Ladies and Gentlemen, it is time again for Nathaniel "Nat" Welch's year in review. Compared to 2012, 2013 was a little quieter, in the beginning, but the Fall was pretty insane. Read on for the play by play.
January
January was a pretty simple month. I continued working at Google and continued dating Annie.
Also they began the slow launch of The Bay Lights, which is one of my favorite art pieces. Such a cool idea and highlights a fantastic piece of architecture.
February
February we celebrated Niket's cancer going into remission, and I took a week off of work to hang out in the mountains and in SF. I also threw a bacon party with my roommates, which was horrible for my health, but fantastic for my taste buds.
March
March was amazing. On a last minute notice, Niket invited me out to go see a Space X launch in Florida with NASA Social. We got to be a member of the press core and got a fantastic tour of Kennedy Space Center.
April
In April I did another work trip up to Seattle, and celebrated my Dad's 60th birthday, where I captured my new favorite picture of my parents.
May
In May, Google Compute Engine, the project I work on at Google, launched to the public at Google I/O. We threw a fun little party at the Nihon Whiskey Lounge in SF. Also, Beck and I went to a few Giants games, one of which was for his birthday (Note to all, the Virgin level AT&T park is amazing).
June
At the beginning of June, Annie and I went down to visit our alma-mater, Cal Poly SLO, to attend the Computer Science Banquet.
Near the end of June, Annie and I went up to Chicago for the wedding reception of Karen and Will. Probably one of the coolest wedding type things I've ever been to. Very relaxed and I ended up meeting all of Annie's family.
July
My friends Dave, Le, Richard and I went and hung out in Lake Almanor for a few days.
Also, I took my family to see a Giants game. Sadly we lost, but we had a ton of fun!
August
In the beginning of August, Google had a big SRE get-together in Mountain View. Because of this, the San Francisco part of our team finally got a group picture together. I also attended Outside Lands for the third time and had a blast. It was especially awesome because my buddy John Bernard came down from Seattle to attend as well.
At the end of August, Travis and I went up to Seattle for PAX. We played video games for three days, explored UW for a day and hung out with our cousins and some of my friends.
September
I stayed up in Seattle for an extra week for work after Travis and I visited PAX, and then visited Annie's cousins and her parents on Bainbridge Island.
I also went two a wonderful weddings with Annie. One for her two friends Matt and Kelly and one for my friend Gustavo down in San Diego. This caused the unthinkable: I actually bought and wore a suit for the first time in my life.
October
October was probably the craziest month in a long time. My team in San Francisco was shut down, and we were given the option to move to London or Seattle if we wanted to keep working on the same project. I spent most of the month consulting friends and coworkers trying to figure out what to do.
I also got to meet Alexis Ohanian and watch one of Travis' last marching band shows at his high school.
November
I decided to move to London, and sadly broke up with Annie.
I also gave a talk at Cal Poly about scaling distributed systems. Apparently I was emotional enough due to all of the change that had happened in the past month, I took next to no photos for the entire month.
December
In December, I visited London, preparing for my move. My original plan being that I would explore the city, but instead I spent the whole time in meetings... #facepalm. Oh well. I also visited one of my favorite people Chris, with our good friend Dave up in Portland, and spend two weeks up in the mountains with my family.
Stats
- Read 24 books.
- Listened to a lot of music
/images/2013/12/lastfm2013.pdf
- Wrote a lot of code:
- According to Tripit, traveled 29,359 miles to 11 cities over the span of 47 days.
2014 Goals
- Survive move to London
- Take more photos
- Visit five or more countries
- Start running daily and watching what I eat
Anyways, Thanks for a fun and interesting 2013. I hope to see you all in 2014. As I've been saying to most, please come and visit me in London, where I'll be living starting in February, 2014.
/Nat