Moving stuff

I just took pictures from my visit to my new apartment. I need to figure out where everything will go. I may need to put a bunch of stuff on wireless. It will be cool, but will cost more, and will be slower.

I have not started to pack at all yet for this move. I am hopeful that I can just throw stuff in the moving carts that my building has and just move everything. only a small part of the stuff I have needs to be considered fragile. My sword set and Hard Rock glass’s.

One thing I noticed last night when I was at my new place was that I heard allot of background noise. I think it is from the Clearview Expressway. I am not sure, but it worries me. I am not that close to that road, and I will be 19 floors up. What was weird was that I only heard these noices from my bedroom and not the living room. Maybe the noise is coming from a vent or something? I am not sure. I will investigate further.

The new paint and carpet look awsome. I still need to pull up the crappy carpet in the bathroom but that should not be a problem. The bedroom already has wires for cable TV. All I need to do is wire for my computer stuff. I will most likely put my router near my TV so I can have less wires. Also the wall unit where the TV will go is in a more central point of the apartment. That way I will get better wireless coverage.

Computer equipment swapping

Gus and I went down to the Apple store again yesterday. He needed a case for his new ipod, and I needed a scanner. I had a great scanner that did slides and everything but it did not work with my Powerbook in OS X. Thanks HP! So I got a Cannon USB scanner that is supposed to work with OS X. I am not sure if it does yet. I have not tried it out. The guy at the store was trying to sell me a more expensive one going the expensive one will definitly work with OS X. Dam sales guys.

My sister now gets my old scanner and a new hard drive I just ordered for her. She is taking so many pictures of the baby that the 8 gig hard drive they currently have is getting maxed out

Buying and selling

So I am selling some old (and not so old) stuff on ebay. I sold 2 of the 3 items already. I have some more to sell later this week. I sold an external DVD player for a laptop that I don’t need anymore now that I have DVD built into my Powerbook. I haven’t used it in a while so it is time to go. I also sold an older enterprise class 802.11b access point.

Still on auction is my Palm T (can’t spell it out) running OS 5. And now that the new HP iPaq’s just came out I will probably sell my current one and get one with bluetooth. I am pissed about that decision, but see my previous posts on my handheld’s.

I also just got my sister a new 80 gig hard drive. I need to go over and install that for her sometime soon. I am also giving her my scanner. She will scan all our baby pictures on slides for my dad. It works out ok since my scanner rocks, but does not work with OS 10 on my mac. It gives me a reason to go out and get a Mac compatible scanner. I only wanted the slide scanner attachment to do the baby slides anyway. If she will do them she can have the scanner.

Key’s and baby’s

I actually left work early today. I was as amazed as the readers must be. I needed to go and get my keys for my new apartment. I am actually moving next week. It is cool and a pain. I want to move and the new place is great, but I feel like I just got everything where I like it in the current apartment. I need to go over to the new place and check out the paint job.

Being home early had an added benifit. My sister and the baby were at my parents house so I went over and we all went out to dinner. Morgan was being fussy so we didn’t get to actually eat till after 8, but we were trying from 6 PM on. She is so cute. It drives me crazy when she cries because she puts on this really cute pouty face and gets all upset. Everyone will have their hands full with her when she grows up!

Cebit, TechNY, PCExpo and whatever else it was called

Every June I want to goto the big tech trade show in NYC. This year it is called Cebit, last year it was TechNY. It used to be called PC Expo. Last year we just moved offices and I couldn’t go. The year before that was the same problem. In 2000, and 1999 I was traveling and unable to go. I haven’t been in years and always want to go. This year I got the free invite I always get (everyone in the tech industry probably gets them) and I just didn’t feel like going. Last year I heard it wasn’t that great. I had missed the boat on the last great big expo’s in NY. Turns out I am glad I didn’t go. Howard went and said it wasn’t that good at all.

I would like to goto CES, but my position at my current job doesn’t require it. Others go, and it sounded cool the past 2 years. On the flip side, whenever I goto those shows I hate getting bombarded by sales pitches. Can nothing please me? 🙂

Be wary of software updates!

I had a close call yesterday with my Apple Powerbook G4 12″. I ran the airport extreme update to get the wireless device to comply with the final 802.11g spec that came out last month. So I run the update and reboot my powerbook only to find out that I can no longer get on my wireless network at home. I didn’t play with it because I was tired, but I was able to get it working at work on our regular 802.11b network. I get home and redo the network and all of sudden I get the network working. I was a bit scared for a minute. Rolling back from an update can suck or sometimes is not possible.

I am using a Linksys WRT54G 802.11G Wireless Route/4 Port Switch. I love linksys. This is my second router from them. When I got my powerbook I figured I would get an all in one router/wireless point that does 802.11g since the powerbook could do the faster G. I still need to ebay my old router and Lucent/Agere AP-1000 point. I still have to wait for the linksys wireless point I have to have the firmware update to comply with the 802.11g standard.

I love wireless and use it for tons of stuff around the house and work, but I will take this time to say that if you need to copy tons of stuff from one machine to another, get a 100 megabit wired switched connection. You will save yourself hours of waiting. 802.11g rocks (in my house I get double the speed from 802.11b while my laptop sits on the desk above my wireless point) but it is still not that fast for corporate use. At home with 1 computer on a network going to the internet, it is fast enough. Of course in that situation 802.11b is fast enough since the limiting factor is your internet connection. Just my two cents.

All in all I had some issues and I got some luck back today so it almost fixed itself overnight! How about that for Mojo?

The traditional friday evening of drinking

A bunch of us ended up going out after work. We ussually goto a bar by my office called No Idea? It is cool. We are creatures of habbit. Today I bumped into a few friends from when I was working at Y&R / BM. Dave and Nick were out playing pool. I didn’t speak to them much today. I need to hang out with them more. People out and about were Keith, Jenn, Rajive, Sam, Matt, & Vijay. We had a good time, but we cut out early. Jenn had plans, kieth was tired, and rajive had a train to catch and Vijay went to some sweedish party (no joke). I was exhausted from the week. We are looking to meet up on Saturday to goto some club Vijay knows about. Gus was MIA due to a long day of travel. Others were also MIA. Not sure what was up with Mark. He was in the office, and then didn’t end up out at the bar. I guess that is what happens when you have a new born baby at home.

What I need to do most this weekend is get a good night sleep. I used to get good long sleeps over the weekend. I am not recently. I can’t seem to get up in the morning during the week, but the weekend comes along and I get up at 10-am. When I mean sleep late, I am talking about 1pm or so. I used to love doing that in college. I even could do that for years after college. Maybe I am getting older?

Its Friday and things improved, finally!!!

Thank goodness things got better today. I was having a bad week, and today turned things around a bit. My new linux admin started today. I spent allot of time bringing him up to speed on stuff. He seems cool. I also got some decent resume’s for our kingston office. Finally!!!! I have some interviews setup for next week. I also got some other misc stuff out of the way today. It is always good to close out some lower priority issues and keep the task list down.

We took the new guy out to eat today. We went to Dukes. It is a bar / restaurant across the street from our office. It has good (but greasy) food. And the waitress’s are usually really hot. Hey we tip well so I can say that! One thing I don’t do that often recently is go out for lunch with people. Keith has been starting to go out with some of the dev staff but they usually goto indian food and I am not into that. I am a more steak or burger kind of guy. Of course we need to try the seafood place across the street from my office. I have worked in this area for a combined total of 3-4 years and I never ate there. Go figure.

I still stress because I need to continue to push our kingston project along. Everything seems to take so long to do. I know that is just the way things are, but I hate waiting around for crap. I am just dealing!!!

Personal stuff, not as bad as work

Even after all I said about work sucking today, I actually feel ok. And I haven’t yet started to drink my frosted shot of godiva liquor. It actually tastes good before bed. Pause, slow sip… Yup tastes good.

I did some research online tonight. I found a few places that offer the PADI SCUBA class. I guess PADI is the certification you need to dive almost everywhere. it works out to like $300 for the classes. the open water dives are more and you need to buy some gear. My luck to pick an expensive and potentially dangerous hobby! But it is dam cool… One place offers a crash course over a weekend. They offer it this weekend. I am going to call tomorrow and find out it I can still get in the class and buy the gear in time. I post more information when I get it.

On the broken computer side, I don’t think the dam thing is broken, or if it is I got it working consistently today and last night. Since I don’t want to be without my laptop for a week, I am not going to send it back and see what happens. Not sure what apple will do with the open ticket, nor do I care if the thing works.

Have I mentioned how awesome my powerbook is? I just wish it was a bit faster, and didn’t get so hot when I leave it plugged in. But it rocks!!!

A few people from work are thinking of going to see the Hulk friday. I am down for it as long as I don’t have to get up really early for SCUBA class. I will find more information out friday.

Space, Space, Space, No Space

Work space in my office is in short supply. We are over crowded. This will continue until we finish our new call center in kingston. Unfortunately that wont be till the end of the summer. It is going to be a hot and crowded summer at work. For the past year I have been lucky. I have been doubled up in an office with Keith. We are messy with all the computer crab we get, and we can lock it up so that is why we are in an office. Well, we are probably hiring a sys admin to oversea some projects we have going on. That means we are getting a new office mate. Our building area is now going poof. I won’t feel the pain until all the kingston servers come in. Not sure where we will stage them. On the plus side this will be a temporary (2-3 months) thing. The problem with temporary things at my company is they tend to end up permanent or long term things.

Thankfully I have input in space allocation. To my dismay I ended up with that job when we moved into our new office. Not sure exactly why I got that privilege, but I have an idea. I have come to accept it. It has it’s plus’s and minus’s.

The next problem to tackle is the lack of GOOD AC at work. It is always hot. I am going to start leaving the door closed to let the AC work.