I’m excited to announce that next week I'm relocating to Yahoo!’s new Santa Monica office. I’ll continue to fulfill my current role as Senior Editor for the U.S. broadband portals (SBC, BellSouth, Verizon, and Plus), but I'll be working among the Full Coverage and Yahoo! News teams who have recently moved down south to be part of the new Yahoo! Media Group.

"Why the hell are you leaving San Francisco?" at least hundreds of people have asked, yelled, emailed, and pinged me. It sounds like some people think I have a lotta explainin' to do -- so here are the main reasons why I'm so glad to be making this move:

1. It's a great opportunity to work among colleagues in the Yahoo! Media Group where most of the new original content on the Yahoo! Network (including Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone ) is being produced. I've worked in online web content creation for the past ten (can you believe that, ten?!) years, so now that Yahoo! is making a big commitment to creating original content it makes sense for me to be located where it's all happening.

2a. I love San Francisco, but to be honest I don't see as much of it as I'd like to. For the past five years(!) I've made the arduous commute from San Francisco down to Silicon Valley --  I worked for two years at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View and for the last three years at Yahoo!'s campus in Sunnyvale. I spend ten hours per week driving on the 101 freeway, and that's 10 hours too many at this point. Sure, I still do cool things up in SF, like produce a weekly pirate radio show  and go to my friend Derek's Walk-In Movies  and occasionally to see bands -- but the truth is, I'm in Sunnyvale in the midst of Silicon Valley waaaay more hours per week than I'm up in SF. And since I never want to live down in the suburban sprawl of "The Valley," I'm looking at many more years of commuting ahead of me if I decided to continue living in San Francisco and working a decent tech job. Pretty much all the best tech companies: Apple, Google, Yahoo!, and eBay are each headquartered somewhere down on the Peninsula, an hour's drive from San Francisco. I love it when Bay Area people comment about all the traffic in Los Angeles. My commute in Northern California is far worse than any Southern California commute I've ever had.

2b. In Los Angeles, I can live near the Yahoo! office and still live in a great area with cafes, bars, and shops that I'll enjoy. My friend Laura and I just signed a lease on an amazing house right across the street from the beach in Venice . It's only 4 miles from the office, and it has trees in the living room growing down into the ground! (Have you ever heard of such a thing?!) And I just might *gasp* ride my bike to work along the Venice to Santa Monica beachfront bike path.

3. I've lived in San Francisco for exactly 5 years. I arrived in SF in October 2000 just as closing time was setting in over the drunken magic of the dotcom days -- the music was turned off and the dim lights were turned up and everyone had to go home alone to their cold, lonely beds.) My instincts are saying that five years is long enough to stay in one city at this point in my life. I've experienced two neighborhoods in two different housing experiments: I spent 3 years living in a loft in Lower Potrero/Dogpatch and 2 years living with some guy friends in a dilapidated Mission District Victorian. I've met tons of amazing people and been to great parties and seen some incredible things. I'll certainly miss my incredible SF friends (August, Owen, Bethany, Allyson, Bryan, Andy, Jen , Deneb, Derek, Shannon, Daniel, Mici, and everyone else I'm not naming) and I'll definitely be back to visit, but it's time for a change.

In yesterday's Yahoo! Broadband portals' team meeting, my boss Jim walked in and announced -- "I was just reading the latest issue of 'The Economist,' and there's a picture of Jess in there from Burning Man!"

"Please tell me that I have my clothes on in the photo," I joked.

(I already had an inkling about this "media appearance" because I had spoken with writer journalist Kurt Opprecht on the playa while I was inside my art project -- the Psychiatric Help Booth -- and he had mentioned he was writing a piece about the economy of Burning Man for (who else?) The Economist. He talked to me for a while and asked if he could take a photo of the booth.)

You can find Kurt's piece (and this photo) on page 41 of The Economist for September 24th-30th. The article is also available online as premium content, if you have a subscription to The Economist. You can view a snapshot of it here on flickr.

Anyway, back to the Yahoo! Broadband portals team meeting where this was all mentioned before I had seen the photo or the piece (before I knew what I was wearing or how it was all presented)...

At this point, Allyson looks across the table and says, "Jess, I'm aware that The Economist is a well-respected publication, but I'd honestly be more impressed if you had your photo in "Us" weekly or "Star" magazine."

(Allyson's comment certainly sheds some light on the state of American Culture in 2005, and as a scholar in this department I promise you I will get to the bottom of it...) What say you?

So, if you work at Yahoo! in Sunnyvale, you may know that we have this service called "Office Lube" that visits our campus to provide us wickedly-busy internet tech worker folks the convenient and helpful service of getting our oil changed while we are at work. (If you don't work at Yahoo!, you probably are reading this blog post because you think it is about a topic that is slightly more nefarious than routine auto maintenance!)

Office lube visits the Yahoo! Sunnyvale campus every Tuesday on the 4th floor of the parking garage.

I mostly avoid the on-campus services such as the onsite Dental Van, and the onsite haircuts, but I'm a busy person, and my poor little convertible has been a bit overdue for an oil change. So, yesterday morning I drove up to the top floor of the parking garage and brought my keys to the Office Lube guy and asked if I would be able to get an oil change for my car.

"Sure," he said nicely. "And have you had your engine flushed in the past 6 months?"

"Ummm no," I said, wanting to run off to make it on time to a 10 a.m. meeting. "How much would that cost?"

"$19.99. And it will get it all working smoothly. "

I kind of knew that speedy-type oil change places always try to tack on unnecessary extras, and my car already seemed to be working smoothly, but I was in a hurry and -- to be totally honest -- I really don't know much about the exact maintenance needs my car has. Furthermore, $19.99 seemed acceptable. (Note to marketers: $19.99 is an attractive price-point for selling things to busy tech professionals.) "Sure," I said before my better sense had a chance to get control. 

Of course, once I said yes to that, the guy asked the next question: "Have you had your tires rotated in the last 12,000 miles?" I honestly couldn't remember (I hadn't had my double latte yet), and furthermore I wasn't even sure if my tires needed rotating every 12,000 miles, but I must've looked at him kind of skeptically for proposing an additional "add-on" service, because he then pointed at my tires and said, "See how they're riding unevenly."

I looked, and it was true. The two rear tires seemed to be lower or less inflated than the front two. “Hmmm. How much will it cost?” I asked.

“$19.99,” he said. Clearly, the Office Lube guy was already well-aware of the fact that $19.99 was an attractive price-point for selling things to busy tech professionals.

“OK, sure. Sounds good,” I said, making clear that I was about to be late. “Do I leave the keys with you or with the valets over there?”

“Leave them with me,” he said. “Thanks!”

He called me in the afternoon to tell me that the car was all finished.

I left the office around 10p.m. that night and drove the 40 minutes back home up to San Francisco.

This morning at 8:20a.m. I drive the 36 miles back down to Sunnyvale.

During my 10 a.m. Front Doors meeting my phone rings 4 times from a random 408 area code number.

At 11:05 a.m. when the meeting ends and I’m walking back to my desk, another call comes in from that same 408 number that keeps calling me (but curiously hasn’t left a message), so, of course I answer, “Hello.”

"Hello, ma'am. This is ______ from Office Lube calling you. I’m sorry, but I have an embarrassing request.”

"Yes?" I say, growing nervous but still curious, thinking he’s left something strange in my car.

"I need to come back to Yahoo! campus to check out your car,” he says quickly sounding nervous himself.

"OK." I said, figuring I would find out the mysterious reason why when he arrived.

"Where are you parked today?" he asked.

"I’m on the 3^rd floor of the garage," I said. “I’ll meet you by the 3^rd floor elevator, and show you where it is.” My thinking was that I wanted to be there to see in-person what was going on with my car, despite the inconvenient inturruption to my work in the midst of a busy work-day.

"Thank you," he said, sounding relieved. "I'll be there in 15 minutes.”

At this point I was arriving back at my desk and distracted as I needed plow through my email and simultaneously prepare for a noon and 1 p.m. meeting, so I just got off the call as quickly as I could and tried to get as much work done before he arrived. I had had a previous Beetle that exploded on me due to a "bad battery" while I was living in LA in 2000 and later died in the middle of traffic on Dolores Street during a morning commute with Andy in 2003  so I’m no stranger to unexpected car stuff happening.

The Office Lube guy called my phone 15 minutes later saying he had arrived, and I walked over to meet him at the 3^rd floor of the Yahoo! garage, feeling totally weird – should I be worried about my personal safety? Was he hitting on me? What was going on? This special on-campus “service” was suddenly making me nervous -- and yet still I was totally curious about why he needed to see my car again.

When I came up the garage stairs, he was in the white Office Lube van, and he recognized me and rolled down the window.

“My car is around the corner here,” I pointed and started walking in that direction.

“Do you want to get into the van?” he asked, still seeming obviously nervous.

“No.” I said, getting more nervous because it’s pretty much rule #1 that you never get into vans with people you barely know in dark – though fairly well-trafficked – garages. “The car's just right over here,” I gestured for him to follow me while I walked quickly down the garage ramp to the car. “See, here it is.”

He stopped the van, and got out carrying his toolbox. I quickly guessed that he hadn't left anything in my car and that he probably wasn't trying to kidnap me.

"So, why do you need to see my car again?” I asked. The suspense needed to be broken, even though I was scared to hear what he was going to say, and he seemed so embarrassed and nervous.

“Well, there was an extra bolt that we had, and I just want to check the wheels to make sure…”

“To make sure that they’re all bolted on OK?!” I finished his question when he trailed off.

“Did it drive OK last night?” he asked still deflecting a bit as he noticed I was getting angry.

“Yes, I drove it all the way back up to San Francisco at 10 p.m. last night. Are you telling me one of the wheels wasn’t bolted on properly when I drove it home?”

"I just want to check the wheels to make sure. I don’t think it’s an important one.”

I watched carefully as he proceeded to take the little metal thing out of the middle of each hubcap and then check and twist each of the bolts. It was hard to see exactly what he was doing because the space between my car and the cars on either side – per the Yahoo!-standard ultra-compact parking spaces – was really really tight.

“Do they seem OK?” I asked as he worked on the 4^th and final one.

“Yes, I just wanted to make sure,” he said, emphasizing.

"Do I need to pay you for this?” I said, thinking about the mysterious still unexplained “extra bolt” and suddenly realizing that I hadn’t yet paid for any of the previous day's service, and wondering if I should be paying after the mysterious bolt scare.

I felt conflicted:
on one hand I was glad he was so adamant to call me and immediately drive over to check to make sure that all my tires were properly bolted on
on the other hand I was pissed that he left the day before without noticing the mysterious extra bolt and being sure that my tires weren't properly bolted on.

He sort of evaded the question of payment and said I could pay later, and reached into his pocket and handed me a $10.00 Office Lube voucher.

“So I can take $10.00 off the total cost?” I asked.

“The voucher can be used on your next service with us,” he said.

I can’t believe this guy is thinking I would even consider getting my car serviced by them again.

Seriously, have other folks had good or bad experiences with this service? Am I overreacting about the wheel bolt thing? What say you?

I met Peter Jennings (and also rode up in an elevator with him) when I worked as an intern at ABC News in 1995. I was working for Diane Sawyer on "Prime Time Live," but we would always go stand on the catwalk and watch when Peter taped "World News Tonight." Peter Jennings was always my favorite broadcast journalist to watch work. He made fast and furious notes on all the copy that was given to him. I always got a sense that he was very interested in what was talking about, and that he was interested in conveying stories as accurately and thoroughly as he possibly could. It's very sad to hear that Peter Jennings succumbed to cancer on Sunday.

It's hard to say what the future of broadcast journalism holds now, with the retirement of Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and Ted Koppel. Times, they are certainly a' changin'. So, who will give us the news now? Diane Sawyer? Hari Sreenivasen? Bloggers? Citizen journalists with video cameraphones? What do you think?