I’m on my Macbook again tonight after having taken my desktop out to my new apartment and coming back to my corporate apartment to spend likely my last night here. Tomorrow the agenda is to move everything remaining of mine from here to my new place, and also to build the Ikea desk and coffee table that we bought earlier tonight. Once that gets done, I should have just about everything done aside from unpacking my DVDs and games from the boxes they’re currently still in.
I ordered seven month late my birthday and Christmas present earlier also which ended up manifesting itself as a 46″ Sharp TV from Best Buy. That will get delivered and installed (for free) next Saturday, so until then, I’ll have to live in the land of SDTV and likely limit my console game choices. Speaking of TV, my parents are almost definitely sold on switching to Verizon for TV service when they move into a new house in the next year or two after having seen the short demo that the installer gave me of all the various features. Comcast and Time Warner, you’re not going to be missed one iota.
Personal - Seattle
Ladies and gentlemen, if you are not properly acquainted with the web comic XKCD, let me be the first to welcome you to this humorous world with a very fitting comic (that strangely enough was posted yesterday):
Everything got moved into my new apartment just fine today, so tomorrow Verizon will be hooking up my internet and TV service. Then, the only thing left to do this weekend will be to move whatever of mine is here at my corporate housing over. It should also be cooing back down to somewhat average temperatures over the next couple of days, so the lack of air conditioning will cease to be an uncomfortable issue, especially over the weekend.
Comics, Personal - Seattle
I thought that by moving up here I’d gain the benefits of comfortable summers and hopefully winters about on par with Dallas. Well, with the former of those expectations completely destroyed, perhaps I better start stocking up on clothes for when it drops into the negative double digits. For the past two days, I believe, it has reached over 100 here in Seattle while Dallas has had the pleasure of remaining in the low 90s. The radio station I listen to even did a contest where people could call in and guess if a city was hotter or cooler than Seattle (when the temperature was 102). As it turns out, Aruba, Phoenix, Houston, Mexico City, and some other city far closer to the equator were all cooler, ranging from about 79-95 degrees. I appreciate the desire of the weather gods to help me feel at home, but enough is enough, and I’ll be happy to return to average temperatures for the area ASAP.
Tomorrow is my first day of playing musical car with my parents as I go pick them up, drive to my new apartment, drive to Microsoft, and then give them my car to drive back to my new apartment. Hopefully, they can then find their way back to Microsoft later in the day to pick me up. Considering out previous experiences with freeways (and streets in general) in the Seattle area, I think I’m justified in being slightly concerned.
Personal - Seattle
Seattle might have felt like they were having excessive heat for about the past week or so, but today was the first day that I would consider to be uncomfortably hot. It actually reached 100 today (at least according to my car), and Microsoft was fortunate enough to be having an outdoor expo type thing going on today, so that was a less than comfortable experience to attend. Andrew gets to go to that tomorrow in order to hear Ballmer talk, but considering the fact that his building lost power today due to the heat, he might rather be outside.
Fortunately my parents aren’t making me drive to pick them up at the airport tomorrow, so I’ll just be driving to their hotel sometime after I leave work. They’re staying just a couple blocks from my new apartment, so since they aren’t renting a car, it will be a quick transportation trip for me each day while I act as their personal shuttle. Still, it will be a welcome trade for them being at my new apartment on Thursday when the movers arrive to deliver my furniture so that I don’t have to be there.
Personal - Seattle
One of my goals with moving into my new apartment is to generate and handle as little paper as humanely possible. Sure, we can go with the idea that I’m being environmentally conscious and everything, but the truth of the matter is that papers are what seemed to always clutter up my desk and room in Dallas (pick any of the three places I lived). So, rather than print things out if I want to keep them from now on, I’m just converting them into PDF or XPS files and filing them away on my computer. I also gain the benefit of being able to get access to them anywhere that way since I have my Documents folder set up to sync online. Combine that with paying all my bills online and hopefully I can manage to keep my desk area relatively clean.
I went by the MS company store today before I left to come back to my apartment, and there’s a lot of both cool and random stuff in there. One thing that I don’t remember seeing but that they most likely have there (since Microsoft makes them, after all) are headsets of the computer variety. I have no speakers in my office so I just lived with no sound last week, and when I remembered to head my headphones today from here (where I also have no speakers at the moment), I forgot to bring them back. Using sport headphones designed for listening to music on an MP3 player works in a pinch I guess, but having two full featured pairs would be significantly more convenient.
Personal - Seattle
I’ve owned my name as a domain since the second year anniversary of this blog (so, 2006), but up until now, it’s just pointed at this site. Today, however, all of that has changed, and I’ve launched my “professional” site under that domain name. This is one of those titles that I’ve had thought up for a while; it’s just taken me longer to get my site up and running than I anticipated. Of course, moving and everything really didn’t help with that endeavor. So, consider this a notification to all my family, friends, and stalkers (especially the latter) about my new site which definitely won’t be updated daily but will focus on more technology and project related topics than here.
G-Force was…an average movie. It was funny in parts, but a lot of the good one-liners were used in the trailer (thereby making them not nearly as funny in the actual movie). I went to go see it in 3D at a theater that I hadn’t been to before as I am still searching for the perfect theater for me (in Dallas I had quite a few, but the only one I really like here so far is in downtown Seattle). I thought it might have potential, but it turned out to just be a movie that I might watch once it hits TV stations if nothing else is on. My score: 6.5/10.
Personal - Seattle
Next weekend I’ll still be busy moving into my new apartment, but as for future weekends, it probably wouldn’t be a bad thing for me to find ways of entertaining myself beyond just sitting around and watching TV. Going to see movies is a nice fallback (and one that I think I’ll exercise tomorrow), but something less “passive” might be nice to try. I’m sure it won’t be difficult to find things to do considering this is a brand new city to me, but the bigger question is one of if they’re things that I want to do.
Surprisingly, I managing with one monitor quite well for the time being. I’ll definitely be looking forward to going back to my triple-screen setup, but there’s just a nice simplicity about a single widescreen one. I’m probably only saying this because I lived on a 13″ laptop screen for two weeks, so even a 22″ monitor is like a godsend as far as screen real estate goes.
Personal - Seattle
Aside from a lunch meeting/presentation today that was actually fairly interesting, my day ranked pretty high on the boredom scale. Lots of people weren’t around still due to Windows 7 being officially completed on Wednesday, so not only did they have nothing to do, but I had even less to do. Still, I guess you can say that I successfully survived my first week at Microsoft, and my initial impression is quite favorable. I have a job where I can wear a t-shirt and shorts (or more likely pants considering the Seattle weather) each day, flexible times on when I arrive and leave as long as I’m there for when I really need to be, and the chance to play with all of Microsoft’s brand new toys before they become available to the public. Yeah, I think I’m going to like it up here.
Vegas seems to be a done deal for Thanksgiving, so I just need to book my tickets from here. Unfortunately, that means I can’t use American Airlines since they only fly to about four destinations from the Seattle airport, but Alaska Airlines (whose hub is here) fortunately is a partner as far as sharing frequent flyer miles and stuff goes. I’m eventually going to take a Virgin America flight somewhere, but that will probably be to Los Angeles or someplace direct so I wouldn’t have to make a stop in between.
Personal - Seattle
Getting all my various services set up at my apartment was not the easy exercise that it should have been. Failure #1 came when the electric and gas company phone numbers on the sheet that the apartment complex gave we were wrong (the electric company was for southern California, and I have no idea where the gas company was). Failure #2 came when the website for the city of Redmond offered no direction at all for the company to contact, but luckily I was able to reach into my random memory banks to recall the name of one of the electric/gas providers for the area. Failure #3 came when Verizon’s website didn’t recognize my apartment address. Failure #4 came when the Verizon customer support guy I got was possibly in the running for stupidest person alive and thought that the city I was moving to was “Redman” and then (once corrected) proceeded to tell me that FiOS was not available at my apartment. Failure #3 was fixed when I went back to the website, typed in the name of my street wrong, and Verizon corrected me to give me the right address (where stupid guy was proven wrong and I was in fact able to get both FiOS internet and TV service). When both computers and people fail you, what can you really do?
All the Microsoft interns had been speculating about what their gift would be this year since last year everyone got Zunes. That seemed to be the consensus again for this year from what I had heard, but Andrew informed me that everyone actually got Xbox 360s that were specially engraved with some art and text to link them to the intern program. I found that to be a slightly strange gift since my guess would be most people who would want a 360 would already have one by now, but apparently that’s what Microsoft felt was the best present to give out.
Personal - Seattle
If I was Andrew, this post would inevitably be about how I got my computer and it was broken for no apparent reason, so I would be unable to use it until I found the magic piece that needed replacing. Alas, I am not Andrew, and the tech god smile much more favorably on me than they do on him. I type this from Vista, only running a single monitor (it’s a 22″ though), but much happier with my computer life. Macbook, you can now go back to being my laptop that I only use as a secondary or travel computer rather than being my main.
My apartment transition date will be next Thursday, so in the next couple of days I need to call to have electricity, gas, and internet/TV all hooked up. I know that Verizon can do the first of the latter, but I’m hoping that they can do the second part also. If not, I can live with Comcast as my TV provider; all cable companies are pretty much the same in my mind when they stick to what their original intent was.
Personal - Seattle