Goolsbee News – Page 3 – chuck.goolsbee.org

Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Pixels!

Apologies for the lack of updates this week. It has been a crazy 10 or so days.

In short: Sue & I flew down to central Oregon, and found a new home, then we came back and I’ve been working like mad to prep our current home for sale.

As far as house-shopping goes, I am a good husband and just let Sue find what she wanted. I only ask for enough garage/workshop space for my hobbies of old British car maintenance and homebrewing. Everything and anything else is just a “sure honey, whatever you want.”

The choice came down to two places (after discarding dozens of alternatives) and both had excellent detached workshops for me. One had a stunning 270° hilltop view of all of central Oregon and the Cascades from Bachelor to Adams, along with a Garage Mahal of a workshop… easily room for a half-dozen cars and then-some. Unfortunately the house itself was … odd. Really a bizarre mish-mash of architectural styles thrown together in an outrageous excess of late90s/early00s Mcmansionism.

The alternative, and the one we ultimately chose, is a very understated and elegant house, that fits our personal style. It has a modest view (Mt. Bachelor & the Three Sisters) and a fairly generous workshop, though not in the Mahal-class of garages. I think I’ll have to put the homebrewery in storage until Spring, as the property will require a bit of preparation for it. The current owner runs a woodworking shop now, but it should adapt well to a car-wrenching area. Here, have a look for yourself:

The ceiling is a tad low, so lift clearance may be an issue. Not so much for the Jaguar, but certainly for the Jeep and maybe the Jetta. We’ll see.

We move at the end of August, which is timed to have Nick start at his new high school the beginning of September. Meanwhile my blogging may remain sparse until we are settled and I’m in a reasonable daily routine. I start my new job on Monday 8/2, but will be in the Bay Area at first. Would love to meet any Northern California readers for dinner/drinks in early August!

I’ve got a nice backlog of “Car Photo of the Day” posts, so I’ll try to make them live when I can.

My Next Challenge: Facebook in Prineville, Oregon

Facebook's Prineville, Oregon Data Center.

Now I can finally tell everyone what’s been going on… what all those cryptic status messages I’ve posted on Facebook & Twitter over the past several weeks have meant:

I’ve taken a position with Facebook in their Technical Operations group as the Lead Datacenter Technician at their new Prineville, Oregon facility, working for Ken Patchett. I’ve talked often about the migration of the datacenter industry into rural areas, and now I’m living up to that conclusion. Facebook is a rapidly growing company and performs technical operations on a scale I never could have experienced at digital.forest, so I’m very excited about this opportunity. In the decade I’ve worked at d.f I was immersed in every facet of the datacenter business except scale, as our largest project ever topped out at ~2MW/10,000sq’. Day One at Facebook for me will exceed that scale by a wide margin. I can’t wait to meet my new colleagues and be a vital part of building and operating the best facility on the Internet. I start at Facebook on Monday, August 2nd.

Sue has found a position as a Public Defender in Crook & Jefferson counties. This move will something of a homecoming for Sue as she was born in Prineville and grew up in various small towns in central and eastern Oregon – her dad worked for the USFS. We’ll be close to family now too, as Sue’s dad and two sisters still live there. When I first heard about Facebook’s choice of Prineville for their new facility I joked to Sue about her birthplace being suddenly thrust into the limelight… then a few months later they called me! It was like fate or something. She’s very excited about being able to move back to Oregon. Due to the Oregon State Bar process she can’t start practicing law until early October, but we hope to be all moved down there by early September at the latest to have Nick ready for school.

Nick is mildly apprehensive about all this, as he’s really settled into a good spot in life here in Arlington. He has all those things teens need: great friends, good grades, and a passion (running X-C.) As much as we tell him that he’ll be able to find all that in Oregon, he doesn’t know that … yet. We hope to find a place where he can fit in, so we’ve been emailing the coaches of the various X-C teams in the area.

We’re currently shopping for a home down there (dictated by Nick’s terms above, and of course with some good shop or barn space to build my “Garage Mahal”) and will update everyone with our new address as soon as that process comes to a close.

It is of course tough to say goodbye to our home of the past eleven years here in Arlington, and our friends, family, and colleagues. But we’ll still be in the region. Come visit us at hit the slopes!

This is the beginning of an exciting new chapter in the Goolsbee’s life. As always stay tuned to follow along!

Nick Driving Stick, take two.

Nick laughs when I once again remind him that he has to be IN GEAR to achieve actual launch.

Nick finally worked up the courage to take another attempt at learning to drive a manual transmission car today. After the last time, when he never quite got the hang of it, and shaved some life off my pressure plate in the process, he’s been a tad clutch-shy. I finally convinced him that it can be done by showing him a neat trick: the one pedal launch. The healthy torque of the VW TDI motor means that if you are very smooth with your clutch foot the car will start from a standstill (on flat, or gently down-sloping ground!) at idle. His problem last time was too much throttle. I pulled the Jetta out of the garage and demonstrated very low-speed launches using nothing but my left foot. After a couple of demos I had him take the wheel. Of course the car immediately died on his first five tries. Thankfully he stuck with it and eventually got the hang of starting from a dead stop. At first with no throttle, then with gentle acceleration. I had him do it over and over on the gravel driveway, doing laps of the house. Eventually I hopped out of the car and he continued practicing until it seemed that he really had the hang of it. Next was several more laps of the gravel driveway at higher speeds (never out of 1st gear though) to get a feel for the car at rates of travel more akin to driving on the street. Then I had him take the steep part of the driveway uphill to get a feel for the amount of throttle needed to overcome gravity. I did NOT have him start/stop on this steep grade however… that comes later. Much later!

Feeling confident I drove into town and went to an industrial park south of town where the streets would be empty on a Sunday to have him practice on a paved street. The car won’t be as forgiving of poor clutch technique and timing on asphalt compared to gravel. Wheelspin isn’t going to happen with 90 HP and good tires on tarmac!

Nick gets his game face on to tackle the tarmac starts.

It was a small step backwards at first and his car-killing ways came back, but at least now he was gentle with the throttle and not buzz-sawing life out of my clutch plate. A lesson or two more and he’ll be ready for the real streets!

Nick Goolsbee news

I mentioned in the last post about Chris being home for Spring Break that he & I attended the state finals for Hi-Q competition to watch Nick’s (and Chris’ former) team, Arlington High School compete. The finals were once again held at Stanwood, the defending champs from last year, with a loud, boisterous home-team crowd. The teams were Stanwood, Monroe, & Arlington.

Unfortunately Arlington fell behind early and was never able to catch up. 🙁

We had good seats and I was able to shoot some photos for you:

Nick answers a question (correctly by the way!)

Thinking hard!

Conferencing

The score near the end of the match. You can see the look of despair on the AHS team.

Still managing a smile though.

This past weekend when I wasn’t spending time with Chris in Olympia I was helping Nick in a project for his Spanish class. I don’t speak any Spanish beyond “Mas cervaÃ§as por favor.” so I have no idea of this is as funny as it looks, but it was fun to help Nick do the editing on our iMac at home.

Happy Birthday Chris! (Updated)

Chris Goolsbee turns 20 today.

I’ll be offline most of today as Sue & I are heading down to Olympia to celebrate Christopher’s 20th birthday. I’ll bring along my camera, but here are a couple of shots I made of him when he was home recently on Spring Break. He came with me to watch his brother Nicholas compete in the state Hi-Q finals. Since Chris’ team from three years ago were state champs, it was fun for him to come back and say hello to the teachers that still run the program at AHS.

Happy Birthday.

Speaking for myself, I’m amazed that I have a twenty year old kid! It seems like I was twenty not too long ago myself. (In reality it was 27 years ago!) I have a photo of my somewhere on my 20th birthday. I’ll dig it up and put it here if I can find it. Meanwhile you’ll have to make do with my reasonable facsimile. Those of you who knew me when I was twenty can attest to the resemblance, though I think Chris is better looking than I ever was. 😉

As promised here’s a photographic update, fresh from the scanner:

Chris and Sue on his first day.

Chris and the proud father on Chris' first day.

The whole family, circa 1990-1.

Two classic young Chris shots.

Chris yesterday, on his 20th Birthday.

Chris and Sue on his 20th birthday, in front of his apartment.

Finally, my favorite photo of Chris & his mom, taken on Vancouver Island in the summer of 1991:

Sue and Chris

Seven Years in Two Photographs

Watching children grow up is like observing starfish. It happens so slowly that it is impossible to actually see it happen, but like watching that minute hand move on the big wall clock in fifth grade math class, while it happens almost imperceptibly, it does happen. Photography of course allows us to cheat time and observe moments from the past, and collected photos can form a sort of mental time lapse movie where suddenly those seemingly motionless starfish are wandering all over the tide pools.

In 2003 the entire Goolsbee family visited my parents, this included my two sisters and their families. At the time all four of the grandkids, that is my two boys and my two nieces, all just had braces put on their teeth. I snapped a photo to commemorate the situation:

Lâ€”R: Christopher, Nicholas, Lauren, & Caroline in winter 2003.

It is a cute photo and it ended up on the cover of one of those Apple iPhoto books I made for my parents of our week with them, which to this day enjoys a place on their living room table. The photo captures three of the four of them at the end of their childhoods and into their teens. Chris and Caroline were thirteen years old, Lauren was fifteen. The littlest is Nicholas, who was then just ten years old and as you can see the teenagers are all hunched over to match his height for the photo.

Fast-forward your metal time lapse to the end of 2009:

Lâ€”R: Christopher, Nicholas, Lauren, & Caroline in December 2009.

On our last day in Colorado over the Christmas holiday I rounded up all four the grandkids away from their iPods, school reading assignments, and laptops. The intent was to recreate the 2003 shot, with a little art direction from my sister using the original photo on the cover of my parents’ book. Chris & Nick are now over six feet tall. Their cousins, being their mother’s daughters (my sister Cathy is, shall we sayâ€¦ “vertically challenged”) remain about the height they were in 2003. Getting everyone’s head lined up was a bit of a challenge! Both nieces are in college now, with Lauren set to graduate in May. Chris is in college too, and Nick is a sophomore in high school. (Nicholas is also no longer the youngest and certainly not the “littlest” grandkid anymore as my youngest sister had a son 3 years ago.)

The intent of the photograph was to capture their smiles, and the results of all that orthodontics. What I see instead however is seven years of maturity reflected in these four faces. While they’ll always be our children, none of them is really a child anymore.

Happy Birthday Nick!

My son Nicholas turns sixteen today. And yesterday.

An oddity of his birth is that the state put the wrong date on his birth certificate. To be honest I can’t recall which day (21st or 22nd) he was actually born, and which one was the clerical error. Funny how those things play out over time (I’m certain his mother knows though!) We’re taking him out to dinner tonight, but I thought I’d reminisce a bit with a few photos of him that I’ve shot over the years. He’s always been interested in cars, so he’s tagged along with me on a few adventures…

Age 9. Navigating for me on our 2003 trip with the 65E from Colorado to home.

Age 11. Posing with a Lotus at English Classic Cars in Chilliwack, BC.

Age 14. Sitting in Philippe Reyns racecar at the Northwest Historics in 2008.

Age 11. Standing by the broken 65E when we were going to the Northwest Historics in 2005.

Age 7. Smiling over a Christmas gift from his Grandmother Bishop.

Age 15. Looking studly on the Pacific Coast Highway.

Happy Birthday Nicholas!