Blog entries tagged OFA 2012

4 blog entries

What I was actually doing for those 15 months in Chicago...

I moved to Chicago for 466 days, where I lived in 3 different neighborhoods and visited 375 different places — 239 of which were restaurants or bars. I walked around 10,087 steps (or 7.67 miles) per day, slept roughly 7.19 hours per night, and gained 1 pound before returning to Iowa.

I was actually in the city on 400 of those days and ventured out of Chicago on 117 of them. 68 of those (spread across 17 different trips) were spent in my actual home, with my wife in Iowa. I was also fortunate enough to get out to Washington DC, San Francisco, Arizona, and Napa Valley.

I spent 302 days at Obama's campaign headquarters, where as an engineer I committed over 140,000 lines of code written in 6 languages to 19 applications across 1,675 commits. …

A Visit From The President

Once I got to work, things were fairly normal - well aside from most everyone else being dressed to the nines… especially the ladies.

But then around lunch time, about 30 giant secret service dudes started showing up along with cops, dogs, etc. We had a mandatory office leave while they swept the entire place. (Remember, this is Obama's campaign headquarters. These are the people who love the president and are hired to re-elect him. Security was still this tight)

After the sweep was done, we all came back to the office and went through security similar to an airport (or a hip hop show), but with qualified professionals. Not the TSA.

Once through security, we hung out for a bit, working as usual while tip-toeing around the secret service …

Preparing to Meet the President

After my shower this morning I thought to myself, "What should I wear to make myself presentable to the President of the United States?"

I don't really like dressing up and I wasn't about to start… but I felt like I should at least make an attempt. My normal attire consists of a hat, a pair of skate shoes, an unwashed pair of jeans, and an inappropriate/inappropriately priced screenprinted tee.

To me, the only real variables of this outfit were my hat and shirt.

So I glanced at my 2 stacks of t-shirts and thought, "I probably shouldn't wear a screen printed shirt... Maybe I should throw on one of my 'fancy' flannel button ups."

After looking through those for a bit I remembered that I worked in a 76 degree office and that everyone in the …

My New Gig: Helping Reelect the President

So my buddy, Harper is currently serving as the CTO for the 2012 Obama Campaign. This spring, he told me I should interview to join his team. However, after taking the 5 hour commute and a couple other minor details into consideration, I declined.

… and regretted it immediately. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, working on technology for our president with a team of baller engineers. There would've been a lot of sacrifice, but the experience and knowledge I could've gained would have been completely insane.

So fast forward a few weeks... I began talking with Harper and his team again.

Today, I accepted an offer with Obama for America - so did my friend, Nick.

Most of you probably know that I'm not a very political dude. …