This didn’t really settle into my mind until today, when I was outside the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, I looked out over the bay and saw the skyline of San Francisco partially enshrouded in fog. We got back from Alaska on New Year’s Day, and from Wednesday through Friday, I was heads down in a work project, adding some new features to a node.js project that I only started working on recently. Most of my work in the past few years has been in Ruby on Rails, and though I only have this project to judge from, my sense from it is that node.js can be messy.
People criticize Rails for its imposition of sometimes unneeded structure on projects, but I do like the automatic MVC division. It makes it easy to know where to put stuff. I suppose you could add the same kind of structure to any project, but then you’d have to think. I’m used to not thinking about that kind of design, because in my mind, it’s a solved problem.
Anyway, I was working on this project all week, and despite the fact that I was biking to work, I wasn’t really taking in the fact that I was home, so today at LHS, I had this pleasant realization that I was back in the Bay Area. Other places are nice to visit, but the San Francisco Bay Area is my home.
We had quite a lovely time in Alaska. Unfortunately, after the 28th, it got above freezing and was kind of soggy and gross outside. Nevertheless, the sidewalks and roads were still icy, and it was treacherous to go out without grippers on the soles of one’s shoes. Somehow, I managed to survive the first 18 years of my life in Minnesota and upstate New York without grippers. Nevertheless, in a week and a half in Juneau without them, I felt as though I came close to cracking my head open multiple times from slipping on the ice. Note to self: buy grippers.
My sister writes a column for the Cordova (Alaska) Times called “Alaskatarian.” Here’s her latest column, “Polly Put the Kettle On,” which describes our family’s holiday in Juneau.