williamhathaway.com

Here are my thoughts on living in the south SF Bay area now that my wife and I have been here for a while:

Pros

• It is awesome being in such a cultural melting pot
• The supply of interesting things to do is fantastic
• The density of technology oriented companies and people is amazing
• The weather is definitely better than central PA (although not as nice as an area like Santa Barbara)

Cons

• Housing costs are ridiculous (other costs are higher too, but housing is 3-5x central PA)
• Depending on time and direction, traffic can be horrible (mitigated for me by working from home)
• The state government seems really behind the times – my wife and I both had abysmal DMV experiences (the process and technology are busted, the people were friendly)

Notes

• A thumbs up to meetup.com for making it very easy to find groups of like-minded people to get together for activities
• The Mercury News’ events section is also handy when looking for things to do

Overall

I am really glad we made the move.  My wife now has a job that she absolutely loves, and besides missing our friends from the east coast, we are both really happy.

I was reading a NY Times article about these cool workspaces that had lots of high-end industrial machines available for members to use and noticed that the workspace chain called Tech Shop mentioned in the article seemed to be located around the San Francisco bay area.   Perusing the Tech Shop’s class list, I saw they had location that wasn’t too far from me and signed up for a “Safety and Basic Use” class about their Epilog Laser Engraving/Cutting machines.

Epilog Helix 24 Laser Engraver/Cutter

I took the two hour class on Wednesday night with three other participants.  The class was taught by Laura Mapping, who has been a laser-working enthusiast for about three years.  The class covered:

• Shop etiquette
• How the machine works & basic operations
• Safety
• Appropriate materials

Everyone in the class got to take turns trouble-shooting and optimizing a design that we “lased” onto some cardboard, showing how the dots-per-inch, speed, and power settings affect the final outcome.  At the end of the class we were given souvenir dog-tags and allowed to etch whatever we wanted onto them.

I really enjoyed the class, the machine was neat and the instructor was great.  Once Clio and I finally find our permanent location in the bay area, I’ll probably get a membership at the Tech Shop so I can go back and play with the laser and maybe learn about some of the other machines.