Personal

Apartment Hunting

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I went to see what the apartment scene looks like in Manhattan today. I looked at midtown on the east side today. Nice places, but far from the subway. 1st Ave. is far from the subway. I don’t care how nice the place is.

One thing I realized is how big my current place is. I couldn’t physically fit all my furniture in any of the places I looked at today. not that they were really small, but my current place is really big.

I am going to look at the west side next week. I am beginning to think near the subway is a must.

Apartment Choices

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For several months I have been rethinking my decision to live where I live. I live out “way out” in Queens, and commute to Manhattan every day for work. It takes me an hour during rush hour, and longer after hours. I don’t have a subway near me so I take the LIRR.

The work commute has begun to be difficult, and it is also tough to go out after work because I worry about train connections. Also showing up in the event of an emergency at the office is almost impossible.

Last week I finally decided I needed to move. I love my current place, but as they say, location, location, location.

I spoke to my landlady last night and she asked for 60 days to find someone else. Other than that she is going to let me out of my lease. I am sending her a copy of the current lease with the date revisions on it, and she will sign it and send it back to me. I would assume that should be enough proof for me if I need to prove the changes.

I will give her till AuGust 1, 2004 and then I will be gone. Hopefully I will find something and move sometime in July. July 15 is perfect, but July 1is doable.

I am off to look at some places with a broker today. Alyssa and AJ at work both used her and they loved her. She is also no fee, that is a nice change of pace from the 1 to 1 1/2 months rent I have paid as a fee in the past.

I gave her my broad requirements for a place and she said that for the price range I am looking for I should have no problem finding an apartment. I am scheduled to see her today to see some places. I am told it is kind of early to be looking for an apartment for July, but I want to see what my options will look like.

What’s Going On?

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I have taken a few days off from blogging. I have been busy. Thursday night / Friday morning Jayson and I did our rewiring of our NYC computer room. We redid an entire rack. We also fixed the KVM’s in NYC. It took us from 9PM till around 4AM to complete the work. I was so tired afterward.

I was stupid during the work. I climbed onto of 2 of our racks to free up some caught cable. Getting down I hit my elbow on a rack door. It hurt. It is nice and black and blue now. Well actually it looks better now, but was black and blue when I did it Thursday night.

I didn’t get much sleep Friday morning. I had to get back to work. I ended up getting back to the office at 12:15PM. Turns out we got everything back online except 1 server. The server was ok, but the disk array plugged into it was not responding. Thankfully Gus got it working by rebooting it. This was not before he complained that jay and I were not in the office in the morning. He forgot about a little thing called sleep.

Surprisingly I completed the day friday like normal. I still don’t think I have caught up on sleep though.

I just hung out at home Friday night. I needed a night to just relax.

Saturday was another story. Due to our domain controller problem from last Monday I have had tape backup issues all week. The tape backup system runs on the domain controller that went down. So I have been working on getting the backups working like normal since Tuesday. I had to work on the backups a bit Saturday. Still no resolution. I also had to cancel plans with alison because of the problems.

After working on the backups, I got a call from Dan about a poker game. I was in.

My dad gave me a rid to the train so I wouldn’t have to leave a car there all night. As we pulled up to the station I realized it was May 1st and I had forgotten my new may monthly ticket. I should have taken that as a sign how my luck was going to go at poker that night and just go home. Of course I didn’t.

I had to get my cousin a 40th birthday gift so I went to best buy and got a gift card. I waited for the 1 train for 20 minutes before one came. That was another sign that my luck was not going my way. At best buy I did get to cut the entire line because I was paying by credit card and no one else seemed to be. That was a piece of good luck.

At poker I ended up loosing $40.00. That is not allot. I thought I was going to loose really quick. I lost my initial 2000 in chips, and then another 1000. I sat for a while before I could buy back in for the last time. By then I figured I would be out quick. Maybe be the first of the 8 to go out. Turns out I held on pretty long. I ended up being in 4th place. Granted it was a distant 4th from the guy in 3rd, but I held out for so long. Everyone left kept trying to kill me off for like an hour. That is what you do in that situation. But I just kept getting good enough (or great) hands that kept me alive. I wish that my luck was that good during the first half of the game. That way I might have had enough money to have been a threat by the end. All in all I had a good time.

I got to bed late again Saturday. actually by the time I got into bed it was early sunday morning.

Yet More Train Delays

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Just went through an interesting train issue this morning. I was on a train and they just tell us to get off due to equipment problems. The good news was we were already at a station. The bad news was we ended up waiting 30 minutes or so from the time we stopped till we got on another train.

The good news is I got a seat on the new train. That is always a plus. I am now officially late for work.

UPDATE: took me an extra 30 minutes more to get to Penn from when I originally wrote this entry. In total it was like an extra hour to my commute. I just love the LIRR sometimes…

Drinks With Dave

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Jay and I met up with Dave and his cousin for some drinks after work today. dave still doesn’t know what he wants to do for a living. His cousin johnny is always interesting. I cut out early so I could rest up a bit in order to install some backup agents tonight for work.

We went to a cool bar on 35th and madison ave. It had over 100 beers. I think on tap. I am not a big beer drinker, but they did have some interesting stuff. I just stuck with Jack Daniel’s and Coke. Can’t go wrong with Jack and Coke.

Tuesday Stuff

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Jayson and I are trying to get our friend Dave to come into the city tonight to go out to dinner. He has the day off, so we figured it would be cool. He is talking with Jay about relocating down to LA (near New Orleans). I told him that I loved it when I was down there. I moved back for work, not social reasons. The lifestyle there is totally different than NYC. I still don’t know if where is better to live. each is a toss up.

Not sure if we will get together tonight, but as of this morning that was the plan.

Mortons

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I had dinner at Morton’s steak house last night. It was good, as always. It was a little hectic with Alison’s nephews around, but not too bad. I had a small filet and I was stuffed. I didn’t drink more than 1 jack and coke since I had to work after dinner.

Because we were running so late at dinner I had to cut out early to get to the office for our scheduled maintence. I missed out on the godiva chocolate cake desert. It sounded exactly like what amanda made for me for my birthday. Mmm, molton chocolate center cake. I don’t want to ask how it was because I wanted to have some. Oh well, next time for sure!

Canceled Plans

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I got my hair cut yesterday, but that was about it. I got a migraine and ended up doing very little the rest of the day. I hate these things. I took a zomig, and it let me nap for most of the afternoon. I then took a butabitol and was able to function the rest of the evening but I wasn’t up for going out. I had to cancel my plans. Good thing since we had web site problems at work at like 9PM. I am luck I was near a computer.

I also finally renewed my pool / fitness center membership. I got screwed into paying the full price since I was a previous member. They won’t prorate you if you already were a member, and I needed to renew back in November and I didn’t. Oh well. I hope to use the pool this summer so it was worth it.

This entry was written while listening to Mary Jane’s Last Dance from the album “Greatest Hits-Tom Petty” by Tom Petty And The Heartbrekers

Mmm Outback

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Now that Jayson is in NYC for a while working with me, that means only one thing. Lots of Outback and other really bad (for you) food. We went to the outback after work today. I don’t know how I walked to the Subway. I can barley keep my eyes open let alone walk. I feel so full. We put in a decent days work and got stuffed. Just like old times. We used to goto outback like twice a week and just eat appetizers. Man was that good food.

Double Booked

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I tentatively made plans to go to dinner with my girlfriends family on Sunday. She wasn’t sure if it was going to happen or not early this week so put it in the back of my mind and left it off my calendar. Not thinking I scheduled a server move Sunday night. Jayson and I need to move this server from our office to our data center so we can do other maintenance in our NYC office next thursday.

Tonight I find out that dinner is on. Now I have plans to two things on the same night. My only saving grace is that the dinner is planned early, and we wont do anything to the call center until after 9PM. I may be able to make it, or leave the dinner early to do it. I want to stick to these plans so we can keep the maintenance cycle for thursday.

This blog entry was written while listening to Sympathy from the album “Gutterflower” by Goo Goo Dolls