Above all else, this project is dedicated to Sadie and her mother. Every feature was designed and every decision was made with you two in mind. Throughout the thousands of hours spent working on this project, you were in my thoughts every moment.
Even without any new features for animals, building commercial multi-family housing requires scores of people working together, and without everyone’s efforts, it simply wouldn’t be possible.
As such, I would like to thank everyone who contributed vital services to the design and construction of Lion Canyon, including: Arturo, Caleb, David, Diane, Epi, George, Gerardo, Jeremy, Johnny, Mike C, Raul, Robin, Rough Mike, and Sal, plus everyone who worked on their teams.
I’d also like to thank:
- My parents, for your time and attention; for your love and sacrifice, like buying us food and clothes when, in retrospect, it is obvious you should have fed me less and put the difference into an S&P 500 ETF; for not discouraging my wild ideas when I was a kid; and for consequently making me someone who still thinks moonshots like this one are worth trying.
- Clay, for having the patience of a saint, the uncounterfeitable Boy Scout ethics this project demanded, the courage to build a bunch of things that have never been built before, and the professionalism to treat my objectives with reverence, even the ones that seemed frivolous.
- Mark, for reminding me repeatedly that I am not, in fact, an architect; for helping me to understand and appreciate the depth of the profession; and for correcting Copernicus, who foolishly thought the Earth revolves around the sun, rather than the ADA.
- Diane, for having the empathy to truly understand this project’s goals; for spending the energy to put that understanding to practical use; and for giving me a moment of euphoria and solving several of my problems at once, all by introducing me to dim-to-warm lights.
- Brian, for going down yet another rabbit hole with me, riding along in my quest to find the most improbable and circuitous path to save the world; and for, during so many marathon late-night conversations, joining me in collaboratively torturing ourselves over minutia that we both know probably won’t ever matter.
- Trevor, for, unbeknownst to you, saving Brian’s sanity by enduring even more marathon late-night conversations over minutia; for being great at getting what’s stuck in my head out into a practical form others can see; and for sharing an unhealthily relentless pursuit of perfection.
- Jeremy, .
- John, for sparing me the trouble of learning lessons the traditional, expensive way; for assuring me that the laws of physics cannot be persuaded to be broken, no matter how convenient it would be; and, in general, from preventing things from burning down.
- Other John, for questioning everything, sometimes repeatedly; for debating philosophy like our lives depend on it; and for helping give a tiny apartment building a level of network security that would normally only be found in a multi-billion-dollar corporation.
- Yet Another John, for your captivating conversation; for your expert advice; and for shepherding such a large order of custom furniture without complaint, as if seventeen weren’t an infuriatingly high number of revisions.
- Christine, for inspiring me with her creativity; for turning my vague vision into functional art, transforming the mundane into objects of beauty; for letting me rename a few masterpieces; and for loving animals more than I do.
- Matt, for solving difficult problems, casually and without fanfare; for indulging my opinions of just how important a gate could be; and for turning my words into metal with surprising speed and precision.
- My neighbors, for putting up with months of construction noise without complaint; but more importantly, for trusting me to do my best to minimize the impact to the neighborhood, ultimately supporting a project they would otherwise oppose if it were undertaken by an outsider.
- Countless others, including the thousands in academia who produced the research this project is based upon, as well as the millions of giants upon whose shoulders they stand; the inventors of automatic litter boxes, high efficiency fans, televisions that look like framed art, and, of course, dim-to-warm lights; the dozens of people who work for the City of San Diego that reviewed and approved this project…
It may seem absurd to express gratitude to so many people, but it is a sincere reflection of the reality that, although it feels substantial to me, my own contribution to this project is miniscule compared to that of all the other people who made it possible.
So, to everyone on this page and everyone I forgot to mention: Thank you.