Last September, I spent a Saturday afternoon in the office, attempting to work on a particularly difficult project. It was a gorgeous, sunny Saturday, which meant that it was rather stuffy and hot in the office. After a couple of hours of false starts, I gave up and headed to the gym.
The gym at UCSC has a nice balcony to workout on. As I sat there contemplating my lost afternoon over sit-ups and crunches, I met a UCSC staff member from the campus Public Information Office. We talked about U.S. politics and the amazing view of The Monterey Bay from the balcony. When I talked about my job, he mentioned that his office had been without a web developer for a couple of years and would be seeking someone to fill the position. They hadn’t ironed out the details yet, but the announcement would go up on the UCSC jobs page soon.
I kept an eye out for the job announcement, but didn’t see anything after several weeks. By chance, I saw the staff member again a few weeks later, and introduced him to Kalin. He told me his office was close to posting the job announcement at that point.
Fall came. The owner of the house we were renting foreclosed (though she called it “selling the house”), we were looking for a new place to live, and work got crazy. In early November, Kalin happened to be at the gym one evening when the same staff member sought her out to tell her that the job had been posted for several weeks and the first review period was to start the following Monday.
Short. Notice. I hadn’t been checking the UCSC jobs site and nearly missed an opportunity to apply for the position.
One hectic weekend later, I had produced a fresh version of my resumé, a supplemental document highlighting some of my specific experience and a cover letter to “tie the room together”. I submitted my application materials for the position 3 minutes before the system would have locked me out. Score!
Four months and 2 interviews later, I have officially been offered–and accepted(!!)–the position of Senior Web Developer in the Public Information Office at UCSC. I’m very excited about the new opportunities ahead. Of course, I will miss my Quiddities family. But after nearly 2 years together, there cannot be goodbye, only see you later. Santa Cruz is too small, and I love them too much to vanish from the Quiddities landscape.
So, why did I include all of that back story just so I could tell you I’ll soon be starting an exciting new job (you had to read, like, 3 paragraphs or something!)? Because I wanted to show you what it felt like to walk the jagged path to this point. I’m not a religious person, and–despite living in Santa Cruz–I don’t own any fortune-telling crystals. It may sound hypocritical, but I also don’t believe in fate. Life is a series of opportunities. Some you take, some you don’t. How you get to those opportunities often makes your choice easier when you get there. A series of chance encounters at the gym brought me squarely to this point. And I’m excited to jump into this new job.
In all honesty, when I first took a look at the site, I didn’t think it was that bad. It is simple, not cluttered and gives access to important information about Palo Alto. I agree with many who worry it doesn’t properly portray the vitality and beauty of the city, but all in all I think they came up with a good, functional design that can be built upon. I’d start by replacing the images used for text (interior page navigation) with real text so those of us who don’t enjoy reading 10pt fonts can resize the text as needed. A government website should definitely avoid image-based text because it must accommodate visitors of all ages and vision quality. There are 
The DOCTYPE being used on the site is HTML 4.0 Transitional. This is about as forgiving a DOCTYPE as you can use without just leaving a DOCTYPE declaration off altogether. Yet, as I write this, 
