Russell Beattie

I almost forgot. Today is my Spainiversary, the anniversary of the day I came here three years ago to stay. It seems like a LOOONG time.

In the fall of 1999 I got a call from Jose, an old coworker of mine who was part of a group of people at Proxicom who'd made some serious cash in the IPO and were going to be starting their own "eBusiness Consulting" business called Intabia. I was heavily involved in my own attempts to start a business, so I said, "No thanks, but good luck," and continued trying to get something started on my own while consulting another startup called Kinecta. I want you to imagine a renovated office building in the wrong end of SoMa filled with a bunch of energy, Nerf weapons and java code and that was Kinecta at the time. We spent easily 14-16 hours a day there, 6 days a week. Crazy but both lucrative and fun.

Then in the Spring when it was obvious that my efforts on my own company weren't going anywhere, Jose called me again and this time I said, "sure, why not?" and decided to head out to Madrid as the resident techie for 3 months. I arrived on April 3rd, 2000. Let's recap what the world was like in 2000 (I've done this before, but indulge me):

• Bill Clinton was President and Al Gore looked like a shoe-in for the November elections
• The NASDAQ was at 4,223.68 (it's now at 1,396.72 )
• The Dow was at 11,221.90 (it's now at 8,285.06 )
• I read this article on the plane (compare this with this story today).
• Survivor? Big Brother? Nope (I've never seen either of the U.S.'s versions)
• There was no 9/11 nor Bush nor War nor a bunch of other fundamental changes to the U.S.

That's all I can think of right now. Basically, what I'm saying is that I took off and the U.S. has been changing at a radical rate. I'd say that you could not have left the U.S. at any time in the past 20 years and had such massive changes on the society you left behind. It makes me feel quite stranded sometimes as I've only been back to the U.S. for three short trips since I left. It's a different world now...

Anyways, so within a month I met Ana and thought "hey, she's great! I'm going to stick around a bit longer..." And a year to the day later we were married. And then a year almost to the day after that Alex was born. And now almost a year later I'm here typing this.

Three years. *Poof*.

-Russ