The press release announces it and the announcement over at my company's website confirms it: starting January 1st, I'm going to be an employee of Raincity Studios. On Tuesday RCS acquired Bryght, the Vancouver-based Drupal-based hosting and hosted service company I've been working for since 2004. My role, currently as community support guy, will change slightly, details we'll work out in the following days and weeks. I'm excited and nervous at the same time, both usual for me when change like this happens. To say this came at the right time for me, however, is an understatement.

It maybe took a little longer than it needed to, but it really hit me how impressive their design chops were when Mark Yuasa's offered to redesign my blog back in 2005. 2005? Seems longer ago. I remember meeting him at BCIT and going through what theme I wanted for the look. Since it was around March, cherry blossom trees started losing their petals and the smell and sight of pink leaves all over the streets of the Lower Mainland filled my senses. With a little trepidation—pink not being the manliest colour—that I asked him use that as the concept, and his two original concepts floored me. One, while beautiful, was a little too white for what I thought of, but the other, overwhelmingly pink design made the choice obvious. I was impressed with his holistic approach (he asked me to write down what music I liked as part of the design consideration) and his attention to detail and his flexibility in the changes I requested. I've since reverted back to a default theme for the site (changing the colours to match the previous look), and I've committed to releasing the theme to the Drupal community.

Raincity is cataloging the social web's reaction to their announcement, and if you visit that link, you'll get to see me a little more than halfway down at the Cambie Pub, during my first week officially working for Bryght, in September 2004. That's a fairly iconic photo of me, so much so that Karen has taken to calling me a "support cowboy". Think I can get away with calling myself that? Probably not: I'm the strong, silent type, and besides, I don't like horses that much. I'm still going to celebrate by buying another cowboy shirt.