Just to show off my mad Excel skills, I'm posting a static-html version of the pivot table I used to keep up with my packages. [Note: this was A Bad Idea, as the spreadsheet not only doesn't show up in Firefox, it doesn't get along with Blogger either. I gave up on it.] It looks like I have too much stuff coming, seeing as how the room is already full and none of the nine boxes has arrived yet. I know I've been spoiled living with unlimited space at G-diddy's, but if there's one thing I learned at Tech, it's how to fit way too much stuff into way too little space.
If there're two things I learned at Tech, the second one is how to fit way too many activities into way too little time.
And if there are three things I learned at Tech, the third one is that space and time are inextricably intertwined in the first place.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
They ain't kiddin' about that mile-high business.
Here I am in sunny, pointy Colorado. It's everything you could ever want in a place to live, except of course for an oxygen-rich atmosphere. I have to take a nap every thirty minutes or so, and can't carry a letter to the mailbox without panting. That's gonna be an adjustment, I think.
I'm told that my packages (the first batch of them at least) are now safely in my office. I take this to mean that I now have an office. So that's one less thing to worry about. An office is a good sign; I've always had less work to do when I had one of those, and most people I know with offices seem to have a better time at work than those without them.
Lest you cube-dwellers should wax envious of the space, I'm going to post some pictures of my new domicile. It turns out that the room I rented has less space than my Accord. Basically all the stuff that came out of my car has rendered the floor more of an ideal than an integral part of the room. I'm about to go take pictures of everything, since I didn't have much light to work with yesterday. There's rain and stuff here, which is less than ideal, as far as I can tell.
Anyway, I'm living with a personal trainer and a window and siding guy, who both seem pretty cool so far. They're both older than I am, so they shouldn't get me into too much trouble. Unfortunately the Frietnamese lady didn't work out; we had irreconcilable differences in our concepts of square footage. But she's still awesome.
I would've gotten my Colorado driver license today, but I'm out of the kind of money they take. I've got little short-term liquidity, but slightly more plasticity to my name. The generous folks at Visa were kind enough to increase my spending limit fivefold, but something tells me that might have been a mixed blessing.
More stuff is forthcoming; I'm gonna run take pictures now.
I'm told that my packages (the first batch of them at least) are now safely in my office. I take this to mean that I now have an office. So that's one less thing to worry about. An office is a good sign; I've always had less work to do when I had one of those, and most people I know with offices seem to have a better time at work than those without them.
Lest you cube-dwellers should wax envious of the space, I'm going to post some pictures of my new domicile. It turns out that the room I rented has less space than my Accord. Basically all the stuff that came out of my car has rendered the floor more of an ideal than an integral part of the room. I'm about to go take pictures of everything, since I didn't have much light to work with yesterday. There's rain and stuff here, which is less than ideal, as far as I can tell.
Anyway, I'm living with a personal trainer and a window and siding guy, who both seem pretty cool so far. They're both older than I am, so they shouldn't get me into too much trouble. Unfortunately the Frietnamese lady didn't work out; we had irreconcilable differences in our concepts of square footage. But she's still awesome.
I would've gotten my Colorado driver license today, but I'm out of the kind of money they take. I've got little short-term liquidity, but slightly more plasticity to my name. The generous folks at Visa were kind enough to increase my spending limit fivefold, but something tells me that might have been a mixed blessing.
More stuff is forthcoming; I'm gonna run take pictures now.
Sunday, July 24, 2005
I didn't know Daewoo even made monitors...
This is as close to roughing it as I'm equipped to be, blog-wise. Well, no, I suppose I could update from my cell, but that's not the best use of my thumbs.
Anyway, I'm in Elk City, OK, for the evening. They said there wasn't anything of note between here and Amarillo, and, given where they were when they said that, that's saying something. The plan, according to my sister-to-be-in-law's fiance, is to hang a right at Amarillo and head northwards to colorado springs. Apparently I get to see more cows that way than by going through St. Louis.
I used to think Alabama was the most backwards state in the country. I'm not recanting that, now, but I have come to realize that threre are some contenders for the title. Take, for instance, the city of Florala, which lies, conveniently enough, on the Alabama-Florida border. I used to think that was a pretty stupid name for a municipality, but after passing through Arklahoma on my way to Texarkana, it doesn't sound so bad.
The scenery hasn't changed since Memphis, although I'm seeing a sharp increase in the number of American cars on the road. Most of the drivers are nice enough, except for people in maroon minivans. I don't have time to go into the reasoning behind this, but soccer moms are constantly trying to drive me off the road.
I'll take some pictures of the car loaded like it is, but it's seen worse. I hope the TV and monitor in the trunk don't get their pixels shaken loose by all the bumps in the roads, but the former is under warranty and the latter is obsolete, so I'm not too worried.
On the roommate front, I haven't made any progress since about thursday. I guess I'll go ahead and pay the greedy people at roommates.com for more access. I'll be paying for it if I don't, that's for sure.
I could probably afford a decent place on my own, but if I'm gonna be working with computers all during the day, it'd be nice to have another vertibrate life form at home to make some noise. I've only had one roommate, and he was pretty easy to get along with, being more like me than I am, but in a good way. I've never been the smart one in the room before, though.
Well, I'd write more, but the table upon which this lobby computer sits is about to break, and it shakes whenever I hit a key. That and my arms are sticking to it, which is sub-optimal.
If you're new to the blog, check out some older posts, many of which have actual content of interest to more people than just me, and a few of which I actually put some thought into.
Anyway, I'm in Elk City, OK, for the evening. They said there wasn't anything of note between here and Amarillo, and, given where they were when they said that, that's saying something. The plan, according to my sister-to-be-in-law's fiance, is to hang a right at Amarillo and head northwards to colorado springs. Apparently I get to see more cows that way than by going through St. Louis.
I used to think Alabama was the most backwards state in the country. I'm not recanting that, now, but I have come to realize that threre are some contenders for the title. Take, for instance, the city of Florala, which lies, conveniently enough, on the Alabama-Florida border. I used to think that was a pretty stupid name for a municipality, but after passing through Arklahoma on my way to Texarkana, it doesn't sound so bad.
The scenery hasn't changed since Memphis, although I'm seeing a sharp increase in the number of American cars on the road. Most of the drivers are nice enough, except for people in maroon minivans. I don't have time to go into the reasoning behind this, but soccer moms are constantly trying to drive me off the road.
I'll take some pictures of the car loaded like it is, but it's seen worse. I hope the TV and monitor in the trunk don't get their pixels shaken loose by all the bumps in the roads, but the former is under warranty and the latter is obsolete, so I'm not too worried.
On the roommate front, I haven't made any progress since about thursday. I guess I'll go ahead and pay the greedy people at roommates.com for more access. I'll be paying for it if I don't, that's for sure.
I could probably afford a decent place on my own, but if I'm gonna be working with computers all during the day, it'd be nice to have another vertibrate life form at home to make some noise. I've only had one roommate, and he was pretty easy to get along with, being more like me than I am, but in a good way. I've never been the smart one in the room before, though.
Well, I'd write more, but the table upon which this lobby computer sits is about to break, and it shakes whenever I hit a key. That and my arms are sticking to it, which is sub-optimal.
If you're new to the blog, check out some older posts, many of which have actual content of interest to more people than just me, and a few of which I actually put some thought into.
Friday, July 22, 2005
The Trick to Moving
is to realize that you are not just a person. You are a hundred different people in a thousand different databases, and moving all of them at the same time is next to impossible. This is before even bothering with actual cargo. Despite doing everything I can conceive of doing ahead of time, it's still gonna be a major headache.
For instance, I'm required to get a Colorado driver's license immediately upon becoming a resident. I'm pretty sure I need to present a valid DL on my first day at ITT as well. The only problem is, when I get a Colorado license, they will force me to surrender my Alabama one and issue me a fake-looking temporary ID, which will in turn delay everything from a new bank account to a security check to a car tag & smog check to a rent-ability check.
Then there's the medical stuff. Just to continue allergy shots, even with a note from my current allergist, I have to see another doctor out there. Apparently allergists from rival states don't trust one another, or maybe it's just a scam to get more business. Anyway, even though the allergins and Tabasco sauce or whatever they put in the needles will come from my allergist back home, I have to make an appointment to see the new overlord of the dominatrices who call themselves allergy technicians (or maybe I call them that, whatever).
I decided to go with FedEx, since they told me I could just ship my stuff to a FedEx/Kinko's in Co Springs and pick it up there. Then they told me I could only do that if I were sending the package "express," which, incidentally, isn't what the Ex stands for in the first place. I wanted to ship ground, and they said that they can't hold boxes when they ship them on the ground, because they'd have no way to keep track of it. It turns out that, while they can track millions of packages all over the world that are moving at varying speeds via land, sea, and air, if a box stops for some reason, it ceases to exist. Sorta like how photons can have a momentum but no mass. (How many people do you know who can't move an apartment's worth of stuff without using quantum mechanics?) Anyway, I shipped the first batch of boxes to my employer (I love having one of those), whose warehouse will have fun trying to decide what to do with them, since I probably don't exist over there yet.
Now my navigator has gone AWOL on me, so I'm gonna have to use mapquest, yahoo! maps(!), and google maps, and figure the best consensus of the three of them. I figure whatever I lack in direction I can make up in speed; if I drive fast enough at random for a long enough time, I'm sure to hit colorado eventually. They say it's a mile high up there, so all I should have to do is keep driving uphill.
Oh, and my car got new shoes. Apparently when I did my budgeting for the machine I didn't reckon on its preference for V-rated (the V is for expensiVe) tires. They're apparently the Air Jordans of roadware, if Mike played basketball in the mud, rain, and/or snow. This comparison got me to thinking why Nike hasn't come out with a line of tires yet, but I think I'll let somebody else make a million dollars off that idea, since branding isn't really my style. (BTW, I want to start a Hooters spin-off company selling coffee and magazines. I think I'll call it Moe Juggs).
It turns out Colorado is a whole state to the west of where I thought it was; it looks like Kansas swapped places with it or something since I checked the map last.
I'm sorry for not updating during my downtime, but my uplink is down in the dumps. I'm not sure if packets travel faster in the thinner air in the mountains, but we'll see. If anything, the letters should go faster when I'm uploading them downhill.
I thought I'd be on the road by now, but my mother said something about "deep cleaning" after I left, which means I've got to batton down some more hatches if I want any of my stuff to be where I left it. The more irreplacible something is, the more likely she is to throw it away. Plus I still need to back up all my files in case of, I don't know, something bad happening, even though the computer will be riding with me.
For instance, I'm required to get a Colorado driver's license immediately upon becoming a resident. I'm pretty sure I need to present a valid DL on my first day at ITT as well. The only problem is, when I get a Colorado license, they will force me to surrender my Alabama one and issue me a fake-looking temporary ID, which will in turn delay everything from a new bank account to a security check to a car tag & smog check to a rent-ability check.
Then there's the medical stuff. Just to continue allergy shots, even with a note from my current allergist, I have to see another doctor out there. Apparently allergists from rival states don't trust one another, or maybe it's just a scam to get more business. Anyway, even though the allergins and Tabasco sauce or whatever they put in the needles will come from my allergist back home, I have to make an appointment to see the new overlord of the dominatrices who call themselves allergy technicians (or maybe I call them that, whatever).
I decided to go with FedEx, since they told me I could just ship my stuff to a FedEx/Kinko's in Co Springs and pick it up there. Then they told me I could only do that if I were sending the package "express," which, incidentally, isn't what the Ex stands for in the first place. I wanted to ship ground, and they said that they can't hold boxes when they ship them on the ground, because they'd have no way to keep track of it. It turns out that, while they can track millions of packages all over the world that are moving at varying speeds via land, sea, and air, if a box stops for some reason, it ceases to exist. Sorta like how photons can have a momentum but no mass. (How many people do you know who can't move an apartment's worth of stuff without using quantum mechanics?) Anyway, I shipped the first batch of boxes to my employer (I love having one of those), whose warehouse will have fun trying to decide what to do with them, since I probably don't exist over there yet.
Now my navigator has gone AWOL on me, so I'm gonna have to use mapquest, yahoo! maps(!), and google maps, and figure the best consensus of the three of them. I figure whatever I lack in direction I can make up in speed; if I drive fast enough at random for a long enough time, I'm sure to hit colorado eventually. They say it's a mile high up there, so all I should have to do is keep driving uphill.
Oh, and my car got new shoes. Apparently when I did my budgeting for the machine I didn't reckon on its preference for V-rated (the V is for expensiVe) tires. They're apparently the Air Jordans of roadware, if Mike played basketball in the mud, rain, and/or snow. This comparison got me to thinking why Nike hasn't come out with a line of tires yet, but I think I'll let somebody else make a million dollars off that idea, since branding isn't really my style. (BTW, I want to start a Hooters spin-off company selling coffee and magazines. I think I'll call it Moe Juggs).
It turns out Colorado is a whole state to the west of where I thought it was; it looks like Kansas swapped places with it or something since I checked the map last.
I'm sorry for not updating during my downtime, but my uplink is down in the dumps. I'm not sure if packets travel faster in the thinner air in the mountains, but we'll see. If anything, the letters should go faster when I'm uploading them downhill.
I thought I'd be on the road by now, but my mother said something about "deep cleaning" after I left, which means I've got to batton down some more hatches if I want any of my stuff to be where I left it. The more irreplacible something is, the more likely she is to throw it away. Plus I still need to back up all my files in case of, I don't know, something bad happening, even though the computer will be riding with me.
Monday, July 18, 2005
Head 'Em Up, & Move 'Em Out
Now it's officially official; I'm a Hydrocode Analyst, headed for Colorado, where, I'm told, I have a job. I'm kinda taking it on faith that there is a company out there and that they have a job for me. Maybe it's all an elaborate hoax, but then again, I can't prove that the rest of the world isn't, so what the heck.
I've decided to pass on U-Haul in favor of just shipping my stuff. It should be cheaper and less of a hassle. The only big obstacle now is finding a driving buddy, since it's like 23 hours' worth, and my siblings are both indisposed, or at least not at my disposal.
I've started posting some of thel pictures from the beach at my brand-new flickr account. I'm thinking it's a little higher-class free picture hosting than photobucket, at least for visitors. Check it out.
I'm looking for roommates now, preferably ones with rooms already since the logistics of co-shopping with stranger for a new place involve too many degrees of freedom. I've met a Frietnamese woman who's renting out a posh room on top of a mountain or something. The only catch is, all the furniture I bring has to be attractive enough to match her decor. She's a little ahead of me in that regard, but maybe we can work something out. Since I'm a Taurus/Aires hybrid, and she's a Gemini, we "click," or so I'm told. I won't say more, since she could be reading this... Hi, if that's you. It may be a little more highfalutin than I had planned on, but the price is good for the accomodations.
I still have ahead of me the arduous task of deactivating my resumes, agents, profiles, and recruiters on a couple dozen web sites. I think I'll make a spreadsheet to list which ones are where and what the passwords and login names are. It's pretty ridiculous, but you know how much I like listing thins.
Speaking of that, moving is a great time to assess the total replacement cost of my worldly posessions. As I pack, I'm gonna be listing contents and retail replacement amounts to figure out how much insurance to put on each box.
If there's one lesson I learned the last time I tried this trick, it's to carry your GameCube memory card separate from the cube. One of the final traumas I experienced at Pacific Tech was when UPS lost my cube shipping it home, and when, paying out the insured amount, all the proceeds went directly to the Bursar's office toward my balance. In other words, I was denintoed, and had to start over on all my games when I did get around to buying them back.
So I'm doing an ambitious backupping project. Basically I'll assume that my computer is obliterated, my car stolen, and everything else is lost. I don't know if that will be enough precautions, but we'll see.
Today was Monday, and I have exactly 13 days until I report for work at wherever it is I go to do whatever it is I do.
I'll write more later (Charter is coming tomorrow between 8 & 5), when I'm further along updating my resume sites. I hope to get an apartment soon so I can start sending stuff ahead of me there, although if I room with the Vietnamench girl, who's only 97 lbs, I might have to pack in smaller boxes, or hurry and beat the truck up there.
I've decided to pass on U-Haul in favor of just shipping my stuff. It should be cheaper and less of a hassle. The only big obstacle now is finding a driving buddy, since it's like 23 hours' worth, and my siblings are both indisposed, or at least not at my disposal.
I've started posting some of thel pictures from the beach at my brand-new flickr account. I'm thinking it's a little higher-class free picture hosting than photobucket, at least for visitors. Check it out.
I'm looking for roommates now, preferably ones with rooms already since the logistics of co-shopping with stranger for a new place involve too many degrees of freedom. I've met a Frietnamese woman who's renting out a posh room on top of a mountain or something. The only catch is, all the furniture I bring has to be attractive enough to match her decor. She's a little ahead of me in that regard, but maybe we can work something out. Since I'm a Taurus/Aires hybrid, and she's a Gemini, we "click," or so I'm told. I won't say more, since she could be reading this... Hi, if that's you. It may be a little more highfalutin than I had planned on, but the price is good for the accomodations.
I still have ahead of me the arduous task of deactivating my resumes, agents, profiles, and recruiters on a couple dozen web sites. I think I'll make a spreadsheet to list which ones are where and what the passwords and login names are. It's pretty ridiculous, but you know how much I like listing thins.
Speaking of that, moving is a great time to assess the total replacement cost of my worldly posessions. As I pack, I'm gonna be listing contents and retail replacement amounts to figure out how much insurance to put on each box.
If there's one lesson I learned the last time I tried this trick, it's to carry your GameCube memory card separate from the cube. One of the final traumas I experienced at Pacific Tech was when UPS lost my cube shipping it home, and when, paying out the insured amount, all the proceeds went directly to the Bursar's office toward my balance. In other words, I was denintoed, and had to start over on all my games when I did get around to buying them back.
So I'm doing an ambitious backupping project. Basically I'll assume that my computer is obliterated, my car stolen, and everything else is lost. I don't know if that will be enough precautions, but we'll see.
Today was Monday, and I have exactly 13 days until I report for work at wherever it is I go to do whatever it is I do.
I'll write more later (Charter is coming tomorrow between 8 & 5), when I'm further along updating my resume sites. I hope to get an apartment soon so I can start sending stuff ahead of me there, although if I room with the Vietnamench girl, who's only 97 lbs, I might have to pack in smaller boxes, or hurry and beat the truck up there.
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