New Pics!

Julia loaded up the pictures we took on the trip to California, my new living quarters, and my workplace. You can see them over in the Flickr badge on the right.

I've been spending a lot of time at work since I'm not hooked up to the Internet at home and don't really have a way to get around very easily. That's okay, though, since I need to conserve money. And the upside of not having a car is that I've been doing a lot of walking. Jim picked me up and dropped me off a couple of times, but I think I've either walked to and/or from work everyday this week.

I worked a bit today (Saturday) and spent some time getting files moved onto my computer so I can get to work on other projects. I also filled out some paperwork for the new job. It's nice to not have that hanging over my head.

I'm heading out now to walk home. Tomorrow I need to hit the store, do my laundry, and maybe come to work to find something to do. We'll see how it goes.

Let's See . . .

I haven't posted since mid-/late-last month, so I better have something meaningful to say, huh?

Hate to disappoint, but everything I have to say revolves around my new job and the move.

I flew down to San Francisco to vist the folks at Cryptic about a month ago on a Friday. The interview went well and the trip was pretty easy considering I flew home the same day.

The following Tuesday they made me an offer. I had a few questions for them and I accepted the offer a day or two later. I quickly exited from my job at Microsoft and actually managed to leave everything in a pretty good state there; I finished up some projects and actually managed to get some things shipped out that had been sitting around waiting for me to take care of them.

I had about a week off to organized things around the house, pack, clean, and generally prepare for moving. The time was almost exactly the amount I needed. I had a huge list that I managed to work my way through. Here's some of the list:

1. Go to the storage unit and return some things, but pick up others to list on eBay.
2. List 'em and ship 'em.
3. Tear down boxes in the garage and clean it up. (Looks gooooood, too.)
4. Sell a bunch of stuff to Half Price Books.
5. Wash and vacuum the cars.
6. Meet with tax guy -- and have all the tax stuff ready for him.
7. Hang curtains. (Which look awesomely awesome!)
8. Go see the doctor.
9. Change flat tire on my car and get the flat fixed.
10. Reserve hotel and car for the trip.
11. Vacuum the house.
12. Clean my office. (You can actually close the door to it now!)
13. Donate some stuff to Goodwill.
14. Get a haircut.
15. Get the security system installed in the house.
16. Do laundry and pack!
17. Have lunch with my friends!

So, yeah, a few things to take care of -- and that's not even the whole list.

Anyway. Last Thursday (Criminy! A week ago!), Julia and I picked up a rental car from downtown Seattle, loaded it with six or seven boxes of games and books along with a couple of bags of clothes and hit the road. We drove about 10 hours the first day and made it out of Washington, all the way through Oregon, and to Redding, California where we stopped for the night. We'd planned for Thursday to be the bulk of the driving and I think that was a wise choice because it meant we could sleep in on Friday and take our time. We didn't leave Redding until about 11:00am and we made it to my new house between 3 and 4pm.

We quickly moved everything to my room, unpacked, and went out to explore a bit.

I won't go into too much detail about the weekend, but we had a good time. We picked up some things I needed (shampoo, food, etc.) and managed to find a good comic shop (Heroes), a table for my TV, a walking-distance grocery store, my route to work, and a few other places of interest. Oh, and we went to see the Winchester Mystery House and spent some of Sunday at the Campbell Farmer's Market.

It really was a great weekend together and I was very sad to see my girl fly home.

Since then, I've pretty much been reading, walking to work (unless Jim gave me a ride), and working.

More soon, I swear.