Riptown held a going away party for Carla-Mae and I tonight. Like most other companies I've worked for, the party consisted of dinner and drinks at a local pub and some funny gifts for the road. A lot of people showed up though, even some whom I haven't really taken the time to get to know very well, as well as Corey & Anne, two of the high-ranking types in the company.

If it was just a party though, there wouldn't be much to post about, but I wanted to take a minute to just talk about how nice it is to feel respected and appreciated in the workplace. I heard a lot of nice things said about me tonight. My IT lead, Mike was very generous with all sorts of compliments and Corey even made mention of a new project I could help start up with Riptown when I got back to Vancouver. The general feeling from the group was that everyone was sincerely sorry to see me go and that my presence here has meant something to them and the company -- it doesn't get much better for your self-esteem than that.

Mike says that he's going to do everything he can to make sure that I get a job with the company when I get back into Vancouver and I really hope it works out. Never before have I worked with such a wonderful group of people that made me feel so talented and appreciated.

If any of you are reading this, thanks so much for a wonderful ten months.

A few months ago, as we'd just moved into the new downtown office, Ahmad was feeling separated from the rest of our team. The problem was that he was sitting on the far side of our desks and would have to walk all the way around to take part in conversations etc.

His solution was to separate my desk from Aileen's and give himself a little canal in which to pass through and visit with the rest of us. This resulted in the creation of a little island composed of my desk and 2 other empty desks, one of which housed our library. The other teams began referring to it as "Dan's Island" and that's when Corey came over and delivered my flag: Behold, the nation of "Danlandia".

I've had my flag up ever since, even though Danlandia is now populated by two developers and a library (I imagine Talesh will rename the island after I'm gone). The flag stands to my right, next to my Nerf guns (the Danlandian military) and the other "citizens": Ari, Zim, Gir, Naruto, some crazy guy with white hair and a pet frog and of course, my menagerie of plastic animals from Milestones.

Anyway, as a parting gift, my teammates at Riptown gave gave me a commemorative tshirt in recognition of the nation upon which I've served for the few months I've worked in this office. It's a lovely gesture and I'm totally gonna wear it around Europe. Thanks guys, you all rock bigtime.

I've not been posting a lot lately, mostly because I'm just stupid-busy. I'd forgotten what an incredible hassle it was to move my life 4349.9 kilometres away in the first place and doing it again is generally un-fun.

For starters, the cost of moving is ridiculous. Most moving companies will only accept a minimum of 1000lbs (they charge by weight, not time), and since I live in a bachelor, that's typically an aweful lot of extra space. On top of that, I have to pay for storage (since I'll be in Europe for a couple months before getting to Vancouver) and insurance, and movers. My latest quote was $2429.54!

Clearly, I have to keep looking, but time is running short.

Once I have a mover, I need a moving day, and since I'm not likely to leave Toronto 'till September 11th (yes, you read right, it is the cheapest day to fly), I could be living at Melanie's out of a suitcase for nearly a month.

Then there's the flight itself, I've been working with a travel agent and the routing is insane. I want to visit these places:

• Stockholm
• Berlin
• Amsterdam
• Geneva
• Prague
• Rome/Vatican City
• Seoul

So one would imagine that the cheapest (and most efficient) option would be:

• Toronto » Stockholm
• Rome » Seoul
• Seoul » Vancouver

But sadly, because of the way the airlines work, not only do I have to use Frankfurt as my entrance & exit for Europe, and route my Seoul trip through Singapore, but in order to get home, I have to fly back through Europe!

• Toronto » Frankfurt
• Frankfurt » Singapore
• Singapore » Seoul
• Seoul » Singapore
• Singapore » Frankfurt
• Frankfurt » Vancouver

This trip is about $3500. I can't be the only one that thinks this is insane. Obviously, I can get a direct Seoul » Vancouver flight, but that costs roughly $600 more and a RoundTheWorld pass is nearly $5000.

I may still take the more direct route, if only because it means I'm not in transit for 26hours on my last leg, not to mention the environmental implications of adding so many more kilometres to my trip. I'll also be buying carbon credits, but somehow, that doesn't make me feel any better about it all.

I'm also leaving my life in Toronto, of which Melanie is a big part. She's going through a rough spot in her life lately, and sometimes I feel like I'm not helping enough because of all of these other complications, not to mention the fact that I'm likely to make it worse when I leave. Even though we both knew this was coming the day we met, it doesn't make things any easier.

I have responsibilities as coordinator for the Camaras in Public Spaces campaign of the TPSC. I have yet to find a suitable replacement. We have a big event coming up for August, but someone will have to be here in October to field questions from the press when the pilot project is over and the one I had in mind to replace me doesn't appear interested. Stephen has expressed interest, but he's always got so much on his plate, I wanted to bring in some fresh blood to run the show, but I'm not sure who that would be at the moment.

Then there's my job. I don't have one lined up in Vancouver just yet, though my current boss has been kind enough to look into available positions with Riptown's Vancouver office. Whether there's a spot for me there or not, I'm not too worried about finding work in what I understand to be a competitive market, but that spectre of joblessness is still pretty scary.

Lastly, I've started re-coding my site using the new techniques I've been learning at my current job. The new site (still in development) will use a true MVC system and include nifty stuff like Ajax and JQuery as well as a Modified Preorder Tree Traversal algorithm for storing the hierarchical sorting structures in my Imager. This is mostly in preparation for when I'm in Europe and want to remote-blog and upload images -- I want the site to be better equipped.

So that's all for now. Wish me luck I suppose. If my heart & brain don't implode from the pressure, those of you reading this from Vancouver should see me in a few months.

I received a postcard from Ari today from Germany:

Guter Tag from Berlin Dan! I hope that you are doing ok without me! I have been good! A great family has taken me under their wing and are letting me stay with them in Germany.

I have seen the sights and I think I am ready to move on! I will email you from my next stop.

Please don't worry, I am fine!

Now Ari has already returned (on the 24th, sorry I forgot to post about the event) and the postcard is dated for the 22nd, so it's a thin line, but it checks out :-)

So I had this little plastic toy thing on my desk. It was a solar-powered, head-bobbing, smiley face and yesterday morning, it was missing from it's usual place. I asked around, looked under stuff, some people even made up "MISSING" posters but alas, no, my little friend is gone.

I suppose it's the inevitable result of your company growing: the level of trust available diminishes. Now I'll have to build a "lock up all my shit" step into my leaving the office routine. It's a shame really.

I just made a pitch to my office manager to switch the whole office from standard office paper to FSC-certified paper. And we'll probably do it because the costs are the same.

I just did some quick digging today and found that while we were spending roughly $50 for 5000 sheets of paper (10reams @ 500sheets each), we could get the very same quantity of Domtar FSC-certified paper from Staples for $49.96.

Honestly, I don't know why everyone doesn't do this.

We worked long and hard, but the site's finally done and live. I was mostly responsible for the stuff behind the scenes in the admin section so you can't see my work really, but if you're interested, it's here.