Barrie on Boxing Day. We definitely picked the wrong time to drive home as we ended up getting caught in the middle of a terrible snowstorm. The drive ended up taking 11 hours instead of the typical five! But we made it home alright in the end.

Peter—unfortunately—caught a pretty bad fever right when we got to Barrie, with the result of him and Tonja having to stay in for nearly their entire Barrie trip. Some Detroit/WA crew came up on Friday night (Bonnie, Krista, Nat, Brooke, Alex, and Katrina), and we all (including the Dennys) headed to Toronto on Saturday. Peter was still too sick to do anything so him and Tonja ended up just headed home to MD, but the rest of us had a blast: we wandered around downtown, had a long dinner at Richtree Marché:

and ended off with a snowball fight and limbo in Dundas Square:

The crew went sledding on Sunday, then we spent the evening at Skyttä’s where we solved riddles/puzzles, looked at pictures of the last year of our lives, visited, and ate some of Hille’s amazing food. After a late breakfast at Deb’s Place on Monday, the Detroit crew took off for home.

Charlie, Landon, Rob, and myself headed to Karl’s on Monday night for the New Year’s festivities. We lit the sauna, ordered Chinese food, and played Risk.

Tamara & Rob, Grant & Kristina, Hanski & Lea, and Miila, Maija, and Natalia showed up later on, and we played a most entertaining game of Scattergories into the New Year. Rob and I spent most of New Year’s Day sitting in coffee shops, talking about life and scheming up various plans. We had our (Melvin) Marttinen Christmas that night so I headed home for some quality family time.

I headed down to Detroit again with Rob the next day. I worked from Mike’s apartment the next few days, and we spent the nights visiting in coffee shops and various people’s homes. Adam took us skate–skiing on Saturday morning, after which Rob and I headed home to Barrie.

Rob, Karl, and I loaded up all my stuff into Karl’s van on Sunday morning and moved me down to Waterloo for my last term. I’ll be living on campus this term (MKV 404E) with a schedule full of bird courses, and I’m really looking forward to this nice and relaxing end to my undergraduate career.

My last few weeks in New York ended on a hectic yet happy note. Quentin flew in the Saturday night of my second last weekend in the city, on his way home from California where he was presenting for his doctorate. (Some of you probably don’t know Quentin Vitale. He’s an amazing dude who lived with us in the Shakespeare Manor for the summer of 2010, finishing up some research for his Masters before returning home to Paris.) We headed straight out for coffee and crêpes with Lee and Kit at Paris Dakar, then went to watch Cloud Atlas in Times Square.

Sunday was the basic city tour: lunch at Qi, rooftop exploration, Union Square Christmas market, Staten Island Ferry, dinner at Petite Abeille, pool at Fat Cat, then home to watch Tree of Life. Quentin and I joined Lee and Kit at a performance by Andrew Bird at Riverside Church on Tuesday night, then saw Alex Clare in concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Wednesday.

Quentin went to visit a friend up in Northampton for the night on Thursday so I spent the evening packing up my apartment. Karl and Rahul arrived around 12:30 that night, and we walked around the neighbourhood for a bit before bed.

Us guys had dinner at Petite Abeille after I got off work on Friday (by far the best burger I’ve ever had), then met Peter Denny, Nick Hiivala, and Quentin at their buses at around 10:00.

We grabbed coffee, caught a late show at the Comedy Cellar, walked the Brooklyn Bridge, and finally got home around 5am.

After a breakfast of crêpes the next morning, we headed to Williamsburg to explore for a while.

Quentin left for his flight home to Paris soon afterwards and Nick and Peter caught their bus home shortly after that, so Rahul, Karl, and I headed back home to just chill for a bit.

We packed up my belonging in the car on Sunday morning and Karl and Rahul headed home at around 2:00pm. And just like that, my last weekend in New York was over.

Well, my time in New York is fast coming to an end and life is as busy as ever.

Now that I’ve learned my way around the (massive) code base, I’m starting to really enjoy my days at Work Market. I’ve shipped code on the regular, the team is awesome, and the hours fly by every single day. We recently shipped the (long overdue) public–facing site redesign (check it out). The development team spent a day out in the Long Island last Thursday, after which Jeff (Leventhal, CEO) took us out for a classy Mexican dinner. I’ve helped a few new guys get started with the code base: Arjun — who ended up starting full–time at Work Market after Peek finally officially closed its doors — and a young guy name Zhe. Also, I was tasked with hiring a contract PHP developer so I spent last week interviewing a score of applicants. I’m going to be working half–time throughout the next school term, which is a good thing because I’m not nearly ready to say goodbye to this team.

Outside of work, I’ve still been doing a ton of reading, (finishing off The Great Gatsby, Forever Peace, and The Fall of Hyperion in the last couple of weeks). I headed down to the Denny’s for American Thanksgiving and joined Tonja, Nick, Marissa, and Peter’s family for the feast (including two turkeys, one baked and the other deep–fried). I headed back up to the city the next day (Black Friday), as Kory was flying in for the weekend that night. We caught a late showing of Skyfall, then headed out for a solid Saturday (Brooklyn Bridge, lunch at Qi, Christmas shops at Union Square, coffee on the roof of 900 Broadway, then finishing off the night with Vezzo and Fat Cat). Sunday was spent shopping in SoHo and Midtown, dinner at Petite Abeille, a late show at the Comedy Cellar, and the weekend ended with Kory headed home early Monday morning. I did make another (rather spontaneous) trip to Maryland last weekend, but things were pretty uneventful. Ty also finally came back from Denver after the election (he was out there running the Democratic campaign).

I’ve been working with a guy from Vermont (Nat Kelner) and the CTO of Kohort (Steve Blood) to get a side–project up and running. We call it Volley, and the idea is location–based instant customer service. I’m not going to say too much on it now, but we’ve met with a couple of investors to pitch the idea and we’ve got our TechStars app in the works.

After a day of interviewing at Art.sy (I didn’t end up getting an offer), passing preliminary interviews with Yext and Google, and an offer from Work Market, I came to the realization that I didn’t want to live in New York City any more. An eight–month work term was fine — I’ll never regret deciding to come here — but I honestly can’t see myself being happy here without the prospect of moving away in the near–future. So I turned down second interviews with Yext and Google and accepted the Microsoft offer (Seattle). It looks like I’ll be moving to Seattle some time next summer! I’m planning on taking a few months after graduating and using my signing bonus to travel to Iceland, Finland, and across the US (I will need a travel buddy; anyone want to join me?), with a start date of somewhere near the end of the summer. I’m looking forward to this one last — nice and easy — term in Waterloo, free from job–hunting and stress!

Owen Williams recently made a point that resonated deeply with me:

The thing that confuses me is, when I think of spending ten years in an office, just for the sake of money, that’s a terrifying thought. A waste of life. You might be alive by definition, but not actually alive at all. When you’re watching the clock, looking forward to the next paycheck or counting the days until your next vacation, you’re doing it wrong. You might have the illusion of happiness, but these are clear signs that you’re not doing that thing you should be doing.

I’m approaching an entirely new point in my life. Through the end of high school, I was just a kid. From there, I committed to getting an undergraduate degree as some semblance of a security net. But come April — for the first time in my life — I will have absolutely nothing holding me back. And that’s a little scary; because even though I know I can do anything, I know absolutely nothing.

The decision to move to New York — however insignificant as it felt at the time — has elicited a monumental shift in my life. Even six months ago, I felt that the natural progression after completing my undergrad was finding a safe $60k job somewhere near home; I was probably going to find myself a nice little townhouse in Barrie and partake in the daily grind commute to Toronto. I had never even considered myself capable of anything more. But it all comes down to happiness, and I’m certain that thoughts and what-ifs of more satisfying and meaningful options would soon start creeping in.

I may not yet know what makes me happiest, but I sure as hell know I’m not going to sit still and hope it finds me.