Vote Charlie!

Hello! I’m Charlie Gorichanaz!

I’m a software engineer based in the San Francisco Bay area. After leaving the beer and brats of my native Milwaukee, I found a home in San Francisco, where my accent sounds fairly neutral, and some people even understand the word bubbler. Then I lived in Tokyo for a year and for a while found it difficult to stay put. I’ve since settled a bit in the East Bay and have been doing as much hiking as I can!

I earned my biochemistry degree while directing The Badger Herald‘s web department and studying Vitamin D in Hector DeLuca‘s lab. Then I spent a month in Buenos Aires before starting my career. I architected systems and solved clients’ business problems for five years and was a product manager for Movable Type.

My years in the lab and at the newspaper, as well as involvement in family businesses since age 10, have taught me to critically analyze and find the best way forward while staying patient, passionate and humble. I try to apply these lessons to all things in life.

I love reading, running, listening to music, recording photos and videos and collecting data of all sorts.

Recent posts

Featured posts

Faster Burning Man Ultramarathon than predicted, than ever!

Posted at age 36.

The part of my Burning Man I spent the most time preparing for by far was the Burning Man Ultramarathon. I had run the race six times before, so I knew I could finish it without dying. But I knew from past years my training rigor correlated strongly with how painful the race would be, and how long it would take me to recover. There’s little sense in putting in all the effort of getting to Burning Man only to spend several days of it barely able to move — though it would still be worth it if that were the only option!

The ultramarathon went really well!

The ultramarathon went really well!

Read more

Japan reunions, hedgehogs, my first capsule hotel

Posted at age 36.

I just came back from a refreshingly packed trip abroad with my friend Patton. We visited several cities each in Japan and Vietnam. I took way too many photos, and given Burning Man is less than a week away now, I’ll post these entries as quickly as I can but likely won’t finish until September. This first one covers Tokyo, the city in which I lived for a year back in 2014, and didn’t realize how much I missed.

It was great finally meeting Nori after 10 years, as well as his friend Jing, and then being reunited with Kai after almost as long.

It was great finally meeting Nori after 10 years, as well as his friend Jing, and then being reunited with Kai after almost as long.

Read more