Life, Kids, Technology & that move to another continent
Today after work I headed into the city to Blaggards to meet up with friends. Yes headed into the city is what I said. I was working from home so it is always kind of odd to go into Manhattan to meet up with people after work when I am already home. Meet up with Mike, Luke, and others. I had a good time, but it is always fun hanging out with those guys.
Thankfully an otherwise uneventful day at work.
Today was my scheduled trip to meet up with most of my team in the NJ office. The day went well, but the bus ride home was not fun. I had to get off on 34th and 9th and walk to 7th ave for the subway. If I had stayed on the bus it would have probably taken another hour to get home due to the bus traffic. Got home in around 2 hours and 15 minutes.
I hung out during the day today. Nothing spectacular. Just happy to relax after a long week at work.
Meet up with Danny this evening to see the new Star Trek movie. I was skeptical about the movie since I can’t remember a good Star Trek movie since my dad took me to see Star Trek II in the mid 80’s. I was pleasantly surprised. It was a decent movie. Nothing spectacular in my opinion but pretty good.
Afterwards Danny and I grabbed food at a bar near the theater. I got to have some Obon, so I was happy to have some nice scotch.
Last night I downloaded the Release Candidate for Windows 7. I had some false starts trying to install it on my Netbook last night. I finally was able to get the install files on a bootable USB flash drive I had. Once that was done it was really easy getting the OS on my Netbook. Since work was hectic today I only just got around finishing most of the install. I have the basic apps on it that I use.
I have to say I am so far impressed with what I see. I don’t know the true benchmarks but Windows 7 seems much faster than Windows XP Home was on the Atom processor. Granted I haven’t really run any apps. I have just been installing them, but the system does seem more responsive than with XP. The graphics on 7 are nice also. I like pretty, yet functional OS’. Right now I have the HP Mini 1000 plugged into a 23″ display and it is working fine. I will continue to play with it over the next few days, but my first impressions are positive. The only main downside I see is that at idle with 1 program running (IM) the system is using around 46% of my 2gigs of RAM. Not as bad as Vista, but not by much.
Today I was an at the office day. Prashant wasn’t around so I ended up eating lunch by myself. It is odd that when I am in the office I don’t even get to socialize more than when I work from home. I know that is because the teams I work with are not in the office I am based out of but it is still a bit unusual. I had a busy day of meetings and getting tasks done. I had an issue later in the day so I ended up staying at the office till 6.
I was going to meet up with Kristen and possible some of her friends for drinks, but that fell through since she had some last minute things to take care of. I am glad the plans got canceled because i did have to stay late at work and I wasn’t sure if I would have had to stay later. I always hate canceling plans because of a work issue that comes up!
The rest of the evening was uneventful. My mom is off to Europe with a friend so I spoke to her on the phone at the airport for a while. I am her weather checker / temperature converter. I love that I can convert Celsius into Fahrenheit using Convertbot on my iPhone.
Today started out working from home like a normal Monday. By lunch time I had to go into the companies mid town office for a meeting in the early afternoon. Since I love the company cafeteria at that office I went in at lunch time. Seriously, it is not a dingy place to eat. They have tons of great stuff even though I usually get the same thing when I go since I don’t go too often. I am usually there 2-3 times a month at the most for lunch.
The meeting was eventful. Hopefully we can make our proposal work once the details are reviewed. I liked the old plan personally so either way would work for me! Vague I know, but I don’t talk details about work on the blog! Besides the meeting I got to have several conversations with people I don’t normally see in person since I am not in this office that much. That in and of itself was very productive. I am back in that office again this thursday all day. Hopefully that day is as productive!
I finished work around normal time. I ran down to near Macy’s to get my hair cut. I don’t know what it is exactly but I enjoy getting haircuts. Maybe it is the relaxing vibrations of the clippers on my head. Who knows!
Today (well yesterday at this point) was a work from home day for me. It was surprisingly busy. Friday’s is typically a day that starts out free from meetings, but like today usually gets booked up. This week it got packed with meetings and things. I was glad to get the day over with since it was particularly hectic.
I ended up going to Blaggards for a few drinks. I saw a bunch of Redcats people there. Some I haven’t seen in a while. Had a drink with Louis. Saw Simonne, and others. It was fun. Mike was able to come out later. Saw Jenn and some of her friends again. Ended up hanging with Stanley and one of Jenn’s friends for a while, but I cannot recall her name. I can’t stand it when I do that. I don’t remember what time I headed home, but it was probably before 11, I hope!
Today was my day to goto the NJ office. It was a long day as usual. Lots of meetings. Went to Uno’s for lunch with a few guys. Then more meetings. An issue came up late in the day so there was allot of pacing in a conference room as I talked on the phone. I pace when I talk on the phone for some reason. Then there was another conference call while I was on the bus going home. I became “that guy” and was on my blackberry for about 30-40 minutes on the bus. I never like it when people do it, but it was for work. At least it wasn’t someone yammering about so petty personal thing that no one needs to hear. I actually had stuff that needed to get done. Oh man, now I am justifying being that guy!
I was planning on going to dinner or bringing something home to eat, but since I went to lunch I wasn’t that hungry. I just came home and microwaved something. What fun.
Friday was a work from home day for me. The day would be classified in the normal category. Crazy things went on, but nothing out of what I would consider normal for a day. After work I meet up with Luke, Mike, & others at Blaggards to hang out. Unfortunately the night got cut short around 9PM when I had to go home for a problem at work. I didn’t get to bed till around 2AM because of the commotion. That is not they way I want to end a week. In the end everything was fine, but the excitement can be hectic. Even with the late night adventures at work the day and evening was mostly good. I had a good time with friends for a few hours so I can’t complain!
Unfortunately now my sleep pattern is all messed up for the weekend! I am trying to relax so the bad night of sleep doesn’t turn into a migraine.
Today is the normal day that I have scheduled myself to goto our NJ office to spend time with the majority of my team. Now that the office they are in has been renovated they are all back in the office instead of working remotely part of the time. It isn’t practicle to have them come to NYC anymore so I goto NJ. The trip is not the most fun I have had getting to work, but it is still better than the trip I had to take to goto Kingston when I was at Partsearch. That was a crazy day.
In order to make it to NJ I do need to get up 2 hours earlier than I normally would. And the commute is long. In the morning it is about an hour and a half depending on traffic. Going home it is over 2 hours door to door. I almost didn’t make it today. The 7 train stopped running due to a mechanical problem with a train, so it stopped at 5th ave station. I had to walk to Port Authority to catch my bus. That typically would be fine, it is only a few avenues but I was on a tight schedule and if I missed the bus I was aiming for it would mess the whole day up. The whole situation aggravated me since I missed catching an earlier 7 train by 2 seconds (literally the doors closed in my face) and that train would have gotten me to Time Square since it was in front of the one that I was on that got stuck at 5th ave. But I digress. I was able to make it to the bus with minutes to spare.
The rest of the trip was uneventful. The day however was full of excitement. We had an issue during the day that kinda messed up my meeting schedule, but issues and emergencies kinda trump typical scheduled stuff. With the excitement out of the way I had a semi normal afternoon before running out to catch the bus going home. The past few return trips from NJ have been bad since I have gotten dropped of on the street far away from Port Authority. It seems if you get a bus stuck on the line into the terminal it can take an hour to go from the 30’s on 10th to the terminal. Thankfully this bus got out of the tunnel via a different exit and it only took like 20 minutes to go 2 blocks (yeah this is why I don’t like bus’s) to the terminal. I was home in around 2 hours 10 minutes door to door. Not great, but not horrible. I stayed in after that because I was just tired. Thankfully tomorrow is a work from home day.
I will say that my issues with the iPhone as a phone aside, I would probably go crazy without it on the bus. I am able to listen to music, watch some podcast’s, read the news on the internet, or just watch my location slowly move on google maps. It helps pass the time!