While I was away from Nobody Knows Anything, Darin’s job situation changed a few times — he was with Eazel, then Eazel was no more, then Darin contracted for a while. Contracting in 2001 was not quite like contracting in 1997. Darin still had plenty of work, but he had to work harder to find it. Yes, I know: we can all hear the world’s tiniest violin playing in the background. But still, when you’re four months pregnant, the lack of consulting jobs worry you just a tad. Not to mention the quite considerable factor of health insurance–
You wanna start a fight with me? Tell me how great the healthcare system is in this country for anyone who isn’t megarich or in the Congress. We were paying $500 a month for what basically came down to catastrophic health insurance and out of pocket for everything else.
(deep breath) (counts to 10) (back to topic)
–So last year around this time, despite being my nauseated from pregnancy and his general reluctance to travel away from me and Fia, I encouraged him to go up to MacWorld and chat with buds he ran into there and he did.
And I am so glad he did. He ran into a few people and reminded them of his existence. Which was good, because a job opened up that he was uniquely suited for and Apple Computer hired him to work long-distance. So he’s back at Apple. Doing what I can’t tell you, at least not yet. (N.B. to anyone from Apple who might read this: of course I don’t know what Darin’s working on. He hasn’t told me either.)
Both of Darin’s brothers work at Apple as well, in very different departments. Mitch works on the iPod, Scott works on Java. I have studied this text intently but there’s nothing in there about “when the three tall eagles from the park of the high lands toil in the service of Steve” or anything like that, so you can all relax.
Given that his brothers live in the Bay Area and my family lives in the Bay Area and Darin’s job is in the Bay Area, we are feeling quite a bit of pull to move back there. There are lots of reasons to go, and plenty of reasons to stay here in Los Angeles too. (A really primary one is: we have a great house here, and in the Bay Area we’d be able to afford what, a trailer?)
In case you hear some ambivalence in this journal about what our future holds, you now know why.
Compulsory tipping (if I wanted to own a restaurant and be an employer, I would do so, dammit) and expressions of how great the healthcare is over here (what you said) are the very best ways to get me ranting.
Such a rich country, and the health care is a fucking disgrace. (breathes deeply and thinks about TimTams)
Having had the privilege of working with Darin years ago and also having been aware of his work both before and after that time, I’d like to point out something about him which modesty probably prevents Diane from saying (although actions speak louder than words and she did marry him) which is: the guy is brilliant. You’ll never meet anyone better at walking into a technically (and maybe also interpersonally) complicated situation, absorbing tons of relevant details fast, and making huge improvements immediately and then consistently as long as he’s involved He’s also great at organizing, motivating, and leading other (notoriously hard to manage and communicate with) engineers. He’s just very, very smart and fast and strong, both with technology and people, really a star and a hero to those who know him and his work.