Go ZipCar Go

If you’re thinking of getting a car, or if you’re thinking of ditching your old car because it’s too expensive to maintain, let me introduce you to ZipCar.Com. I’ve been a ZipCar member since February 2008, and it’s been a really great experience for me.

So what is ZipCar? ZipCar.Com is a service that allows members to rent any car within their network quickly and easily, and for short periods of time.

How’s it different from a regular car rental company? ZipCar.Com is really more of a car-replacement program. If you’re a ZipCar member, then you have access to a car when you need it, without the hassle that comes with ownership, like paying for maintenance, gas, and insurance. It’s a really a great substitute if you don’t use your car everyday.

And if you’ve never owned a car before, it’s a good place to start building your driving history. Because the ZipCar program insures you while you’re a member, your driving history with ZipCar qualifies you for a lower insurance rate (for when you do decide to buy your own car).

EHAZ Chronicles

Announcing the new launch (ok, I’m exagerating a little) of my wife’s new blog (her old one is WAY out of date) about her running adventures. She’s really into it – must be the Vancouver weather. And if you recall, I ran with her at the Vancouver Sun Run a few weeks ago. Congratulations to her for that! And if you want to read her perspective on that, she has an article on it too. Check out: http://ehazchronicles.blogspot.com.

Goodbye ShowTimeTickets.Com

Yesterday was the last day of April, and officially my last day with ShowTimeTickets.Com. It has been a rewarding 2 and a half years working with them. I felt a sense of nostalgia as I stepped out of their Vancouver office one last time. This was after all, my first job in Canada.

It has definitely been an interesting two and a half years. I remember struggling the first few weeks, having no one to show me the systems I inherited, feeling my way through thousands and thousands of lines of legacy code. There wasn’t a development environment, or a staging environment. For a while, I had to make changes directly to the production environment (such might be the case for many small companies), which was really scary, by the way. And tracking bugs and issues via e-mail was a monstrous headache.