I’m pleased, tickled, elated, excited, and just plain happy to announce that I’ve decided to join the kick-ass folks at Engine Yard. Their focus is on-demand deployment and management of Ruby on Rails applications on Amazon EC2. They’re movers & shakers in the Ruby & Rails worlds (Engine Yard are the folks behind Merb & Rubinius, and are heavily involved in Rails).

I’ve had a mostly fun year & a half or so at Google. I met some cool people, who I will miss, and had some great food, which I will also miss (JC, both of those apply to you).

The reason for the change is that Google wasn’t taking my career where I wanted it to go. I took Chad Fowler’s words to heart (which were something I’ve tried to follow but sometimes get distracted from) “What would you rather be doing?“

I decided that what I’d rather be doing was: writing code, in Ruby, with awesome people, while contributing to the Ruby community, writing, and speaking. Being able to do all that in San Francisco… bonus.

So, here begins a new chapter in my career.

Thanks for all the well wishings & congrats from folks.

No ordinary drafts either. Tuesday night I was invited by BDM to join the group at Jon Finkel’s place for a couple AAC drafts. Good times.

And Thursday night we had a “reject rare” draft at work, 3 Googlers and 3 guests.. once again including BDM. (Brian, do you crash every draft in the area or what?) This was pretty cool. People bring random rares, put a pool together, randomize and pull out “packs” of 15. Distribute & draft. Sounds like a cube, but a cube is typically full of powerful cards whereas this format generally uses not quite so good rares (i.e. “reject rares”, or “junk rares”). As Mark put it “It’s like a cube I’m willing to leave at work”.

Once again… good times and great fun.

Although it was announced on the Magic Arcana last Wednesday, I just got around to looking at it this morning after listening to Monday Night Magic podcast #148 (from this week).

Tom, Eric and Gavin conjectured that it might be built around Dinosaurs, Pirates, or a Mayan/Aztek theme.

I must respectfully disagree with all 3. The first thing that came to mind when I heard “Zendikat: Deadly Perils, Priceless Treasures” was Indiana Jones.

Also, the logo definitely looks like a stylized gemstone.

Finally, “Zendikar”… reminds me of “Zanzibar”… it doesn’t sound (or look) Mayan or Aztek. It seems African to me. the Mines of Solomon, lost cities, and such. unspeakable dangers and unimaginable riches. Elephants, Big Cats, Rhinos… we could do an African themed set. Voodoo.. witch doctors, etc, etc. lot so of fun things to play with.

That’s my opinion.

We’ll have to wait a while to see some spoiled cards to see what the truth is.

As was mentioned on the ProTour:Kyoto coverage, Luis Scott-Vargas will be editor and writer. He won’t be the only recognized name either. And yours truly will be helping out with the behind the scenes technical stuff, as well as (I hope) contributing some content.

channelfireball.com

It’s going to be legend…ary.

Tell your friends.

I’m mentioning it becasue

1. I’m a big fan of twitter and this is a cool use of it, and
2. I’m mentioned in it.

[To be fair, it was Matt Murray's tweeting during the Worlds opening ceremonies that inspired me. Also I hope to be doing some coverage type activities for channelfireball.com]

Basic Lands (16) 7 Plains 5 Island 4 Forest Lands (1) 1 Unstable Frontier Creatures (14) 1 Aerie Mystics 1 Aven Squire 1 Valeron Outlander 3 Rhox Bodyguard 2 Deft Duelist 1 Battlegrace Angel 2 Sigiled Paladin 2 Jhessian Infiltrator 1 Akrasan Squire Enchantments (3) 3 Angelic Benediction Sorceries (2) 1 Martial Coup 1 Covenant of Minds Instants (4) 1 Resounding Silence 2 Unsummon 1 Hindering Light

I didn’t keep notes, so not much here.

Round 1 was against a nasty, removal heavy jund deck. Game 1 was pretty quick with me taking a loss. Blightning was involved. Game 2 went long, with Battlegrace Angel gaining me some life. I went on to take the win. Game 3 was similar. We went into turns before my opponent finally scoped them up with me ahead by 8 life.

Round 2 was against a Naya deck packing Where Ancients Tread. Game 1 was pretty even, with me starting early and chipping away at her life total. Once she got online my life started dropping in big chunks. She was at 4 when she took my final 3. Game 2 was fairly quickly mine, aided by a lack of forests on my opponent’s board. Lots of exaltation mean I was swinging unblocked for 6 per turn. Likewise, game 3 was decisive, with Battlegrace Angel coming online and jumping my life a couple times to 30, while eating away at hers.

Round 3 was very sad. I was up against a BR deck full of Gryxis nastiness. Flyers, unearthers, ugh. Games were over pretty quickly. Martial Coup did a nice job of clearing the board and buying me a few turns.. alas, to no avail in the end.

I heard we had 40 players out for the 1K, and there was a Yugioh tourny going on at the same time, as well as some drafting on the side. It was a busy place. Pics below.