Portland Part 1

While I worked for a week…

Jill and the kids went exploring through the city, going to Pittock Mansion, The Zoo, and other things that are interesting to see. While they were exploring this great city, I spent my days building more great things remotely for Emma.

Remote working and office visit

Our Member-sync work had started the week before we were traveling to Portland, so I had a grip on the beginning stages of the work. During my traveling they got the second week of work into the project, so I was excited to dig in and see what I could do to help advance the service. The morning is cool (right around 60 degrees farenheit give or take 5 degrees) at around 6am PST, which is when I started doing my work most days while on this trip. It was a pleasure to take in some cooler mornings, because the morning in TN can be hot. Sometimes when going to my car in Nashville to go to work in the morning, it is approaching 80 degrees already. Our morning standups happen at 9:30CST, so that was 7:30 for me in the pacific time zone. I tried to keep a regular schedule in central time, starting the days at around 6amPST(8amCST) and finishing around 3pmPST(5pmCST). This helped in two ways—it seemed like I was only working remotely but kept to the same schedule with my team, and it allowed me to spend a larger part of the evenings with my family. The Portland office was supposed to be closed when I arrived, so I was just planning to work from my hotel, which has fantastic internet for a hotel free of charge (the best internet at a hotel I have ever had). I can’t recomment the Inn at Northrup enough. But, when I started working the first day

Go back to before I started working to detail my chat with the Portland office here

I was contacted by Chad and he said he was ready to let me in the building whenever I got there. I was a little shocked, since I hadn’t planned on going to the office and assumed it would be closed. Now it wasn’t closed and I had planned on working at my hotel. Well, I asked Chad about the office being closed without specifically mentioning it (just in case they didn’t know something and I was suddenly the bearer of unexpected news). I found out from Chad that the office was closing on the first of July. So, I had some time. I decided to work from the hotel that day and Jill could drop me off the next day on their way to their destination for the day. Remote work went well, attending any meeting I had using Zoom, so I was a real remote developer for a spell. When I did go to the office, there were only 3 people total working on the two floors of office space. I worked with two of them on the 6th floor, Chad and Travis, at a standup desk I chose from the sea of empty desks available to me. I hadn’t worked at a standup desk since my previous job, and I had access to an external monitor, so all was good while working from that office. We had lunch on Wednesday as a company, and a remote worker (from only 7 miles away in Vancouver, OR) fell out of the woodwork to come and have lunch and brought her tiny dog with her. When lunch arrived, she dissapeared to talk with a friend who joined us for lunch (but didn’t eat anything) conversations. Right after lunch, she quickly left. Apparently it was like that pretty much every Wednesday (our company paid lunch days). On Wednesday (check this day to be sure), Travis and I went for a walk through the city most of the way back to my hotel. It was a nice walk and we discussed our histories in college and how we ended up as engineers at Emma. The city offered many different paths to walk along, from bike and pedestrian routes along the water, to bridges, and sidewalks. Although it is state law in TN to stop for pedestrians crossing the street, you basically have to risk your life to get a car to stop at a zebra crossing if you want to cross. In Portland, if you were even near a pedestrian crossing and the cars didn’t have a stop sign or anything, almost every car we encountered would stop and politely gesture you to cross the street. It was a city-walker’s dream. The drivers in the city were also really curteous to other drivers and would let another car in without problem. This was a welcome departure from TN, where it is every driver for himself taking all that he/she can take without regard for others around the car. After the walk, we stopped and stayed at Tanner Springs Park for a bit and had a talk about travel and what each of us is looking for in the future. It was a nice welcome to Portland and gave me hope for seeing this city again in my future.

Meals

Pizza Schmizza

One of the dinner spots we ate at was Pizza Schmizza. It looked like a pub with food, but when we went there at dinner time (prior to 8pm), the service was good (she accomodated our many questions and request) and the food was also pretty good. I don’t think we would go back for the food, but they had an SNES to use, so it gets some style points for that. The greek salad was pretty good, and the pizza was pretty good, too (Jill didn’t care for it). It wasn’t my favorite, but it was probably a 6/10.

Pepino’s

Of the dinner spots we did try, Pepino’s was definitely a hit. It offered traditional Mexican dishes that we were all pleased with. Their guacamole was also incredible. We liked it so much we went back another day for lunch and got pretty much the same thing. It was probably 9/10 for us.