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vacationing in the interim

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

A vacation is not a vacation without free internets.

Did I ever tell yall about this site, Bearskinrug? I love sites that look "handmade." This one is by a guy who does daily (or almost?) illustrations and / or comic panels along with his writing. I really like the idea of doing drawings to illustrate your posts as opposed to pictures. I'd do that more if it weren't for the day job. Or so I say.


Sometimes it's hard to see the internet outside on your laptop, but this deck umbrella is helping. I am in the Wisconsin Dells today, following a fairly long day yesterday of house-emptying, moving activity. To be honest, I'm really aggravated with the movers right now. Not the guys, but the company. After they'd loaded all of my stuff onto the truck and driven away -- like literally right after... we were still sitting in the same spot on the floor where we had signed all of the paperwork -- a woman from Behren's called and said our delivery would be delayed until as late as the 9th. This is after we were initially given a date of the 2nd or 3rd, maybe the 5th at worst. So it's going to be 2 weeks until I get my household back and I have to start at the new office before then. I have like 2 pairs of shorts, 3 pants and 10 t-shirts to wear to work. Great. They've offered to compensate me by paying for a hotel room from the 5th till our stuff arrives, but that doesn't feel like compensation to me. I believe I'll have to call and complain.

So the move has officially begun. We had a going away "party" with Kim's family on Sunday, after which she asked "how come I don't feel more emotional about this?" To her I'm fairly sure that question means "My emotional connection to my family feels rather weak -- I don't understand." But I don't think that's it at all. I think it's just a continuation of my Depth of Experience theory, in which we don't really feel things all that deeply. I guess it's only surprising when we expect to feel something more deeply and don't. Personally, I've been chalking the lack of emotional connection to moving to this lack of permanence that I feel about the whole thing. I think it's mostly a matter of it having been such a slow process over the last month or so. I'm gonna contradict that statement in a second, but let me qualify it by saying that packing and preparation has been going on since I accepted the position 2 months ago. But, in retrospect, selling a house, packing it up, finding a new place and moving in a 2 month span is really quite fast. That's just going from the point that I accepted the job, though. It doesn't include the resume sending, the waiting, the interview...

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Bayou St. John

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

This is facing the side of the bayou I'll be living on, I believe. This is Moss St. in the picture... I'm on a street that intersects Moss, about 2 houses in from the corner. There's a walking bridge that crosses the bayou that is practically right outside of my front door.

Bayou St. John
Originally uploaded by kberke

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not my house...

but this is the block i'll be living on.

summer rain in new orleans
Originally uploaded by nolafilm

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UltraMon

Life Hacker has managed to become one of my most-read rss feeds because they honestly manage to write about helpful things. Imagine. The other day they posted about this little app, UltraMon, for multiple monitor setups. Most of what it does is extend your taskbar to your second (or more) monitor(s). Seems simple enough... makes you wonder why the graphics card can't handle this itself.

When I first started working on dual monitors a few years ago, I had this nVidia card that let you treat both monitors as one, with a screen resolution of 2560 x 1024. It basically stretched your task bar from end to end (and had one huge wallpaper). But it's all ATI's now, at least through Dell it seems to be, and I've been stuck with a cramped taskbar. The horror!

So what UltraMon does is either gives you a mirror of the taskbar on the 2nd monitor (why? why??) or separates it into two, with the apps running in each monitor represented on that monitor's task bar... which is pretty nice! It also adds buttons to all of your windows next to minimize, maximize and close, to send a window/app to the other monitor or to maximize to both screens. I don't know how handy those will turn out to be, but we'll see. I'd still like to s t r e t c h the task bar, but this is definitely worthwhile. Whether or not it's worth $39.95 is another story.

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a place to live

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Monday was the longest day ever, definitely the most difficult of the entire moving process so far. But the outcome was good.

I started the day early enough, going in to the office for meetings and a bit of orientation. I got there for 8:30 and was out by noon, so I thought I was doing pretty well on time. Things started going downhill pretty quickly, though. The first realtor, the one to show me the place on Esplanade wasn't available for 2 hours. The next realtor I spoke with, a guy from Prudential Gardner, had one place for $1400 right next to the cemetery in a shadier section. There was a whole list of places for $1500, but he was convinced that no one would be willing to negotiate on price and we were pretty set against paying anymore. So talking to him went nowhere.

Next I called Latter & Blum, who I knew had a bunch of listings @ 1500. A very friendly lady asked me a few questions, said they'd call back shortly, then disappeared for 3 hours. The realtor did eventually get back to me and helped me narrow my choices down to two, which we saw, one of which was pretty tempting. I was a bit uncertain of the neighborhood though, so I didn't make any moves other than to get an application.

I decided to pass by the place on Esplanade again to mull it over, and wound up driving around the surrounding neighborhoods a bit more, writing down a few more numbers and making calls along the way. I left some voice mails and headed off to find a place to make a copy of my driver's license for my lease applications. Oh, and I was still waiting to hear back if the owner of the place on Esplanade would accept our slightly negotiated offer. I drove forever and it was getting late and I was beginning to feel utterly defeated, unable to find an apartment, unable to even find a copy machine. I drove all the way out to Clearview on Veteran's Blvd and found nothing. I made my way back into Lakeview figuring there may be something by UNO, then my phone rang. By this time it was about 8:00, but when this guy told me his price I asked if I could come now. He wasn't any cheaper, but the house was gorgeous; I thought there was no way it was in my range, to the extent that I almost didn't write down the number.


I forgot to tell you, the Latter & Blum realtor was this dude terrence who had also been out of New Orleans for a while. He told me that he'd lived in Texas, then Ohio, then in Europe for a while. "Where in Europe?" "Hungary."
"So you speak Hungarian?"
"yeah"
"Let me hear it."
"Fogalmom nincs mi mondta."

Turns out that he had played basketball professionally in Europe for seven years. I asked if he was following the Eastern Conference Finals, that I hadn't heard anything since the Cavs went up 3-2. "Hell yeah, man, they beat the Pistons - they're going to the Finals!"

That was a bright spot in my day. The other bright spot was walking into this apartment one block from City Park, and seeing new everything. New tile floor, new walls, new paint, new kitchen. I thought it was perfect and asked the landlord if he'd accept a personal check as the deposit. He let me take my time checking the place out and we wound up chatting for nearly an hour. He pointed out to me that you can see Bayou St. John from the front sidewalk. The next day Kim pointed out to me that the place is a bit small (I'd sent her pics) and it hasn't got much of a yard. But, the street we'll live on looks like a park. There are green spaces all around us, moss in the trees and....

We'll live on the streetcar line.

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Sunday in nola

Thursday, June 07, 2007

When I thought I was going to be looking at houses in Slidell I thought things would be easy. I'd only need to see a few houses - they're all ranches, it's just a matter of which one is flatter. You know. But then the shift to looking uptown threw a wrench in things. I was driving until 11 pm Saturday, criss-crossing down every street writing down numbers. Today Elise and I drove around for hours, checking out the list of places I made from Latter & Blum's website, figuring out which ones to call. In the end we only wound up actually going inside one place, primarily because realtors don't work on Sunday.

It's amazing to me how many of the houses for rent are being handled by realtors here. The vast majority, to be sure. I have to say, though, provided we find a nice house before Tuesday evening, I think I'll be glad we decided to stay in the city. I won't believe the high rents are worth my money, but it'll be nice to be IN New Orleans. I'm actually going to see a place on Esplanade with some friend-of-the-family realtor tomorrow. She had given my mom the address, so I went to check it out today and am pretty excited to see the inside. It is also a continuance on this whole thing being providential. Kim and I, in our letters to each other (during the early 90s) had this recurring "when we can finally be together..." story about it being a warm Sunday afternoon and we're lying around or the couch in our apartment on Esplanade. There had probably been some fried oysters earlier in the day.

Oh, I had a Hansen's snoball today for the first time ever. I've been talking to Elise about snoballs for weeks so we've been rather gluttonous with them. I promised that we'd get one after lunch, but we were pretty far From Pandora's and I think they are closed on Sunday. So we went looking for another snoball place and I remembered Hansen's, though not once have I ever EVER seen that place open. Hansen's is a pretty fabled place in New Orleans, for those who aren't aware. Snoballs as smooth as ice cream, they say. It was owned and operated by a couple, like forever, and they got old and they only opened intermittently until eventually they passed away. After that the granddaughter took it over, in homage at first l believe.

I'm certain that all of the facts in that story are wrong but I believe the folklore aspect to it is spot on. I think there was an article about it on nola.com that I read. I don't just know all this stuff.

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the dividing line

So yesterday was my last day at Fullhouse. I wound up being fairly busy up until the very last minute. I did always say I preferred to be busy, but until 6:00 on your last day is pushing it. I did my best to help them transition, but even 4 weeks notice wasn't enough to replace 2 flash Developers in Milwaukee. It's odd, I wouldn't have imagined it would be that hard to find good flash people, but it's been a struggle even finding people to interview. You would think that some one there would know some one to refer.

Then again, thinking back I remember in the Cream City days how I used to feel like I was operating in a void. There was no one around to ask questions or act as a mentor. I didn't feel like the work we were doing at Fullhouse was particularly advanced, but now that the other flash Developer and I are gone, I recognize how difficult it is going to be for them for the next few months and I feel bad about it. You know, you start a job and you think one day you'll be gone and it just won't matter anymore, but that never seems to be the case. Part of me couldn't help but think, especially considering how hard they tried to keep me at Fullhouse, about the opportunity I was leaving behind as the lead interface developer (not to mention the headaches).




So today, being the day after my last day, I'm heading to nola with Elise to find a place to live. We're looking for a house to rent, but prices there are pretty phenomenal. We were thinking of living in Slidell near my parents - which reminds me that I had this dream last night that my step mom was mounting a campaign for a full-scale war against me. I don't know what it was that I had done to make her so upset, but she wanted my head on a platter. Anyway, Kim's been looking into home-school groups to join and has found that there are several in Metairie and on the West Bank. Having me commute from Slidell to the CBD for work is one thing. Having us both do it is a waste.

So, contrary to what l had been thinking was the wise thing to do, we've decided to look at places uptown. Safety concerns me, and price really concerns me, but l think if we're smart we can manage it. Besides,more than anything, I would like to be near Audubon Park. The bad part is that the shift in our mindset puts me behind in my research in finding a place. I had hoped to at least have a few appointments set up before I got to town and I don't. I may have to do it old school style and drive around to see what I can find. I do have a bunch of listings from Latter & Blum's website to start with, so at least I'm not going empty-handed. The trade off in living uptown is that I may be able to skip getting a second car for a while, and may even be able to not pay for parking - if l can take the scooter or, eventually, the streetcar.

I would love to take the streetcar to work everyday!

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