As of September 16th, I’ll be joining Rick Steves’ Europe as a Software Developer. I’ll mostly be working with Ruby on Rails backend web development work, and the opportunity to be doing this on a full time basis with such an amazing company is an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up. Whenever I’m in Europe, Rick’s books and guidance provides a constant calming hand and excellent advice, and I’m thrilled to be able to join their web team to help their mission of travel and education.

After exactly three years as a full-time employee at UW Information Technology, and another four years as an undergraduate student at the University of Washington, I’m a little sad that I’ll be leaving the institution that has served me so well over the past seven years. While I valued the experience and missions at UW-IT, I felt that I needed to leave the organization in order to develop my career and to work in a position that is closer to what I know and love.

My last day with the UW was in late August, and I’ve been spending the past couple of weeks staying in Seattle. I’ve been baking dinners, organizing and cleaning my apartment, playing plenty of games, and generally catching up on everything that I’ve been putting off. I’ve been connecting with old friends, and it’s been a thrill to find out how everyone is doing and to reconstruct my social network after wide neglect over the past year.