These are my links for September 25th through September 26th:
A few weekends ago Chelsea and I loaded up her 4Runner and went camping on the Olympic Coast. We went to the heart of vampire country at Second Beach just outside La Push, Washington. Since I couldn’t find much info about camping on the Olympic Coast online I thought I’d blog it up.
View Camping at La Push in a larger map
We got a late start on Friday so Chels grabbed us a room at Red Lion in Port Angeles. It was way over priced but nothing else was available online. In hindsight we should have just found a cheap sleazy motel along the road.
For breakfast we ate at the Cornerhouse just down the street from our hotel. The place was packed, and a bit of a trip; totally what you’d expect from a breakfast diner in a small town.
Driving into La Push you pass first by the trail heads of third beach and second beach before reaching the town of La Push. When we got there it was super foggy and overflowing with surfers. It looked like you could pitch a tent anywhere along the beach. However, we talked to the general store folks and they charge $15/night for a pass to park in their lot and get access to their showers and restrooms.
After checking that out we drove back up the road to the second beach trail head. The parking lot was packed but we got lucky with a spot.
We hiked the 15 minutes into the beach and found that while the parking lot was full the beach was not, and it was absolutely beautiful.
We decided we’d rather camp here so we went back to the car and hauled our stuff in. Which was a trick since we had planned on car camping and not hauling our stuff. So we were quite the site to see lugging everything without backpacks and rolling our cooler down the trail. But it was worth it. Especially with the clouds clearing before the sun set.
To camp at Second Beach the coast is $5/night and you need to store your food in a bear proof container. The ranger did not believe that our cooler was a bear proof container. As for room to setup, there was lots of room on the beach. We setup at the north end and from where we camped you could only see one other tent. There was lots of drift wood on the beach so we cooked over a campfire. I also wasn’t going to lug my very heavy Weber Q down the trail!
On the way back to Seattle on Sunday we had a short detour at Forks to get on the Internet to deal with some work stuff. Forks is definitely Twilight crazy. I think every other store was Bella this or Edward that.
Check out all my photos. Chels has better ones but they’re not online yet.
These are my links for September 22nd from 15:31 to 23:08:
Waterloo Alum, Ryan, emailed recently asking about how I transferred my H1B from Microsoft (a very big company) to Redfin (a very small company).
His questions:
When you were thinking about switching employers, did you feel the need to consult a lawyer, to get information on the H-1B transfer process? Or did you just go ahead and do it?
I felt the need to consult a lawyer but was scared off by $200/hour fees. Instead, I just went for it. Fortunately it worked out!
Did you have to work for your new employer a certain length of time before they agreed to begin the Labor Certification process? (The first stage of the green card process.) Or, were you even intending to aim for a green card?
I waited about six months before asking Redfin to start my Green Card Labor Cert process. Microsoft’s rule of thumb is that they’ll get started on your Green Card after you’ve been there a year.
Was it hard to “prove” that the new job was similar to the old job? (Since that is a requirement for an H-1B transfer.)
I was carefully to keep the same job title at my new job as at my old job. In my case “program manager”.
Did the transfer process take what seemed to you to be a long time?
To me it was seamless. HR at Redfin worked with Redfin’s lawyer to do it all.
Related link: Support the Startup Founders Visa with a tweet
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