The day started out with a coffee and the sunrise throwing spindles of light out across the eastern horizon, through the houses. As always, as bright as it is all the houses on Phinney Ridge just look like silhouettes of dark shapes. Hiding their true array of colors that one sees clearly during a sunset.
I boarded King County Metro bus 17 toward downtown Ballard. I had one stop I’d need to make at my office before heading downtown to connect with the train. After departing, retrieving the items from the office, I boarded a downtown bound 40 route bus.
As I transferred to the LINK in downtown, I started chatting using Slack. A few business questions had popped up about the previous week’s interviews and questions. The connectivity however was spotty, but eventually the signal came through and the conversation continued. The nice thing about queue based communication like email, chat, and related things is that even though I have a message, I can respond as it is efficient to do so. It makes things dramatically easier than being interrupted by a brash phone call that would have required I step aside or even off of the train to even have the conversation. I’m thankful for a team also, that knows when and how to communicate, and works remote first. It makes us better, stronger, and more efficient than onsite teams that routinely just waste time plodding through verbal communications that should be quick, queued messages, or onsite meetings that don’t start and resolve as quickly as they should because “everybody’s here so…”. Onsite office culture is just kind of an efficient morass of communications.
For example, I’m on my way to the airport. Using Slack to communicate and working on some code at the same time. I’m queueing it so that I can finish these segments of code, an algorithm or refactoring at a time, then shifting back to the message queue to answer. It’s an extremely effective use of time, considering if I drove, I couldn’t get any of this done or effectively communicate since I wouldn’t be able to pull up an answer from documents while driving. This is the type of bike and transit lifestyle that only these options allow. I suppose one could do this in a Lyft or Taxi, if one is in that big of a hurry and has managed their time according to that narrow option, and price of course is no concern.
While moving along MLK Boulevard we pull through Othello. I see a sign for Armenian, Vietnamese, Mandarin, and Thai. An interesting mix of options. We roll onward, smoothly, and pass by cars stopped in traffic congestion. Toward the intersection two fire trucks, an ambulance, and some police have the section minimized while the work on getting cars past while handling the emergency, whatever it may have been, further up the street. Onward down the street and then the final strop of this section, the Rainier Beach Station. Seems an odd name to me, considering there isn’t any obvious beach or beach like area around the station. Of course, knowing the map I know it’s toward and over on Lake Washington.
Then we depart this neighborhood and urban area to cross the interstate, pass through an urban area, and on to Tukwilla Station. Basically a parking lot somewhat adjacent to the airport itself. Then, next stop is the airpot of SEATAC.
Another departure awaits.
