In 2001, I threw my skydiving and snowboarding gear, a laptop, and a box of clothes into the back of my truck and moved to Portland, Oregon. Well, technically it was Vancouver, WA until I could find a place in Portland. Nevertheless, I fell in love! While many complain about the rain, coming from the desert, I was bewildered and smitten by this phenomenon where water just fell out of the sky. And I haven't taken it for granted since. Everything was green, full, alive, and wet.

My first job in the area was doing odd database processing and OCR work at a direct mail shop called "Cascade Direct". Which, coincidentally, would be where I worked 20+ years later at the (now former) Portland dotdotdash headquarters. I kept looking for a more appropriate job, and about six months later, I joined the Overland Agency.

Overland was a small, interactive agency focused on creative web development, largely using what was then Macromedia Flash. It was where I worked with and befriended Moses Gunesch, who introduced me to the local creative tech community. Some of the friendships I made during that time continue to endure as the strongest as I have today. The Flash projects I worked on, however, are forever lost due to the disappearance of the security-issue-laden Flash Player.