A lot has happened over the last few months so I thought I would write a life update for the two people who read this blog.

First off, I got a job at Google! I started around a month ago in mid-September and I am really liking it so far. Coming in with two years industry experience it is interesting to see how the dev tooling and processes here are different from those I am used to (I really miss Git). As someone who REALLY struggles with imposter syndome it is nice to be validated by getting to go work for a company I always dreamed about working for. On the other hand, being surrounded by all these smart people still means that my imposter feeling is alive and well.

My second life update is that I moved to Seattle! My new job is based out of here and so while it was a forced relocation, Seattle is an area I have been interested at working in for a while. Coming from Bozeman, there are only two real tech cities that I can work out of and still be a one-day drive from home. These two cities are Denver and Seattle. While Denver/Colorado has a vibe I find appealing, the pay is substantially worse for a single guy like me. Washington State has no income tax which combined with the higher salary of the area makes it a much smarter financial decision than Colorado.

I am currently living in a tiny 180 square foot micro-studio in Kirkland which is surprisingly more tolerable than I anticipated. Why am I living in a shoebox when I am making Google money you may ask? The answer is that I hate paying rent and decided that saving a grand a month was worth the mental health hit. Was this a good choice? To that I would answer that I am glad I only signed a ten month lease. I will almost surely be upgrading apartments when the time comes. At least I payed extra to have my own bathroom and my own parking spot. The bathroom cost me an extra 200 a month, and the parking spot another 200 on top of that but those upgrades definitely help make my situation more tolerable. When my lease is up in May I plan to move to somewhere large friendly since I think it is time I got myself the Golden Retriever I have been holding off on for the last couple years.

In other updates I will detail some of the not awesome things that have happened to me since I got here. A big one was getting my phone/wallet stolen. Coming from Bozeman which has very little crime, I was far too trusting and left my stuff out at a bouldering gym. That was a real bummer and caused me a few headaches over the next few days.

The first headache was that the thief had my cellphone which contained a lot of my personal data. Thankfully, I was able to borrow someone else’s phone at the rock gym and use that to access find my iphone. From that I was able to enable lost mode on my phone. At this point I was not positive my phone had been stolen so I held off on remotely wiping it. It was only after I got home and started getting credit card fraud alerts via email that my fears were confirmed and I wiped my phone remotely. Also interestingly, my phone seems to have taken up residence in a homeless shelter now.

My second headache involved my credit cards. It turns out that it is extremely challenging to cancel your credit card when you do not have your phone to get the SMS codes from. While I can see why the CC companies have it set up this way it made it very stupid when I am literally getting fraud alert emails but am unable to get the card shutdown. I was essentially unable to stop the thief from using my cards until I got access to my phone number again.

My third headache was getting a new phone attached to my old number. Since I am on my parents phone plan, I needed my moms authorization to activate a new phone. However my mom lives hundreds of miles away and I needed the phone extremely quickly. After fighting with the un-named cellular company and going into the store 3 times I was able to finally get that issue resolved (only after having my mom call corporate a few times as well). Once I had my phone number back it was fairly easy to get the credit cards cancelled and fraud cleared out so props to the credit card companies for that. Having a police report made this step much easier.

My fourth headache involved my stolen drivers license. My license was a Montana license but I needed to get a Washington license since I had just moved to Seattle. I tried going to the DOL here but even though I had my passport with me to prove that I am Ian Laird I was unable to get a new license since I could not prove I knew how to drive. After going into the DOL a couple more times I able to use my Montana Driving History to prove I was a valid driver.

My fifth headache was actually not directly related to the others but I will include it anyway. I had my car towed on a Sunday night when I was in Seattle visiting a friend. Unfortunately my apartment keys were in my car so I had no way to get into my apartment even if I somehow got all the way home. (I should mention that I was literally on the opposite end of Seattle from my apartment so even getting home via Uber would have been expensive). After panicking for a couple minutes I remembered that I had an airTag in my car and used that to track down my car. It was only a mile away so I sprinted across the city at night in search of my car. I actually got a little frightened when I got to the impound lot because the area it was in was a little sketchy, but thankfully I was able to get my car back a cool $453 dollars later. I am shocked at how expensive this was but I mean what was I going to do? I couldn’t get into my apartment and was ten miles from home with two lakes in between as well.

However, now I am going to list what I have learned from these experiences so that you the reader can help protect yourself.

• Set up Find my Iphone if you have an iPhone or Find my Device if you have an Android. The ability to remotely wipe your phone in the case of it getting stolen is so amazing and great for peace of mind.
• Use an eSim or pin protect your physical sim. This protects your phone number from being used. This is extra important in the case of SMS verification.
• Carry fewer physical credit cards. If your phone is even kind of new you can probably set up ApplePay or GooglePay which locks your credit cards behind your device lock.
• Set up Automatic Cloud backups of your phone on a daily basis.
• Set your phone to wipe itself after ten failed logins.
• Set up Email Notification and Push Notifications for every credit card transaction. This will make it much easier to monitor your credit cards in the case that you lose access to your phone.
• Don’t leave your phone/wallet anywhere it is not safe. I now keep my phone in my pocket at all times. Do not leave your phone on the table while you are eating or in the cubby at the gym.
• Attach GPS trackers to things that would be super inconvenient to lose like keys/car. I recently found out that airtags have a feature where they will not notify when left behind in certain areas which is useful for not notifying when left in your apartment.
• Carry as few things in your wallet as possible. Look at your wallet right now and think about if there is anything that you can take out of it.
• Police Reports are your friend even if you do not think that the police will be investigating the crime. It made it much easier dealing with the credit card companies and also when dealing with my renters insurance (did you know renters insurance sometimes covers stolen phones?)
• Try not to get your car towed ;)