So I just moved on July 1, 2003. if you read this blog you already know that. Well I sent away for a new drivers license with my new address on it. Since the old one was going to expire on my birthday early next year I figured I would renew it at the same time (to save money and avoid an eye doctor visit). As luck would have it I went to the eye doctor in June and he gave me an eye test so I didn’t need to goto the DMV for one. Just filled out the form and attached it to the renewal form and mailed it in with my $45 check for a license. The internet is awesome since I got all the information I needed off the DMV website for NY state. So I get the license in the mail today and it doesn’t expire till my birthday in 2012. Currently the picture on it is from like 10 years ago, and now I don’t need to renew it for another 9 years. That will be almost 2 decades of no new picture. I hope I look as young as I do in the picture in 9 years, but chances are I wont. How weird will that be handing that license to someone then. Will they even think it is valid? Who knows. At least I don’t need to pay another fee for 9 years unless I move again.
Personal
Golf Outing
So I went golfing yesterday. it was fun. I am not good at all, but from what people say they think I would be decent if I took some lessons and practiced. So Dan, Alyssa, Gus, Ravi, Nelson, John, Miguel, and I ended up going. It was fun. My foursome was Dan and me, and alyssa and Gus. Dan is the only good golfer among us. I learned a bunch, but still need to get allot of help. We had fun, so that is all that matters. I only lost 1 ball the entire day. I guess that is what happens when you cannot hit the ball very far!
Nelson was took some pictures of everyone. They are located on my photo site.
Dan had his best game ever, and I was his witness. I told him he needed to be nice or I would say that he lied about the score:)
Dan, John, Nelson & I ended up back by dan’s place in manhattan and ate dinner at some Russian diner. It was nice. The view (aka women walking by our window) was nice.
I didn’t get home till after 10pm due to limited LIRR train’s during the weekend.
Unfortunately I ended up taking 2 bextra’s due to the heat. I was getting a head ache that could have turned into a Migraine so I took the pill’s twice. The alternative was not to be thought about.
How about that weather???
The work week is almost over. Once friday is over I can pass out for 2 days and start all over again. It is a foggy and muggy morning in NYC today. It is supposed to be nice this weekend. They say that one of the only safe topic of conversations to have with strangers is “how about that weather?” Well I think it is totally true. I take a van to the train station every day. It consists of people from my building complex and the car service driver. Almost every day that is what people talk about. Is it hot, or cold today. Someone likes it this or that type of weather. It is almost funny. I of course partake in the conversation as well. Just an interesting observation I have.
hanging out
It is good to know you have friends that you get along with so well that you have a really good time just getting take out and hanging out playing a board game and drinking until 1AM. Sounds boring, but sometimes it hits the spot. That’s just what we did Saturday night. Rich, Amanda, Vivian, & I just got some food (deli for Rich and i. The ladies had Chinese) and ended up sitting on the floor of my place (no chairs or a couch yet) playing trivia pursuit. I showed amanda new ways to mix baileys so she was happy. Rich won so he was happy. The AC was working so I was happy, and Vivian always seems happy!
Note to self I need patio furniture for just this type of night.
Lazy day
With unpacking done and it is only Saturday I decided to just relax today. I tried to sleep in, and was somewhat successful. I slept till 11:30AM but I was still tired. I felt “bla” or out of it most of the day. I tried everything to cure myself of this tired out of it feeling. Finally I just took a nap and am feeling a bit better. Just in time, I have plans with Rich and Amanda in a little bit. Not sure what we are doing yet. The movies out suck, or so it seems. I just looked at the listing and everything looks like crap. We may do dinner and just hang out. I think Vivian is joining us also. She is always interesting.
Fireworks
Like clockwork at 9pm people started setting off fireworks. I found a use for my patio after all. I went out there and watched the fireworks. I could swear I saw stuff going off halfway to manhattan from my apartment. it was cool. The night was a bit hazy so I couldn’t get a complete view of the city skyline but the view was spectacular anyway.
Cleaning up and wireless issues
I was wrong in my last post. The major moving of stuff was done, but the work was not. Today I cleaned. I put stuff away, and otherwise cleaned up stuff. I am mostly done. I still have some crap in my soon to be dining area, but other than that things are neat. Well, the bathroom doesn’t count. And my desk is always a mess, but at least the computers are all tucked away. I built a Windows 2003 Server and it is up and running in my closet. I got the Wifi card I got to work without incident.
I am still having issues with my Linksys 802.11g wireless router. It worked great in my old place, but for some reason it keeps dropping connections in the new apartment. I ended up taking out my old Lucent Wavelan AP-1000 and using that along with the linksys. I still get dropped signals, but the Lucent point recovers better than the Linksys. I am betting my neighbors are using a 2.4ghz cordless phone or something. I tried half the channels I can use and all of them are having the same problem. Updating the firmware did nothing. I am getting pissed. I wanted to do almost everything in the new place wirelessly, but now I am holding off because of the problems I am having.
On a lower tech note, the stove works. I cooked up some potato’s to go with my steak I cooked on the george forman grill today. Didn’t do anything of note today. It looks like I have plans for tomorrow and sunday. I always like at least 1 day of resting on the weekend so I just had it!
The apartment
I think I got most of the major setup work on the apartment done. The furniture I have is in its final resting places. Now all I need to do is get the new furniture.
I still need to figure out how to setup a wireless network card on a linux machine.
I will clean up this weekend, and finish getting the little things from my old apartment. Then I can clean the old place up a bit so I don’t have a problem with the security deposit. Then I am done with the old place.
So far the AC in the new place has worked well. I will see how it gets when it gets really hot again.
the “official” move day
Today I officially took over my new apartment. My sister came over in the morning to help me move my wall unit. It worked out ok. The unit is perfect where it is now. I just don’t know if we can move it again. Every time I move it I fell it will fall apart and not go back together. Thank fully morgan slept through all the hammering. Man babies can sleep!
I waited all afternoon for the cable guy. It sucked, but I had company. My sister went to work out and I got to play with morgan. Watching a baby is weird. The smallest things make them happy, and the smallest problem will set them off crying. She was great until she got hungry. I had a good time. Wait, waiting for the cable guy sucked, but spending time with Morgan was good.
Finally after 4pm I had the Time Warner guy show up. At least I got a shift supervisor who knew what was going on. He was really cool, and I got a good insight to the Time Warner network operations. AKA what I can get away with and what I cannot. I figured most of it out before, but I got some good pointers from this guy. Once he was done everything worked great.
I had some problems with my wireless LAN. My mac kept dropping the network. I upgraded my Linksys router to the final 802.11g specs. it came with a new firmware update that I just ran. Now things seem ok. I am sitting in my comfy pier one chair sitting in my bed room. I am able to surf the web, and write this blog with the access point on the other side of the apartment. So far so good.
I went to dinner with my parents tonight. I was home when they went, so I went along. Recently I have not been getting home from work early enough for me to join them. I want to make time to do it at least once a week, but it hasn’t been shaping up that I am able to do that. We shall see how things go after kingston is launched.
I also did some food shopping. I needed to stock my new fridge. I got some stuff, but I want to wait to place a big order with freshdirect to get the rest of the stuff I need.
If you haven’t guessed already since my cable was down, this blog and my website was also down since friday night. It is back online and hopefully will stay that way.
Well the day off to move is about over. I am getting ready for bed. I am tired. I am back to work tomorrow.
Apartment Layout
My apartment is laid out in such a way that I will be relying on wireless network for almost all of my computing needs. it is much slower than the 100-megabit wired solution have been using for the past 4 years. I have had wireless for my laptop for almost 3 years, but that was for 1 machine, and I would plug it into the wired network when I wanted to transfer large files. I may run a ca…
Well I got stopped in mid sentence when my mom, sister, and the baby dropped by. What I was going to say is mute now anyway. My mom and sister beat me up until I changed the layout of where I will put everything. It is going to be a big pain in the ass to move stuff. The wall unit that I had in my bedroom is going next to my desk on the opposite side of the room from where I thought the bigger wall unit will go. Instead of worrying about wiring, the cable guy will have to deal with that. I will still leave the router in the wall unit, and just run a single cad5 cable to a switch at my desk. The servers will still go wireless since they are in a closet. I hope I get reception in my bedroom now with the WiFi. I should. I will test it this week.
I am taking 2 of the 3 pieces of my parents couch, and 3 of the 5 pieces of their living room wall unit. That is what will fit into my apartment nicely. We think the 3rd piece of the couch may fit. I am going to take it and see. Worse comes to worse I will get rid of it. The extra wall unit pieces will not fit so I am not even taking it.
The dining room table will fit but it will be a bit tight in space for it. After arguing with my mom and sister, I took measurements of all the furniture and the apartment and did a visio of the whole place. I now have a better understanding of what I am putting where. A Visio may be overkill but I wanted to know how everything would look to scale in the space I had, so I did one. I do them all the time so it wasn’t a big deal. That is what I get for doing the entire office all 10,000 square feet of it off of a CAD drawing. You get used to doing them.
My sister is coming over Tuesday. She will help me move the 1 wall unit from my bedroom to the living room before the cable guy comes. She was pissed that I didn’t call her Saturday for her to come over and tell me I was putting it in the wrong place to begin with. I thought I had it covered. Note to self: I have no idea about interior design even though I think I know what is right for me. I will get the help I need to move the dam unit, and as an added bonus I get to hang out with morgan. I just hope she sleeps long enough for us to move the wall unit without stopping to feed or change her!