So, today isn’t a premade post, but it is early just to be on the safe side. PAX setup is happening today, so just to be on the totally safe side, I’m making this early. I guess I could try to pull off a phone post if I really needed to, but this is the 100% bet instead of the 99.9% one.
I was telling one of my friends that after this weekend I’m going to need a vacation (which is actually going to happen, just a few days delayed), but I still expect it to be fun. After all, I had a total blast last year, and I see no reason why this year should be any different. Plus, I get both the attendee and behind the scenes experience, so what’s not to love about that?
Personal - Seattle
So, Microsoft has this concept of levels, and as a new employee you start at 59 (yeah, don’t ask, it made sense to someone at the time). As you grow and do awesome things at the company (gain experience), your level goes up. Well as part of my first year review, that’s exactly what happened. Hey, at least it just took my one year to get to level 60 at Microsoft; I can’t really say the same thing about my commitment to WoW.
Starting tomorrow and going through Monday, I get to say goodbye to my free time. PAX setup tomorrow after work, PAX all day Friday-Sunday, and then PAX teardown on Monday. There will be heavy use of premade postings this weekend, but I’ll find something to include in them to make each one interesting. In fact, I already basically know what they’re going to be, and you put a little thought into it, I bet you can come up with the same result also…
Personal - Seattle
I think I’ll save the punchline for this joke until tomorrow, but rest assured that it’s quite an appropriate title. It involves me, my “level” at MS, and something that officially happens tomorrow. If I’ve talked to you on the phone today you already know, so no spoiling it for everyone else.
The previous two posts were made from my laptop, but I am now back in desktop nirvana with much more screen space than my laptop could ever hope to have. Tomorrow is my last normal day of the week schedule wise since Thursday is when the pre-PAX fun begins. It actually could have started as early as last week, but unfortunately I just didn’t have the free time to pull that off this year. It’s ok, I need to leave a little something to be new next year.
Personal - Seattle
Redmond apartment, totally moved out; Seattle house…well, at least all my stuff is here in one form or another. The move process itself was fairly quick and painless (and cheap, so that definitely won’t be a big factor in deciding what I do in another year), but now it’s just going through box after box after box deciding what to unpack and what to just put down in the basement. The fact that I’ll be have approximately zero free time the next three weekends doesn’t exactly help matters that much either.
When I went back to my apartment one last time tonight to gather up the last stuff, I also decided to vacuum using the vacuum cleaner that was purposefully left for just this reason. Well, everything started off well, but I noticed that it wasn’t picking up some things that I really thought it should. Upon closer inspection, I noticed it was due to it being fairly full, so I disassembled everything, emptied it out, and put it back together. I then proceeded to vacuum the entire rest of the apartment before noticing that it still didn’t look right when it was on. Apparently the filter is a key component that also serves the purpose of lining everything up correctly. With that properly placed, it finally worked quite well.
Personal - Seattle
Most everything is packed (and what isn’t will be put into boxes tomorrow morning or transported by myself at some point during the day), and hopefully by the end of the day tomorrow I’ll at least have the energy left to make a blog post and not just collapse on my bed. Hmmm, maybe I should set up a future post just to be on the safe side? No, I expect that I’ll be tired, but still competent enough to be able to use a computer at normal blog posting time.
If there’s one thing this moving process reminded me of, it’s how much I appreciated the fact that other people (read: not even my parents) came and did all the packing for me before my Microsoft move. I would have gladly taken advantage of that again this time, but chances are the cost would have been high enough to deter me. Granted, it probably would have been cheaper than the cost of my parents’ plane tickets up here, but I didn’t have to pay for those, now did I? :)
Personal - Seattle
Let’s just say that packing with my parents helping out goes way, way faster than I could have ever hoped to do stuff by myself. Of course, if I knew that they weren’t going to have been here, I would have been much farther along in my packing progress by this weekend. However, with the progress, there should be no problem with getting everything else done by tomorrow night. Granted, that will involve dismantling my desks so I’ll be on my laptop for a day or two, but I don’t really foresee that being any sort of significant problem.
One nice thing about keeping boxes is that at times like this when stuff needs to be repacked, it’s (typically) quite easy to do so since stuff was designed to perfectly fit. It might not be the most efficient use of space, but since that isn’t one of my big concerns, the benefits far outweigh the negatives. Then when it’s time to unpack, it’s almost like everything is brand new again yet there’s no configuration hassle that is usually associated with setting up something new.
Personal - Seattle
Ok, so I wasn’t sure if it was at the end of the third or fourth season (turns out it’s the third), but I was at least aware of the twist at the end of this season finale. Strict episode counting aside, I’m now halfway through Lost. With all the stuff that’s been going on, Season 1 really does seem normal by comparison. I mean, you know some crazy stuff has gone down when I think a polar bear being on the island now qualifies as totally normal.
So no actual packing got done today, but that’s cool since it isn’t like I’ve ever been worried about my post titles being extremely accurate anyway (if you need proof of this, I simply direct you to the first couple years of this blog). Tomorrow, however, I expect packing to be in full force. I might also go see Inception (again) with my parents depending on what we feel like in the evening; fortunately I liked it, so it won’t really matter if I end up seeing it again.
Personal - Seattle
Ok, so I’ve put off packing for long enough. Tomorrow + this weekend I really won’t have much of a choice considering it has to be done, and priority wise, everything else needs to take a back seat. This doesn’t mean that I plan or expect to be packing all the weekend, all the time, but I’m sure there will be enough to do that I won’t have much downtime even with my parents here.
I find it humorous that I’m ending up moving to Seattle, and at almost the same time, Andrew is getting an apartment in Bellevue. Of course, he has the benefit of being able to walk to work because of that choice, but I can honestly say that being able to do that was never on my list of requirements. Easy to get to work, sure, but walking? Me thinks that just might be a tad too close for my tastes. Of course, if I worked in downtown Bellevue instead of Redmond, I’d very possibly think differently.
Personal - Seattle
Out of Pixar’s currently released DVDs, I own all but the first three: Toy Story, Toy Story 2, and A Bug’s Life. None of those movies are my favorites by them (as should be obvious or I’d have them on DVD), but they probably fall in the ballpark of Finding Nemo on the rating scale. With Toy Story 3 coming out on DVD later this year (this is all prefaced by me doing some Amazon shopping), even though I haven’t seen it, what I’ve been hearing is basically that I’ll be insane not to like it. It also wouldn’t be the first DVD I bought where I hadn’t seen the movie beforehand (I think that would go to Galaxy Quest?). So, if I buy Toy Story 3, I might as well pick up the first two while I’m at it to have the trilogy. If I do that, then A Bug’s Life would be the only one I wouldn’t have, and it just seems cruel and mean to leave that as the sole movie not in my collection. In other words, expect an Amazon purchase early next week to preorder Toy Story 3 and buy the other three movies.
My calendar looks really busy tomorrow, but it’s more of the “me going to sit places” sort of busy rather than anything I actively have to do. This is currently my preferred type of busy as it means I can be doing things on my laptop while other stuff is going on around me, bonus points occur if it’s a time when I don’t really even need to be paying attention to anything. I’m still on track with where I feel like I need to be in all the work I have to get done this week, so ideally this weekend can actually just be all about packing and not trying to juggle both doing it and making spec changes at the same time.
Personal - Seattle
So let’s so a little counting here, shall we? This week, fairly normal week for me. Next week, only three days that I’m going to my office, and then Monday gets thrown in as a working from home day. The following week, Labor Day is Monday, so just a four day work week there. The week after that I’m going to be in Dallas for probably the entirety of it (or at least traveling), so we can put that down as zero days in the office and more along the lines of three days for doing work related to my actual job. Hey, after that (barring any strange circumstances), I’m back to a full five day week. Just to round out September, let’s take a look at the last week, shall we? Oh, the Company Meeting is Tuesday (which isn’t going to be a day that any work gets done), so four day week there also. In September, it looks like 8 of 22 weekdays I’ll be some place other than my office. Dunno about you, but sounds good as far as I’m concerned.
For whatever reason I seem to find it both entertaining and more productive to do my spec writing when I’m at my apartment. Tomorrow is one of the barren wasteland days for me, so hopefully I can motivate myself to get a lot of work done then, but we’ll have to see. Worst case is that I’ll just be doing more writing again tomorrow night, but where’s the fun in that when it takes away time that could be spent watching Lost or playing games?
Personal - Seattle