Hello!

Why aren't you here in Austin yet?  Come visit.

Austin is still great.  Finally getting some rain.  Blah Blah.  But
this is now what you wanted to hear from me.  Well, you may not have
wanted to hear from me at all, but thanks to email I can see to it
that you do!

You might be wondering why it has taken me so long to write to
everyone about the NEW JOB.  Well, maybe it has something to do with
the fact that I am always there working!  Actually, I'm still not sure
how much extra time I will be putting into this place all told.  Since
these are my first few weeks, it takes me longer to get things done and
I have some catching up to do.  So far I have been doing about 11
hours every day and from 10:00 PM - 1:00 AM on Sunday.  (Actually
there was a small eating break on Sunday.  Thanks Weishi!)

But enough of that.  How about the good stuff?  I never have to care
what time it is.  I have all the free food I can eat out of the
kitchen two doors down, that is stocked once a week.  (Free beer,
including REAL beer like Guinness and Bass, on Fridays!)  I wear
whatever I want, and have rarely worn shoes at work.  We have two
company boats complete with waterskiis and, my new favorite, a Skurf
Board.  (Like surfing behind a boat.)  I have a nice sized office that
I share with one other person and a huge window that takes up one
whole wall.  There are too many trees to see out over the hill
country, but that's the price I pay for being close to the food!  For
the nerds, I have a HP 200 mhz PPro machine with 64 megs of RAM and a
sweet 21" HP monitor.

The company is doing quite well and so there is a good deal
of excitement about what we are doing.  (Hopefully we will go public
soon!)  We (get that... we... I guess I'm one of us now) are called
pcOrder.com (cashing in on the Internet craze) and you can take a look
at our website at:

http://www.pcorder.com/

Of course I shouldn't encourage this, but feel free to create a free
bogus account.  As with everything, the real beauty of all of this is
underneath.  It's a PC modeling system that configures systems from a
massive database of every PC component known to man.  I'm actually
going to be working on custom Web front ends for now, and we are
working on an HP internal project right now.  (C++ on NT machines
etc, again for the nerds.)

--------------

In other news, Jason and my NEW APARTMENT becomes a reality on November 1.
Suddenly walking and unicycling to all that is cool and Austin will be
possible!  (Hint: come visit after Nov. 1.)  How very Austin that our
new landlord, Kurt, is the president of "Save Our Springs", an
environmental action group.  He has also taken us out to lunch and
asked us to dinner twice.  Better yet he has two sailboats, one on
the Gulf, and is looking for a crew to race with!   Wahoo!  Gotta get
those sailing skills up!

Working every harder towards our Sailing Around the World trip
(leaving January 1, 2000 for those interested) Jason and I are
planning a trip to Galviston and Corpus Christi to look at old boat
wrecks for restoration.  Boats that I'm sure will remind me of my dear
old dad's great line when I found a '63 Chevy2 Nova in the ditch, "A
few years back it would have sounded like a challenge.  Now thinking
about it just makes me very tired!"  No sweat dad, just a thought at
the moment...  We also plan to get our SCUBA permits in February, when
the classes are cheap!

OK, time to get back to work.  Next I have to get the second
installment of the Burning Man letter out.  Whew!  At least this will
keep my typing skills in line!  

Aha!  Which reminds me of a side note: thanks to all those who
pointed out the many typos in my previous letter.  It's EMAIL fer
krimey!  I did it to add a personal touch.  Yeah.  So you would know
it was from me!

Till next time,

Love and a life of perpetual motion,

Kai