I just wrapped up a phone interview with the Perl shop in SB, and it sounds a lot like a more techie version of GoAntiques, a really cool small internet antiques company I worked for right before moving to Pittsburgh. It sounds like there's not a lot of fixed division between tech parts of the company, and they're recruiting for "useful people" rather than specific roles. Sounds good so far - while I spoke with the engineering guy this time, because I'm also interested in Systems stuff I'll interview with someone from the systems team tomorrow, and then if things still look good I'll fly out there for in-person interviews. Smallish tech companies are awesome. I'm still a bit miffed that UCSB never got back to me, but ... ehh. This'd be a good place to work, I think.

Looking a bit at SB apartments on Craigslist, I discovered that I shall have to pass go much more frequently in order to have a comparable standard of living. As stated, $500/month would "buy me a toilet" in SB, even though in Pittsburgh it gets me my reasonably nice apartment. I'd feel weird asking for a salary with precisely adjusted cost-of-living stuff (a place like what I have now would probably be $1500/month there), and I've been pretty happy being able to live comfortably while saving money on salaries in the 40s-50s range. I suppose if I had a family, I'd want more money though.

So, having made my resumé public again has led to a lot of phone calls and emails by local recruiters (mainly folk looking for a sysadmin) - it's nice how after I've told some of them that I'm not looking locally, a barrier goes down and I've had some good tech conversations with people I don't know. Some of them are other sysadmins looking to hire their replacement(!) - once one has some stuff on one's resumé, there's a lot of good jobs floating around locally for a unix sysadmin - good to know :)

Foodwise, I have been neglecting to occasionally drink alcohol, and that's made it hard for me to enjoy fondue or a cup of wine with dinner. I'm coming to think of it as a duty - if I can manage to get my alcohol tolerance up to something sane over the next year, that would be good. Also, Dominic said that there's a Cajun restaurant somewhere on the northside - I want to give that a try soon. Alsø Alsø wik, I must visit Abay again soon. Company for either/both of these would be welcome.