March 27: PBwiki 2.0

We just unleashed version 2.0 on the world. Woo!

March 26: Loft

I am all moved into the lofty apartment, and my stuff arrived yesterday. Seeing my TV again was, frankly, AMAZING. I still can't find my remote controls, but I can put up with that. Sweet, sweet pixels. It's sort of weird having possessions again — after a month of it being just me and my laptop, I had sort of gotten used to a sort of minimalism. It makes me want to purge all sorts of crap I don't need, except I've already done that. More purging would be traumatic, I think. I like all of my stuff.

I'm just at work, dealing with a cold or flu or something. It's bad enough that I'm drinking herbal tea, which is a warning sign. I've also taken some DayQuil. It's no good. I hate taking DayQuil. NyQuil works great and knocks you out long enough to feel better (it may or may not just be horse tranquilizers). DayQuil is like NyQuil mixed with espresso or something. Some of the relief with more side-effects than you can shake a stick at. I am not 100% sure I'm not sitting on a chair that is moving right now. Bleh.

Anyway, I've got to go off and be productive. This is a short week for me — Mom arrives at lunchtime on Friday. Huzzah!

March 18: (Almost) Settled

Good news, everyone: I found an apartment! It's a beautiful, 1950s loft in Redwood City. Redwood freaking City! Can you imagine? Somewhere not-so-far-away, in the 1980s, a high-tech factory was pumping out beautiful (and doomed) NeXT Cubes. Being in Silicon Valley rules, just because every town seems to have a company and a story associated with it: Mountain View/Google, Sunnyvale/Yahoo, Palo Alto/PARC, Cupertino/Apple...it's weird and awesome. I love it here! (Have I mentioned that enough yet?)

Speaking of Google, I had supper there tonight with Brian and Jen, his ladyfriend. It's a very neat campus — there's a bronze dinosaur skeleton in the middle of all of the buildings, and a bunch of different cafeterias stuffed with interesting varieties of (free) food. It looks like a highly populated university campus, except everyone there is a computer geek. There are lava lamps all over the place, and every building has at least one screen scrolling by a random selection of search queries. It was pretty much everything I expected from Google — mind-bogglingly huge and clearly optimized for brain throughput. Awesome.

But yeah the loft! It's super cool: the entire front of it is windows, looking out to a lemon tree and a nice, big, grassy area with a few trees. The living room and kitchen are separated by a built-in table thing, and everything looks trés fifties. The bedroom and bathroom are upstairs, and they have an overhang looking down on the living room. It's epic and awesome and I can't wait until I move into it (which will be on Saturday). After three weeks of living in a hotel room, I'll be glad to be settled. I'm feeling much more at home here now than I was a week or so ago, having made friends and learned my way around the area. I can now drive between obvious destinations (San Mateo, Mountain View, Redwood City, Sunnyvale) without really needing the GPS. I recognize landmarks and everything — look at me, learning, like I'm a grown-up or something. It's madness!

Anyway, I've got to go shower and sleep and all the other fun s-words. Until next time, world.

March 11: Damn Skippy

Oh, man, do I ever need to cut back on the Red Bulls. I'm having a very washed out afternoon today. The presence of an unending flow of delicious beverages is really tempting. Must...exercise...self...control!

Today's been a good work week so far — I've been doing much pair-programming with Joël, which is fun. It seems to lead to better code with fewer mistakes, plus it makes the time go by faster. I'm a fan. Lots of nerdy tasks aren't really suited to the format, but the ones that are really benefit. I give it two thumbs up.

Drama in my life focuses on trying to cancel my Rogers cell phone contract. Back in February, when the prospect of the move to California first arose, I called Roger's customer service and asked what would happen. The person there said that the early cancellation fee is $400, but that since I was leaving the country, they'd probably knock it down to $200. Just to be sure, I went into the Rogers store on Spring Garden Road and asked the same thing, receiving the same response — expect to pay about $200. So, of course, I go to cancel it yesterday and the cancellation department insists that there is no way, under any circumstances, that anyone can ever pay a cent less than the full cancellation fee. That it was completely unprecendented, and not one, but two other Rogers employees were completely incorrect in what they told me earlier.

Needless to say, I am pissed. I'm also vaguely stressed, because this move is ridiculously expensive and an extra $200 is pretty much the last thing I wanted to have to spend for yet more contract breaking. Gah. So, if anyone out there needs a phone, or has any thoughts on the issue, well, I am stuck with one.

On a brighter note, I finally got a phone down here, and it is a long lusted after iPhone. I love it muchly, and named it Skippy. Yay!

March 06: Chomp crunch chomp

Oddly, since I started working here, where there is a delightfully stocked kitchen, my eating habits seem to have improved. I am currently manger-manger'ing on some carrots and apples, which makes a half-way decent breakfast. I also had a blueberry crumpet (yay!). Now, generally speaking, I top off the healthiness with an ungodly caffeinated concoction, but the coffee machine had the red-light-of-doom on this morning, so I have tea. You can't win 'em all, I guess. But speaking of win, check this out:

My new nameplate

That's right, I have a nameplate! They just arrived yesterday (it was everyone-gets-a-nameplate-day, not just me). I've never had a nameplate before. The luxury!

Anyway, things are good here. I looked at another apartment last night, but I wasn't really feeling it...great location, but the actual apartment was sort of dingy. I don't think I could really handle a dingy apartment — windows are too good of a feature to not have. So, the quest (slowly) continues. I'm still waiting for my SSN and ATM card, the two pieces of the puzzle that will let me be a normal, functioning member of society. And on that note, I am off to go function. Ciao.

March 02: Adjusting

Hey, all. How are things where you are? Things here are good. I'm sort of settling in a bit — well, as settled as one can be whilst living out of a hotel room. You know, people usually use that phrase with disdain, but it's not all bad. Whenever I come back to the hotel, someone has made my bed, cleaned out the trash, and vacuumed. Plus, I get a new bar of soap every day for some reason. I find myself frantically scrubbing when I'm in the shower, hoping just to put a dent in the bar, because I know it will soon be gone. It seems sort of futile, although I'm not entirely convinced they're not just wrapping my old bar of soap in a wrapper.

Anyway, today, I finally got sick of eating fast food in the hotel room, so I decided to suck it up and perform the awkward eat-by-yourself-in-a-restaurant maneuver (How many? Just one? Oh.). My weapon of choice? Denny's, of course. I figured I could get something reasonably decent there, while not actually having to try a scary, unknown restaurant. Now, for those of you who have never had the pleasure, Denny's is a restaurant with okay food that absolutely wants you to be overweight. They give you so much food that it borders on obscene, and they're programmed to deliver it to you whether you want it or not.

I decided to order the chicken dinner, which came with not only two side dishes (I opted for mashed potato and corn, mm) but two, that's right, two freaking chicken breasts. It's easily enough food for two people. Anyway, I politely explained to the waitress that I only wanted one chicken breast, and yes, I knew it would still cost the same amount. Yes, I know. Yes. The same amount. OK. Yes, just one. Paying for two. Gotcha. Nod. So, she finally walked away, somewhat awed, and I wondered why it was so difficult, hoping no one would spit in my food for rocking the boat. When my food arrived, guess what? It was spitefully drenched in gravy, and it came with garlic toast. Seriously! No wonder there's an obesity epidemic.

So, I ate most of my food and left, deciding to explore a local park of something — having been cooped up inside for days, and just stuffing my arteries with gravy, it only seemed right. I checked out a few parks that my GPS took me to before finding one I really liked, called (I think) Bayside Park, quite close to my hotel. It was super nice — about 22 degrees outside today. Take that, Halifax.

Anyway, I've put a few photos online, although there's nothing too interesting yet. I'll post some more when I take some — more local exploring must be done. And on that note, I am off to go explore television. Ciao.