Dallas, 12:40 AM (12/22): Perhaps it’s just the fact that this really feels like a winter break that I’ve gotten for the past 18 years as a result of school, but in the time that I wasn’t busy answering work emails, playing Zelda, or watching TV, I was busy trying to decide what I wanted my next vacation to be. My parents and grandparents are going on an Alaskan cruise right after the 4th of July in which I am declining to participate (because honestly, I don’t care about looking at ice). Since there won’t be another family-type vacation for me to partake of, I either have to come up with my own destination or simply stay in Seattle all summer long. Given that I have $300 in Alaska Airlines ticket vouchers to use, I’m thinking that the “stay put” option probably isn’t the smartest decision.
The current frontrunner seems to be Los Angeles since I’ve never actually been there as a tourist before (gaining a very good understanding of walking around the USC campus doesn’t count). Whatever plans I end up making, I’m thinking that it’ll be some weekend, possibly over the 4th to take advantage of the vacation day we get, to a place where there will be enough “touristy” things for me to do. Las Vegas actually isn’t at the top of that list (shocker, I know) since it’s already in my travel plans about a year out from now. :)
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 1:50 AM (12/21): So, being 23 for a day really doesn’t feel any different than being 22, and there aren’t even any cool perks that come along with it. All my presents (up to this point in time) have consisted of money, so Amazon or other similar online shopping sites will be seeing some of my traffic once I get back up to Seattle. While money may seem like the easy way out, it’s actually the most convenient thing for me since it takes up very little room to take up to Seattle (none at all if I put it in my bank account down here).
Rather than wait until January to go “back to work”, I’ll probably do some stuff tomorrow so that I don’t have to take it as a vacation day. After all, the fewer days I take now, the more I have to take later on when I go on my next trip somewhere. Granted, I have no idea where that might be at this point in time, but perhaps that availability of one additional vacation day will be just what I need when making my plans, and I can think back to now when I made it all happen.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 1:10 AM (12/20): Sooo, remember two years ago when I was in Vegas, but I had to wait an extra two hours to turn 21? I guess I made up those hours of my life tonight because while I should still be 22 at this point in time, it’s already my birthday in Dallas. I’ll save my birthday post for tomorrow (since, you know, very little has actually happened on it today so far), but it should prove to be full of non-birthday related activities to discuss. In fact, today (the 19th, you know what I mean) was more like my birthday with going to dinner and getting my card/present (read: money) from my parents.
In totally unrelated to my direct life but still a part of my overall entertainment for the past 24 hours, the Cowboys game was quite exciting as they managed to knock off the previously unbeaten Saints. Hopefully this will take care of two things: people complaining that Romo can’t deliver in big games, and people focusing on the fact that December hasn’t exactly been the nicest month for the Cowboys in the past years (like, 12). If they can win their final two games, they’re guaranteed a spot in the playoffs. Unfortunately they’re both against teams in their division. On the flip side, they’ve beaten both the teams already this year, so one can hope for a repeat performance.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 1:15 AM (12/19): What does a Friday, a couple emails to respond to, playing The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, playing ultimate frisbee, and being in Texas add up to? A glorious, 60-degree day with plenty of variety to not get bored and the weekend to look forward to. In fact, the only bad part about the day was the insane traffic getting to and from HP for the ultimate game, but that’s just something that has to be dealt with on Fridays as opposed to Sundays.
Tomorrow night my parents and I are going to our typical “celebration” restaurant, The Keg, to have my birthday dinner rather than doing anything on Sunday night. Personally, I’m totally fine with this, as it just means that on Sunday I’ll get to have Chili’s (after having lunch at our church because of the Christmas pageant). I still haven’t had any food that I can eat in Seattle on a regular basis, and I plan on keeping that trend up for as long as possible.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 1:40 AM (12/18): For a “work from home” day, today was just about as easy as they get. I didn’t have a single email to respond to, so a day at the office would have been quite boring. In order to contribute to Microsoft’s overall well being, I did bother to clean up my email account some so that I was taking up less space on their email server.
I was planning on tomorrow to be my last “work from home” day, but if life is this easy, I’ll do some more so that I take fewer days off as vacation. After all, even if I do have to answer a few emails or respond to a couple IMs, that seems like a very good trade for a full vacation day. Now, in the future when I’m in danger of having too many vacation days saved up to carry over, then maybe my outlook will be different, but for now, I’m in no such danger.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
Dallas, 11:20 PM: First off, let’s clarify what I mean by “Google Phone”: Google gave a phone out to (all) their employees last week, which consensus on the internet immediately jumped to meaning that Google was going to release their own branded, unlocked Android phone. After some less knee-jerk news posts were made, this may may just end up being the new developer phone version of T-Mobile’s newest Android set. Personally, I’m hoping for the former, and here’s why.
If Google was to release their own unlocked phone (at a rumored $199 price point), it would give me a very compelling intermediate alternative between now and when my contract is up with AT&T in about 7 months. Even then (or when I’m eligible to upgrade to any phone in 3-4 or so), there’s no guarantee that AT&T is going to have a handset out that I want. The only things that remotely impress me in the current lineup are Windows Mobile phones (which I could get right now) and another Blackberry (which I see no point in getting), so if Apple can make the iPhone interesting again, it might just be my best option to stick with my current one or jump on board the newest hardware revision that comes out this summer. The only bad thing about doing that would be that if Windows Mobile 7 comes out in about a year, and if it is as awesome as it badly needs to be, then I still wouldn’t be eligible to upgrade to one of those for an additional six months or so.
Dallas, Personal - Seattle
I’m packed (with just my backpack and one very full suitcase), and in order to wake up at around 4:00 tomorrow morning, I’m going to attempt to go to sleep significantly earlier than usual. If there’s anything I’ve forgotten, hopefully I’ll be able to remember it in the morning because otherwise, it’s not something that I’m going to have with me for the next few weeks. I’m almost positive that I have everything major covered (laptops, the monitor, and Christmas related stuff), but looking around I don’t see anything minor that I’ve missed. This is actually quite good since there’s really not that much more room for stuff in my suitcase at all.
I did complete all of my DVD ripping, so I’m actually going to do all the converting in Dallas and then bring the final videos back up here. Had I started a day or two earlier I could have even had the conversions done by now, but this way I don’t have to install another piece of software on my desktop that I’m actually trying to keep very clean of extraneous programs. Besides, the final videos have to be down in Dallas anyway, so it’s not like I could save the space of my external hard drive if I had been a little more proactive.
Personal - Seattle
Turns out I was able to entertain myself just fine today, and one would assume that I will be good tomorrow also. Now, today may not have ranked that high on the productivity scale, but I don’t think anyone was expecting that from this week. If they were, well, they weren’t expecting anything from me.
I finally started my DVD ripping and made sure that everything I need to take to Dallas will fit in my backpack and suitcase. Fortunately, since I don’t need to take clothes, at the present time it doesn’t seem like I’m going to need to check a bag. Of course, that might change tomorrow, but since almost nothing in my suitcase will be coming back with me, that gives me plenty of room to pack all of the new stuff I acquire in Dallas.
Personal - Seattle
Some of our family friends who live up in the area invited me to go with them to the Snoqualmie Casino today, and confusing “S” names aside, the place might as well be Vegas without an attached hotel. They have slot machines, they have table games, they have restaurants, they have bars, and they have nightclubs. While it doesn’t have the same alluring ambience that Vegas does for me, it’s significantly closer and cheaper to get to. I think I’ll save my next Vegas trip for something like CES 2011, and any gambling desires I have in the meantime, I’ll just drive 30 minutes.
I have no idea what to expect tomorrow at work, so it might be back to feeling like I was right after I started. I know that I won’t be the only person around, but that doesn’t really help when people like my lead are on vacation in places like Australia. Oh well, if I can’t find something to keep myself entertained, then you really have to wonder what I would be doing differently at home to produce a different result. Oh right, I’d be playing WoW…
Personal - Seattle
After finding myself on yet another Wikipedia chain starting off with Scotland (yeah, I dunno…) and ending up at Nagoya (not a strict chain I guess, though, since I did have one or two manual (related) searches in the mix), it struck me that in a pre-Wikipedia age, my brain would be full of quite a bit less random information at this point. For example, did you know that of all the airports in the world, the Atlanta one is the busiest? Yeah, pretty sure I would have never guessed that one if I was going down the list.
I used my filing cabinet for its intended purpose today (that being, filing stuff), and as a result, my desks are much cleaner than they were earlier, but still not totally clean. There’s no law that says I have to have my apartment clean by the time I leave to go to Dallas, but having it in such a state will make my return in 2010 that much nicer because I’m going to have to find some place to put all the non-cash gifts that I bring (or ship) back. In past years, they would have sat in their bags on my floor for a good couple of months; while I guess the same thing could be done here, it’s probably better to start developing better habits, even if I do clean up once a month for the cleaning people.
Personal - Seattle