A new routine

It is interesting not having to drive anywhere.

I wake up, shower, breakfast, then it's a short 10 min walk to work.
At lunch I walk another 5-10 min to a different part of town, grab a sandwich or burrito and head back to work.
After work, walk home, cook dinner, then Allison and I walk to run errands - grocery store, or to try out one of the dozen coffee shops around us.

Weekends we've been figuring out the bus system to get to other parts of the city. 10 min to Uwajimaya market and Pioneer Square, 10 min to Fremont and this tasty organic coffee/bakery place, a 15 min walk and 30 mins on the ferry to get to Bainbridge Island and a bunch of other stuff.

However sometimes the car has a purpose

In order to get way out into the suburbs last night we rented a car - $30 for a day, well, 6 hours of running to Ikea so that Allison can put her clothes in a 'normal' dresser instead of baskets on shelves in the closet, and then way north to pick up a great deal on a bicycle.

Ever how convenient it was to use a car instead of the bus, it appears to be rare that we'll actually need it. I'm wondering now what the cost of owning a car (even one fully paid for and cheap insurance) is compared to renting, and if it is worth it.

This is a foreign idea for someone that finds the engineering that goes into certain cars as fascinating and who likes to drive. However in this city, it does work to live mostly car free.

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In other news - all this talk of the rainy season has been just that thus far - today it's sunny and in the high 50's - perfect fall day in my opinion.

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Also in other news - after trying out 3 different types of bike and finding them ill suited to my purposes, I've come full circle back to a basic Trek mountain bike. They're simple, durable, and comfortable, not to mention affordable new and exceptionally cheap used.

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Finally- the parents and grandparents are visiting this weekend - should be fun.

boo

So the local cable internet provider blocks incoming port 80 requests. Bastards.



Time to get nerdy and think of another way to serve content to my friends/ family.



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In other news - still finding lots of good stuff to eat in this city.



The current good things are almond cookies from Nielsen's Danish Bakery and the locally grown pears and apple cider available at the Metropolitan Market.



We're also out of Chukar cherries - I need a constant supply of those things.



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Pics of the apartment are here: Facebook link.



I'll add pics of the scenery along the daily commute and office tomorrow in the same folder.

Um, I should be able to figure this out

maslows.net appears to be inaccessible to the outside world - as such the pictures that were in my last post probably did not show up.

I'm not sure if this is a routing issue or an issue with the ISP port limiting/filtering.

will update as I fix it.

Back online, after lots of happenings.

Wow, it has been a while. What's happened?

0) The Miata was sold to a car nerd in Greensboro. I'll miss it - cheap, lots of fun, proper driver's car. And with the hard top it looks pretty damn good imo (pic taken right after we delivered it to the guy).



1) The modernist barn. It is now empty. And will be up for sale shortly. At least I finished the bathroom, a week before leaving. It looked and worked great, imo - classy modern. Here are a couple of pics where everything was finished except the small piece of trim on the floor edge. The Kohler faucets are definitely worth the extra money over more standard bits - smooth operation and laminar flow design - made by engineers, for engineers, the way I see it.






2) The drive. This is a big country. With lots of nothingness in the middle of it. Ok, lots of nothingness between St. Louis and Seattle. A few highlights:

NC: leaving it behind.

TN: took a 15 mile detour through the Oak Ridge grounds - I guess it is fitting that facility is in the middle of nowhere given the work that goes on there.

KY: Still a surprisingly beautiful state - rolling hills, vibrant and green.

IL: Well, southern Illinois is pretty much nothingness - lots of farm land.

MO: St Louis - the southernmost Midwestern city - it has that immigrant character missing from lots of newer cities. We stayed at a hotel in the Italian district, walked a few blocks to great dinner at an Italian/Spanish cafe (Chorizo/Red Onion Pizza), then picked up some of the best donuts I've ever tasted in the morning. World's Fair donuts were a little bit heavier on the glaze (about one tenth the Krispy Kreme amount) but had sweeter frosting. My preference was for Donut Drive In however. Very light glazing, soft and cakey center, perfect amount of frosting to complement it. I could live in that neighborhood, though I'd probably not live as long.

Kansas City- best radio stations of the trip - some independent station tied to a University there entertained on the way into town - interesting mix, which transitioned to a Reggae station as we were leaving town.

KS: I was surprised that there were hills, for the first 3 hours. Then it was exceptionally flat for another 3 hours. Not much there to miss.

CO: We didn't give this state a fair chance. We arrived late in the night, and left early in the morning. The high plains were dark and boring, but the stars were bright at least. Leaving the sprawl of Denver in the early morning, with the Rockies in the distance, was less than enthralling as well.

WY: The route basically dealt with the Rocky Mountains by driving around them, as such we spent many hours in the high plains and hills of Wyoming. This was very beige and boring, as there is approximately nothing for 7 hours. The town of Green River, WY was neat though. It's in the southwestern part of the state, with towering buttes above the downtown area, and green! due to the river. Very pretty place imo.

UT: More mountain passes and high plains - more scenic as the road followed a river through the northern part of the state. No real cities to speak of.

ID: Flat, flat, and more flat. The road essentially split two mountain ranges, which made for interesting scenery to the sides of the truck, but nothing in front:



This continued for 6 or 7 hours.

Boise was a nice and quiet town. Nothing much to say about it.

WA: Grape Vines/Wineries! Rivers! Mountains! Scenic Valleys! After the sheer boredom of the previous two days it was awe inspiring to drive through this state. Lots to see, lots to explore. The mountains a half hour outside Seattle are stunning to say the least. Steep cliffs covered in tall pine trees, the clouds filtering up through the mountain passes. I'll have to go back and take pics.

On to the apartment, it's nice, everything you could ever want is within walking distance, or internet ordering distance. Check the view from the patio/garden on top of the parking deck:

Where does it all come from?!

An entire SUV load of stuff to Goodwill, and about a dozen bags of stuff thrown away, and most of the furniture sold, and there are still tons of boxes here. Stuff just accumulates. Need to fix that in the future.

Picking up the truck tomorrow morning, then loading, and the rest of the week is driving. I'll post daily updates from the iphone though.

Auf wieder sehen NC. It's been fun. Thanks for the cheap and appreciating real estate. I used this city for an entry level job. Eh, I'll be back for Christmas.

Too much stuff

After many variations on having multiple computers, I am once again down to only one computer in the house, with only a few parts laying around. This is a positive development.

Also, I sold the lawn mower today, and hope that I will never own another one. 

Still need to divest much furniture, and one more car.  

What do I really need - clothes, books, music, a computer, a chair to sit on, a bed to sleep in, some cooking stuff. Having a house has caused me to lose simplicity. 

It's along the same lines of the camping gear dilemma - don't use a larger backpack, you'll just carry more stuff. Which slows you down. I need to get back to the philosophy of when I carried a hammock and mylar blanket to go hiking for a week in the summer. There is a certain level of what is really needed, stuff wise. 

It's really easy to get out of focus.

Change of Scenery

Since I received a bit of flak from Allison and the parents for thinking I could pick out an apartment sight unseen, my dad and I flew out to Seattle for a day to look for a place.

After visiting pretty much every apartment complex within a 15 min walk of the office, along with a couple independent places, the winner was a 9th floor (out of 25) one bedroom place here: http://www.forrent.com/apartment-community-profile/1045928.php - it's walking distance to lots of places, and actually less expensive than some smaller buildings nearby. (Though definitely not cheap - equivalent to my current mortgage payment actually)

I took some pics of the interior of the unit, but it looks pretty much like any normal, recently renovated, 1 bedroom apartment you've ever seen, so I'll save the bandwidth until there are pics of it with personal effects added.

There is definitely enough space for a nice convertible sofa, so start planning your trip to come visit. Anyone that ever visited the Phillips Place apartment will feel right at home in this one - similar layout, just with about 15% more space.

The truck has been arranged and I'm slowly starting to organize everything for the move... still a bit crazy to think about leaving Charlotte behind on such short notice, but it should serve Allison and I well.

Today's project - finish the upstairs bathroom - finally!

Well, why not.

So, I have received a rather nice job offer. Everything about it is great, except that I have to travel across 12 states and about 2900 miles to get there.

Once there though, I'll be in Seattle, which, in about every way I can imagine, is a world away from Charlotte, and one that I belong on, if such a place exists.

Now, to get started on the details, like living accommodations. And er, directions. I wonder if there's AT&T Edge network the whole way. And if there are any decent hotels in South Dakota. Or where to find the best deal on truck rental. Or the cost of shipping a standard size crate.

Continuing the Trend

 A. List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
B. Tag seven people to do the same.
C. Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag "whoever wants to do it."

1. I am a selective perfectionist. Some things have to be absolutely right. (Anything that has a technically correct answer) Other things (fashion, pop culture) I place in the random trivia subset and do not bother with.

2. I basically have two modes of diet/exercise balance. The 'excessive' Nick (most recently - last year of college/first year of Charlotte - apologies to those that knew me then - I look back and think: yikes.) is when I eat whatever is good and don't really do much in the way of exercise - he is 215 pounds and generally rounded on the edges. The 'normal' Nick is the other state. It appears that no matter how much I try to watch the diet or exercise I will be about 202 pounds and not flabby, though not exactly toned either. Perhaps when I have time to deal with scheduled exercise there will be a 'fit' state, though even when playing sports my min adult weight was 190-ish.

3. I have come to believe HGTV needs to be content edited for accuracy. Home improvment is not as easy as they make it look. Damn 2.75 inch pipe nipples. (technical term. really) Yes, I watch HGTV. Yes, I am married. To a female.

4. I can never be late to anything, ever. This comes from my dad, who was absolutely never accurate with time. It drove me up the wall.

5. There is no such thing as the easy way. The only way to approach anything is the examine every option and pick the route with the most authenticity of character.

6. There is never a time when I am not thinking/examining something. I may appear distant/cold, but I'm really just figuring something out. Give it a few minutes.

7. I listen to music for atmosphere and flow. An album where I can press play and 74 minutes disappears whie I figure something out is a good album, in my opinion.  

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I should relate an example of numbers 5/6/7 - last night - I went to the Philosopher's Stone for dinner - by myself - because they have good onion rings, and Chimay Blue, and a good mix in the jukebox.  Ordered the beer, then food. Someone put on a string of songs - there was Velvet Underground, something I didn't recognize, and Phish... I had been thinking about how to make life work if a certain situation presents itself (more details later in the week, maybe)... by the time the song changed to something more pop and I snapped out of it, there was food in front of me and the beer was 1/4 gone, and I'm sure I thanked the server, but it was 20 min later with no acknowledgement of the outside world as far as I was concerned. 

Not that I was much closer to the solution, but I need to focus more... that is a rare event now and I miss it sometimes. 

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Also - the track when H binds to O - by Lotus - one of the best tracks, especially live, to come out recently, in my opinion.

Transitory Experiences and Such

This weekend sounded rather familiar: Work during hours such that I am sleep deprived on Saturday, get some small amount of work done on the bathroom, go out to dinner, mess with some computer stuff around the house in downtime.

The work wasn't too bad this weekend - had a 5.5 hour window for sleep Saturday morning even. (slight sarcasm here)

The bathroom now has shiny new valving equipment and some new electrics, but still no floor covering, nor paint.  HGTV really needs to show the part of the bathroom remodel where they need a 2.75 inch long piece of threaded pipe, yet Home Depot only carries 2.5 or 3.0 inch varieties, neither of which provide correct clearance, forcing a delay while a specialty plumbing supply shop with a half-inch pipe threading die is found so that the correct length piece can be fabricated.

Other made-for-TV bathroom renovation moments - finding a cracked tile while you're putting on the second coat of grout sealant (the absolute final tiling step)

Food: Lulu - creative menu, tasty bistro-style food, in an old house just south of Midwood - the waitress was a bit slow - and the wine a bit overpriced, but that's about it for the complaints. As an example of the menu to food creativity: the dish I ordered was the Silence of the Lambs - fork-tender lamb chops with a port wine glaze over some ground pistachio nuts with white bean puree hushpuppies ($16). It is a restaurant that doesn't take itself too seriously, and the chefs seem to be having fun with the food, though with enough skill to back it up... it's interesting to find places like that. It reminds me why I like cooking.

Time to disappear for another week. Cell me if something interesting happens, or gmail, which is equally accessible now.

education

Before I took engineering courses, I was interested in cars. Then I learned how everything worked, and it was good. I had numbers to back up why certain engines have different characteristics, and how a properly designed suspension works.

- As an aside - now that the Miata has new/balanced tires, it drives like a new car - smooth and quiet, even better handling than before - it is amazing how much of a difference decent tires make over the wal-mart specials that were on it before.

But on the other hand, now I look at a car, or airplane, or even the home air conditioning system, and think about heat transfer, flows, dampers, the design of fan blades, screw threads and materials... I take everything apart mentally and think 'is this the best solution - why was this designed this way' which causes mental conflict - I've sold a couple cars because their engineering wasn't optimal, in my opinion.

Now I'm taking MBA classes... I used to only have jobs and bank accounts... now all income should be seen as an investment, everything owned as an asset, each of which has a total cost of ownership... and certain products or ideas end up looking better under that mode of thinking. Like how I took out student loans, even though I had the cash, just to put it in an HSBC online savings account to have a net-interest-free loan for a year as a reserve fund while I used my real income to more quickly pay down the mortgage to get out of PMI... I mean really, what normal person thinks this way.

In some ways actually figuring out how things work is really neat, and that's what I thrive on, but on the other hand, it makes life more complicated, as I have to weigh the merits of any non-trivial purchase, I have to think about how everything fits together, rather than just accepting that the world just is a certain way.

I'm glad I don't know much about biology, else even stopping to smell the roses would be an analytical experience.

The 6 Month Theory

It seems that, whenever I or anyone I know decides to attempt to find a job, it takes 6 months until something is found/finalized.

Even though I have a few promising leads (including one that I just missed the application deadline for that I was perfectly qualified for - doh - it may be reposted though), it is only just now getting into month 3 of the search.

I'm divided on where I want to go from here.

1) Find another different tech job - something to temporarily cover expenses/investments while I finish school, even if my aim is to leave the technical side afterward. It would be same game, different scenery. Hopefully a lower stress/dependency position though.

2) Find an intro business-analyst type job - prepare to actually use this degree I'm working toward. This will undoubtedly be more learning, but would be a good longer term thing. Problems here - getting hired. I don't have any business side experience, and have been turned down for half a dozen of these kind of jobs already.

Odds are this would all be in Charlotte... though I am also wondering how to move away in a couple years... anything from the traditional route of find job in other city, put house on market, rent for 6 months while house sells. Or, take the equity from this place and outright buy something wherever I'd like to live (foreign countries included), then figure out the job market there when I arrive. The second option seems optimistic, but when you can get a nice size condo for $250k just outside the ring roads of Munich or Vienna, I tend to think of it as a possibility.

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Less of the daydreaming, more of the real life - classes start up again today. Thankfully they're less technical than the two courses I took over the summer - even though the content was interesting, the numerical precision required was really annoying. I left engineering for a reason.

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For anyone not in Charlotte - be glad you are not here - There hasn't been a day with a high under 90 degrees in over a month, most in the upper 90's. Lots of trees are starting to go dormant and lose leaves early due to lack of water. Of the years that I lived in Charlotte, only a couple have had this sustained level of heat. Usually you get cyclical variation between 90's and 80's, and at least some rain in the afternoons. I'm ready for winter again.

Vacationing

After on call and a final exam in the early part of last week, Allison and I received a subsidized trip to New York courtesy of her company.

Their summer party was held at an old du Pont family mansion on the north side of Long Island, which is now operated by NYIT as the De Seversky center (named after Alexander Prokofiev de Seversky, who was an aviator/engineer who founded the Seversky aircraft company, which later became part of Fairchild and produced the P-47 Thunderbolt in WW2. Yes, I find it odd they named the building after his hometown rather than his more formal last name.) and basically had the same feel as the Van Landingham in Charlotte, just on a grander scale.

It was nice to lounge around in low humidity 80 degree temperatures while seeing 102 displayed on the iPhone for concurrent Charlotte weather.

Back in the city, we basically just wandered around for three days. The MOMA had a display on modernist Soviet architecture, which was quite interesting, and is also the home to at least a few works from my favorite artists.  Good way to spend a rainy Friday.

Saturday Gerin/Julie and Sarah/Nathan met us for Lunch/Dinner in the East Village / Mulberry St and South Port area of NYC - with much walking/snacking along the way. Dinner was at Veselka - a Ukranian diner type place - lots of food in a similar style to that of my family's usual dishes - veal goulash, pierogies, potato pancakes, and it also spawned discussion on the application of beets in different foods.

This week - no class - and hopefully nearly finishing the bathroom.

Yes, I am that person.

Before I get to the point of the post.

Those of you who know me quite well know that I am usually really ah, frugal.

I am the type of person that watches for coupons from restaurants I might like (There have only been a couple times where Allison and I have eaten at Situl without the 1/2 off coupon) and uses the customer-tracking card at Harris Teeter regularly.

I have sold many small, outdated computer things on ebay for $9.99 or less instead of throwing them away.

I have bought and calibrated a programmable thermostat per house occupancy at different times of the day so that it is warmer during the day when no one is home, then cooler at night when we're around to save energy and money.

The least fuel efficient car in the household gets high 20's mpg.

And then, sometimes, things go a bit awry.

so, the iPhone.

It works exactly as advertised - anything you've seen on tv, online - it is really that easy, and that smooth.

As a phone it has some really neat design qualities. It requires less [virtual] button pushing to get things accomplished than any phone I've ever used (two Nokias and two Siemens previously)

But the phone is just a sideline application to what makes it worthwhile. You have the internet anywhere you go.

1) How do you get to anywhere? ... One minute later Google maps has a pushpin there and is giving directions.
2) It is cloudy, I wonder if it is going to rain? .... 10 seconds later you have an answer
3) How late is that store on the other side of town open? ... 30 seconds later you're at their webpage and looking at store hours (And this was Allison looking it up, from the passenger seat of the car, while we were driving up South Blvd)
4) I wonder what the... and wikipedia is right there.

This is really as close as any device or company has come to making the vast resources of the internet a pervasive part of everyday life, even for not-that-technical people.

Not to mention the iPod capabilities... the new GUI, flipping through the cd cases, is really slick - it even finds the cover art for albums you have MP3ified previously, or downloaded, through a non-iTunes program.

Yes, the initial cost and monthly cost are a bit high (if you have a family plan it is $20 more per month than whatever you're paying now) but for someone that is technologically aware and will actually make use of the unlimited data plan, it is almost worth it.

If you're away from a Wi-Fi connection, AT&T's Edge data service is inconsistent - most places I've been it is equivalent to any public internet connection you are used to (university lab, library, so on) - or like your home connection while you're downloading some large files - laggy but usable. However there are times inside of buildings where the speed qualifies as 'faster than dial up but that isn't saying much'

And I carry it around in a cloth sunglasses case, because the pretty pretty screen collects fingerprints and face smudges.

Those negatives aside, it is an incredibly useful device.

So I woke up got out of bed this morning and proceeded to pour orange juice over my cereal.

I need less things to do.