So with all the Buzz excitement I've been thinking—and talking to various friends—about things like Profiles, publishing Buzz comments to the entire internets, and how much public information is the right amount.

Since I just missed the Facebook generation most of the people I know tend to lean toward “none”. And my first instinct when Buzz prompted me to make a Google Profile was the same. Where I've lived? Where I work? Buzz posts visibile to the whole internet, and indexed by search engines? No thanks!

But then I remembered I had a blog! (What can I say, I like setting up these straight lines for you guys—prize for the best response in the comments.) It has my name on it, my email, and enough information to find out where I've worked, probably where I've lived, and certainly where I went to college. So why should I care if that same information is on a single page instead of spread out a bit on a blog? And since I use my name for my PWA account, it's not exactly rocket science to find my public photos there... plus, those are the photos I've already decided to post publicly, so again, who cares?

Thus I've decided to take another small step toward the world these crazy kids today live in, and make a real profile instead of a totally empty placeholder. Maybe I'll even try some public Buzzing. If I'm feeling really crazy, I might even post here from time to time!

But I haven't lost all my standards: I still think Twitter is too absurd to bother with. Character limits? Please. My genius will not be constrained.

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Yesterday I moved one step closer to being a respectable (and happy) geek, by moving most of the way into the world of smart phones!

I've wanted a smart phone for a long time—perhaps since my ill-fated run with a Palm PDA back in college. The idea of having my calendar, contacts, to-do lists, etc. on a device that fits in my pocket so that I would always have it seems up there with flying cars to me. After my bad experience with Palm (having a device that's supposed to have all your important info stored on it, but has no persistent storage and was prone to spontaneously draining the batteries dry, was not a winning solution), the next attempt was my iPod. That was good for travel at least, but I couldn't put anything into it on the go, and the reality was that I just didn't carry it everywhere with me since I don't listen to that much music.

Then the iPhone came out, which seemed like an obvious choice, but here one of my shameful geek secrets comes out: I just don't want a smart phone badly enough to pay for it. I could probably have talked myself into the initial cost, but the data plan? I spend the majority of my time in the warm, brain-irradiating field of a WiFi network, so did I really want to pay every month for that tiny bit of extra coverage? Since I was already paying way more than my cellphone was really worth to me every month, it was a tough sell. When I started using GrandCentral (now Google Voice) for all my long distance, and realized I could easily switch to a pay-as-I-go plan, it became even tougher. $80+ dollars a month instead of about $100 a year? No thanks.

Then I got my G1 from work, and I had a ball: as long as I was on WiFi I had all the benefits of a smart phone! And since I've been drinking a lot of the Kool-Aid, the integration with all the Google services (rather than the iPhone's MobileMe, which I don't use) was perfect. The only hitch was that I thought that putting my SIM in the G1 would result in some crazy data fees on my no-data plan, so it wasn't actually my phone—bringing me back to not carrying it everywhere. It was definitely an improvement: no need to remember to sync it, access to recent email (which is conveniently where I keep my to-do lists), ability to write emails while offline and have them auto-send when I got back to WiFi, but it still wasn't always there.

Imagine then how happy I was yesterday to learn that I can disable the phone's cell-data access! Within a few minutes my crappy phone was scattered in pieces across my desk, and my G1 was showing me bars for cell coverage in addition to WiFi. Now I have phone that's a smart phone most of the time, and a PDA (with automagic wireless syncing of pretty much everything I care about) plus dumb (but not painfully bad like most cell phone OS interfaces) phone the rest of the time. So now I'm happy, and perhaps more importantly I'm camouflaged around other geeks as long as I stick close to WiFi. No more pitying looks when they realize that I still live in the ’90s of cell-phones.

One of the coolest parts was the realization that one of the only down-sides to Google Voice—not having a voicemail indicator on my phone—is even better than solved. Because of the new transcription feature, not only do I know that I have voicemail when I look at my phone, I can read it on my phone. Mmm, technology.

And all that for far, far less than 30 Altarian dollars day.

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We had our first night out on the town here last night (thanks Deb!), having dinner, watching a comedy group do old-style radio drama, then listening to an indie folk group, all at a small bar in Hollywood. Occurrences that brought home the fact that we really do live in L.A. now:

• When we arrived and joined the others in line, we came into the middle of a conversation with the couple behind us, one of whom owns the house that served as Dr. Horrible's lair (and had a cameo in the party scene at the end). It turns out that it wasn't a set—the house actually looks like that all the time (giant chair and all) thanks to Monster House.
• A small part in the comedy group was played by Danny Strong.
• One of the members of the band was Adam Busch.
• The comedy show had a guest appearance by Kevin Pollak, who sat a booth over from us most of the evening (not that I would have realized at the time had it not been pointed out to me).

Not big name star sightings, sure, but all together on our first foray into the big city's night life it definitely made an impression. The fact that it was largely Whedon-themed made it oddly surreal.

I'm also getting used to the fact that just as most conversions end up being about software in silicon valley, most conversations end up being about TV and/or movies here. I feel like I'm going to need to spend a lot more time with pop culture to avoid looking ignorant most of the time here.

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That's right, we're all moved! We've been here for two weeks now, and we're close to being settled in to our new apartment as measured on the boxes-on-the-floor scale. Soon we may actually have some time to explore our surroundings a bit!

I have a couple posts of material built up (and I intend to actually post them; crazy idea, I know), but to tide you over until then, a random tidbit that occured to me shortly after we arrived here: I've moved 6 times now (counting dorms), and every time I've moved further south (even if only a very short distance). So my options for future homes are getting pretty limited now, assuming I don't want to learn a new primary language.

On the bright side, I'm told Austin is nice...

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This post is mainly for the benefit of my Fox Hollow French School cohort (that's right, we had none of this “Charlemagne” nonsense; we didn't need a snooty name to know that we were better than other children), but perhaps it will be interesting to others who are just curious about the strange influences that shaped my childhood.

For years, I've been carting around a bunch of cassette tapes from my youth. Mostly I ignore them except to feel that I have to keep them out of vague sentimental attachment, but there is one that I have periodically rediscovered and always had to listen to immediately: the tape of French songs from 2nd grade, which miraculously has not been lost or destroyed along the way. Each time I've though that it was a shame that they weren't easier to listen to, so finally something had to be done.

And so, for your listening pleasure: the songs of 2nd grade French, converted to MP3s. I did my best to clean up the sound, but there's only so much that can be done with a 20-year cassette that was a home-made copy to start with. Still, what they lack in audio fidelty, they more than make up for in nostalgia; if you grew up with these songs, I'd be willing to bet that you'll find yourself singing along at some point—à moins que tu aies dans les oreilles deux gros haricots!

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Coming back to Cupertino from our visit to L.A., I was struck by how green and residential it felt here by comparison—much like the feeling I get when I visit Eugene, but very odd to feel in Cupertino. It really makes me wonder what it would be like visiting Eugene after living in L.A. for several years.

Speaking of which, we are moving to L.A. in a few months (well, Santa Monica hopefully, which sounds nicer but still seems to be covered in smog).

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For those who have been wondering what I've been doing at my new job, here is your answer!

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Time is fleeting. And I'm pretty sure madness is taking its toll.

I'm now officially closer to 30 than I am to 20, which is a somewhat disconcerting thought. Being 20 was relatively straightforward—just keep going to college—but I don't have the slightest idea what I'm supposed to be doing when I turn 30. “In my early 20's” was a nice category to be in for figuring out life, but I don't think I can still be in my early 20's at 26.

But on the other hand, I have a job I like and am very happily married, and those seem like good qualifications for being post-early-20's. And I have four more years to figure out this whole 30 thing.

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I learned today that the next batch of hybrid HOV-lane stickers won't actually be issued until January 1st, since that's when the law that authorizes them goes into effect. It looks like my smug superiority will have to wait a little longer.

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I think the number one thing I got out of today's second half of the wine and food class (besides some really tasty food) was the realization that now I can say I generally prefer white wine to red and it's not total ignorance. Now I can come up with various plausible-sounding reasons instead of trailing off with “...but it's probably because I just don't know any better.”

Also: mmmm, desert wine. But I already knew that.

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The newest piece of my on-again-off-again, two-steps-forward-one-step-back dance with GTD is another attempting at getting the appropriate parts of my life into a calendar. In the past I've had a couple of false starts, where I did a reasonable job for a week or two, then slowly stopped checking my calendar regularly, completely eliminating the usefulness of having things there at all. Part of the problem was that I spent a lot of time at work, where I was using a different calendar system (I was on iCal at home), and looking at two calendars all the time was a pain. Plus, syncing back and forth from work to home was a mess when I was constantly switching computers and reinstalling the entire OS. (On top of which, syncing to development versions of an OS is not for the faint of heart; data loss in an environment where you know it could happen and plan accordingly is one thing, but automatically syncing that back to your home machine is another thing altogether.)

This time around I thought I should check out that whole Google Calendar thing, and it's really quite nice (and no, I'm not required to say that). It's a web interface, which means it's not quite iCal in some respects, but it's without a doubt very usable. On the other hand, it's a web interface, so it isn't iCal in some other respects too: access, both read and write, from anywhere internet-enabled (which is where I spend most of my time) being a big one. Perhaps even bigger is the very flexible inter-user calendar sharing system, which means that Laura and I can have a shared calendar that we can both write to (she has argued that we have one of those already, hanging in the kitchen, but as I can't get to it easily from my desk at home or at work, that's not terribly useful to me). So instead of Laura telling me things and hoping I remember to put them on the calendar, or me putting things on my calendar and hoping I remember to tell Laura, we'll only do the work once, and we'll both get the information reliably. I'm pretty confident that those two things will make the difference and keep me from falling off the wagon yet again.

On the other hand I'm often pretty confident when I start a new GTD piece, so we'll see how that goes. I can but try after all.

My hope is to slowly and steadily pick up GTD habits that I keep for more than a few weeks at a time; I've managed to get a couple to stick, and just those pieces have definitely made me at least a little less disorganized. Hopefully over time I can sidle up sideways to the eventual goal of stress-free productivity.

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Laura and I just got back from learning more about wine in an hour and a half than we had gleaned from several years of random tasting. It turns out there really is something to that whole actually learning about wine thing.

I think the biggest take-away lesson was that I had wildly underestimated the extent to which food pairing matters. I always thought it was a sort of “find a wine you like, and then if it goes with the food, so much the better” sort of thing, when in actuality it's a “if you drink wine with the wrong food you stand a good chance of ruining the wine completely and coming away with totally the wrong idea” thing.

Who knew?

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It has been pointed out to me that I haven't updated in a while, which, while not especially surprising given my record, is certainly true. To make up for it, I'm kicking off another post-a-day week to encourage me to catch up.

We'll begin today with work, which is of course part of what's been keeping me busy this past month. I've been settling in, and am just now starting to feel at least marginally useful; there's been a lot to get up to speed on and acclimated to. The work style I have now is so different than what I've been used to for the last couple of years that it's taking me a while to get used to how to structure my time. Not having the bulk of most days' work determined by events I have no way to predict seems strange and magical.

There is of course also the adjustment to being the new guy. I'm still figuring out where I fit, which can be hard, since it means I'm not really having much of a positive impact. But I know that that's just what happens when you are the new guy, and that it will pass—besides, having a lot to learn means that I'm learning a lot, which is something I enjoy. I definitely still believe that I made the right decision.

And then there's adjusting to the snacks. Working near a convenient supply of M&Ms is indeed a test of my willpower, and as I feared it's not a test I'm particularly well-prepared for. I tend to be good at resting buying snacks, but bad at resisting eating them once they are there. That model had been working well; we don't buy too many snacks, so I don't snack too much. When I lose control over the part that I'm good at, it's a whole different ball game. (Although I at least do avoid the M&Ms in favor of slightly better snacks. Mostly). But hey, I did say I like learning new things, right? And hopefully I can spin the snack-guilt into motivating me to start excercising at the almost-as-conveniently-located gym, especially since I need a regular excercise routine more than ever now that I'm not biking to work...

...which brings me to my last recap for today's installment: my new car! Having one car stopped working so well when I needed the car every day, so we finally broke down and bought a second car. I looked at a hybrid Civic and a Prius (if you are going to be commuting every day, at least try not to be evil about it, right?), and am now the very happy owner of a 2007 Prius. The civic felt smaller, its CVT was noticiably less C than that of the Prius, and, frankly, the Prius is just plain awesomer. Having a car that unlocks when I touch the handle almost makes up for the fact that we still don't have the flying cars we've been promised for so long. I finally collected the last requisite box-top to be able to send off for my HOV lane stickers, which should make me love having a Prius even more every morning and evening as I shave a substantial chunk off of my commute. And really, what's the point of having a Prius if I can't enjoy a smug sense of moral superiority as I blow by SUVs stuck in gridlock?

(I am also starting to look into actually carpooling too, in continued pursuit of non-evilness—I'm just kidding about the smug moral superiority thing. Mostly.)

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I ordered a new iPod for myself the other day. You could call it a going away present, or a final moment of weakness in the face of life inside the RDF; both are equally accurate.

It really says something about both the industry and Apple that I was surprised when I realized that my current iPod is only two years old. Given all the substantial changes the entire iPod line has gone through, it seemed impossible that it was really only two years. And while I fully recognize that there was no real need for me to upgrade (unlike my recent computer purchase, where a five-year-old computer really wasn't sufficient for me any more), there a number of major improvements: a brighter, color screen; between two and three times the battery life, five times the storage, better software and hardware interface (I just missed the click wheel last time around)—and all at a lower price, even before discount.

The other surprise was my realization that as far as I can remember, this was the first time I've ever purchased an Apple product and had a choice about the color. I decided on the features I wanted and I wasn't done. It was very confusing for me. Ultimately I decide on white though, because while black seems to be the new white, white is the original white. And there's just no arguing with that.

Update: I just got my shipping notice, and it says it will arrive on (or before) the 22nd. That would be very fitting: leaving Apple behind, but coming home to find a little reminder of it waiting for me. I could probably construct some kind of strained metaphor involving my old iPod, my new iPod, and stages of my career, but I think I'll spare us all that particular awkwardness.

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At the end of this month, I'll be starting a new job—I am at last jumping into real, full-time, software development. This is about the time I had expected to move into development when I started, so that's not too much of a surprise. What is surprising, even to me, is that my office will be a little more of a move than I would have thought.

That's right, I'm leaving the fruit business, and going to write Mac software for another company you may have heard of. This was not an easy decision, as my current employer has a great deal to recommend it. Ultimately, though, I think the move will give me more opportunity to explore my interests, which is really what I need at this point in my career. (Rumors that I am going for the free M&Ms are lies and slander.)

The next couple of years should be very exciting for me, as I'll finally be doing the sort of work I've wanted to do since computer science and I crossed paths one fateful semester in college. Full speed ahead!

P.S. Some of the keenly observant readers out there may notice that I have resurrected the Camino category in the sidebar. This is not a coincidence.

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No posts in a while courtesy of that big source of chaos we like to call “life”. I may elaborate on parts later, but here's the really short version:

• June was largely good. We had an enjoyable (despite the weather) trip to Europe, resulting in lots of good pictures and stories. On the down side one exciting prospect failed to pan out, but I don't hold June responsible.
• July was terrible—quite probably the worst month of my life to date, for a couple of reasons. About all I can say about July is that it's over.

What does August hold for me? Hard to say at this point. There will be elements of July about it; this is certain. But life has ways of twisting, and there are a few bright spots scattered on the horizon that I can see already. I'm counting on you to do the right thing here, August.

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Yesterday was the anniversary of a very special day: that's right, it's was the anniversary of Kentucky's official statehood. And what's so special about that, you ask? I'll tell you: it set things up so that exactly 210 years later, I would have the exceeding good fortune to marry a wonderful native of that state. And here I am four years later, and still thrilled with my luck. Kentucky knows how to grow them right.

(And a happy belated anniversary also to Duncan and Kris, who have excellent taste in wedding days if I do say so myself.)

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In preparation for heading to Germany, in light of all the German we didn't keep studying like we had intended to, we plastered index cards all over the apartment last night identifying objects with their German names. The cards tell me that I am sitting at "der Computer", looking at "der Bildschirm" as I tap away at "die Tastatur". Probably not critical words I grant you, but many of the others are much more useful. Hopefully that plus some targeted studying of important words (we didn't find any prepositions or adjectives around the apartment, unfortunately) will slightly reduce our ignorance before we strike out.

And hopefully the week in France won't erase what limited German we have...

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I'd been meaning to post a detailed comparison of just how much better my new iMac is than my old G4, but I think it's easiest to just sum it up: it's about a jillion times better.

I'm very pleased with the speed, the screen, the quietness, and even the look (despite my misgivings when then G5 iMacs were first introduced). All in all a great computer, saving me lots of time (and sanity) that would previously have been spent sitting and waiting a little bit longer every time I did something moderately taxing. It even runs Aperture like a champ, which is good since I'm probably going to be switching over from iPhoto to Aperture—after having played around with it for a few hours, I am hooked.

So for anyone who was wondering how I'm liking my new computer, the answer is: very much, thank you.

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I think it's safe to say that the answer to the question "Will getting a domain encourage me to post more?" is "No". I've had some posts floating around in my head, but for whatever reason they never actually made it up here. But two months of dead space is getting to be a bit much even by my standards—so, to compensate, I'm going to try an experiment: I will post something every day for a week. I certainly don't expect to post every day forever, but maybe some forced posting will get things kick-started a bit.

Here goes!

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I ordered my new computer today, since my G4 733 has been feeling its age for a while now—or more accurately, I have been feeling its age. The slow, stuttering-music-playback-inducing app launching and switching has been thrown into sharp relief by my new iMac at work, as has the volume of the fans. Finally, I snapped.

I had been planning to wait for an Intel-based tower, since I've always been an easy-upgrade, separate-tower-and-monitor kind of guy. After all, it's far better to be able to upgrade your monitor or your CPU separately, right? And a tower is just way more expandable than an all-in one. So clearly, buying an iMac isn't the right choice for me.

Only... it doesn't really matter. I've owned 4 computers, not counting the one I just ordered, and I've never upgraded just the monitor or the CPU. Sure, there was a laptop in there to foul things up, but I wouldn't have stayed with a CRT when I got my G4 anyway, and in the five years I've had that I never could justify a new monitor to myself. And component upgrades? It's a nice thought, but mostly I just add memory. Being able to add a wireless card to the G4 was nice, but I never really needed it. The CD -> DVD upgrade was necessary for Tiger, but that was after the machine was already 4+ years old. So while it sounds nice, it's really not that big a deal for me after all.

“But surely,” I said, “I couldn't be happy with an iMac. I'm a Power User™, right?”

Right?

As it turns out: not so much. The most strenuous thing I do regularly with my computer is work with my digital photos. I use the internet and iApps, and that's most of what I need. Sure I play some games, but only a tiny fraction of what I used to—I don't play the kind of games that push the envelope of computing power. Diablo II is the most taxing game I have, and I can play that on my G4. Heck, I could play it on my old G3 laptop. It's not exactly cutting edge. And sure, I do a few super-geeky things still, but mostly that's scripting and web development. It only takes so much horsepower to run a text editor—especially when your text editor is vi. Yes, I do some programming that involves compiling, but not so much I need the kind of raw power a higher-end beast like the Quad G5 offers.

So here it is: Hi, I'm Stuart, and I'm not as much of a geek as I thought.

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That's right, I finally decided to carve out a little chunk of the intarweb for my very own. For now it's just the weblog, but I'll eventually move more content here and create a real site of some sort of description. Maybe.

Will this actually motivate me to update regularly? Will photos go up in a timely manner? Will there be a new exciting language quiz every month? Tune in next time to find out! Same bat time, completely different bat channel!

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I finally got around to seeing a dentist this morning after my long college-induced hiatus. The important things I learned during my visit:

1. I brush extremely well, and/or have magic teeth
2. However, brushing really can't reach everywhere—just because the hygienist thinks you are flossing when you are 16 doesn't mean that you don't actually have to floss
3. Fillings wear out after about as many years as I've had all five of mine
4. Dental insurance is a beautiful thing

Despite my impending dental work, it was a pretty good first visit. I got to see a larger-than-life, almost-live video of my own teeth, which was new to me, and had my X-rays explained to me in great detail. So far, I definitely like my new dentist... which is good considering I'll be seeing a lot of him in the near future.

The real high point of the visit, though, is that I now know why I'm senile before my time: my current fillings are made of a mixture of silver and mercury. Sure, they say it's safe, but I choose to cling to my new scapegoat.

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Laura and I recently decided, as we have several times, that we need to find a larger abode, and one that will allow cats. This time, however, we decided to look at houses for rent instead of the apartments that have disappointed us all the previous times, so we went to a duplex that was (half) for rent not far away. It was great! Almost twice the size of our apartment, small enclosed yard where Laura could garden, pet-friendly, residential area, apparently nice next-door-neighbor landlord, still within easy biking distance of work... and $1750 a month. That's actually quite reasonable for the area, sadly, so we considered it. But finally we decided that we just couldn't justify it to ourselves. Yes, it would be nicer—but so would a several-week-vacation to Hawaii every year, and that would probably be cheaper than all the extra money we'd be pouring into rent.

Then, that got me thinking more about the black hole that is rent, and it just made me more and more annoyed. Why should we contribute to someone else buying a house almost for free? We want a house; we should contribute to that instead! So then we started looking at condos, as strange as that seems to me (I've never been able to shake the association that condos are for old people in Florido, for whatever reason). They're still expensive, but unlike actually houses they might be within the realm of possibility—I'm willing to pay more if I don't feel like I'm throwing my money away. So I dug around some and read up on condos, and am now well armed with information, the most important points I gleaned being:

• Buying a condo is vastly superior to renting.
• Renting is vastly superior to buying a condo.

We figure it's at least looking into at least, so the next stop is a realtor who can tell us just how many of our children we'd have to be prepared to sign away for a condo we'd actually want to live in.

It's just so frustrating, because here I am, married, have a master's degree, have a good job at a great, successful company; this is traditionally the part where we buy a house and settle down, but instead we're still trying to figure out if such a thing is even theoretically possible. Where's my American Dream, damn it?

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As usual, I'm terribly behind in my posting. The most notable event(s) recently have been some additions to the Morgan clan. Two weeks ago I branched out from having just a niece, and now have a brand nephew as well. A couple of days later, I went to an uncle's wedding, where I got not only a new aunt, but two bonus cousins. Plus I got a chance to see basically everyone again after my long exile in Ohio, and Laura got to meet most of my extended family in one gigantic reunion—not only the best way to get the Morgan experience, but also good retaliation for the whirlwind tour I got of her relatives.

It still feels a bit strange for things to be changing so much recently, since for most of my childhood my family was fairly static. In recent years, though, there's been a good bit of growth even without counting the massive familial influx that came with marrying Laura. Before I know it, there may be relatives in the next generation of my side of the family—the part I can keep track of, even—to whom my relationship can't be described with fewer than four words, one of which will be “removed”.

I suspect that the first time I remember some teenager in my extended family at a family reunion from their infancy, and they don't have even the remotest idea who I am, I'll have to go out and buy an expensive convertible or something.

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Laura had decreed that yesterday would be spring cleaning day, so the whole apartment got a much-needed picking-up/dusting/vacuuming/scrubbing. As it turned out though, we did a much more thorough job than we expected, since it's easier to clean everywhere when you move most of your furniture—which we did.

You see, the only high-speed internet access available here is, unfortunately, expensive cable-modem service. Since there are only two cable jacks in the apartment, and the one in the bedroom was no good since I often compute far past Laura's bedtime, we really only had one usable jack, annoyingly located on the island-wall separating the kitchen from the living room. The point being (there is, in fact, a point!) that we had to put my desk in the living room when we moved in, unless we wanted to drape coaxial cable across the floor. In order to fit the couch, TV, and stereo stuff in as well we ended up with a really awkward arrangement where my desk stuck out sideways, which segmented the space, made the living room feel much smaller, and partitioned off the kitchen and dining room area more than we would have liked. Plus, the back of my desk wasn't that attractive a view for the living room.

A week or so ago, though, I gave the old Lombard a new life as a wireless base-station and mini-server so that my computer wouldn't have to stay on all the time serving that purpose (and being noisy and drawing more power). And so (merciful Zeus, the tangent finally ends!) we finally had the freedom to create a furniture arrangement that sucks less, and we seized that freedom yesterday. Now the living room and dining room are combined into one space, with the light from the full-wall glass patio doors making it a lot further into the living room. Giving up ugly and awkward for more light seems like a good deal to me, as does trading the glare on my monitor from a window behind me for a nice view outside while setting at my desk.

My desk, some of my random junk, and Laura's sewing machine do make what was the dining room feel more crowded—and consequently the kitchen as well—but since the dining room used to be overfilled by our table anyway that isn't much of a loss. And who knows, maybe I'll even get wild and crazy enough to clean up my desk, so that it doesn't feel like it's going to spill over and bury the room. But even if I don't, now we can at least sit in the large, airy living room/dining room, and pretend this apartment isn't too small for us and all our stuff.

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It turns out that being called for jury duty consists primarily of sitting around for two half-days listening to strangers talk about their lives, then being sent home because you aren't needed. I think close to an hour of my life was squandered just because most of the people selected had received a speeding ticket at some point in their life.

So to anyone who ever has to sit and wait while I am screened for a jury: I'm sorry in advance for the speeding ticket I got last summer.

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I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything I thought it could be.

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I am, as you may know, a huge online comic junkie. One of my favorites, PvP, has been running a recent series about jury duty, and shortly after it started, what did I receive in the mail but my very own summons to jury duty. Then, when Laura made a crack about how I wouldn't be selected because I'm too informed and somewhat interested in law, this was the very next comic.

I have to admit, the idea is intriguing, and I'm sort of hoping I'll be picked (although I'm sure that if I were it would be some really boring case). The only downside is that I'm not sure it's going to mesh at all with my work schedule, so we'll see how that works out.

Maybe I should start watching reality TV or something to temporarily rot my brain if I want to increase my chances of being picked.

Category: Life

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Clearly, “punctuality” and “not getting behind” are not on the list. But better late than never, so here they are:

• Keep up my French
• Learn basic German
• Keep dancing
• Keep exercising
• Read more
• Justify my KeyStation now that I have my old basic piano books
• Keep in touch with people at least slightly better

In short, do more of the sorts of things I like to do but often neglect in favor of doing pretty much nothing at all.

Also, apparently, not sleep much.

Category: Life

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We got a tree last night (it's nice to be home enough around the holidays to be able to get a tree), so I woke up this morning to that wonderful Christmas smell of fresh tree. It's the sort of thing that makes getting up in the morning almost pleasant.

I'll probably be really confused in a week or two though, because this is much earlier than my family ever got our tree when I was growing up. For me, a tree means Christmas is just around the corner. Maybe I can leverage than confusion to motivate me to do my Christmas shopping earlier than usual this year?

Category: Life

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It seems that the songs aren't true, because I'm sitting here listening to the rain on our deck/patio/porch (I may, at Josh's suggestion, start calling it a lanai—no-one can agree on what it is, but I think everyone could agree on it not being a lanai). You can take the man out of Oregon, but you can't take Oregon out of the man—as much as I enjoy the sunshine here, grey rainy days make me feel like I'm truly home.

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On Tuesday I experienced my first earthquake—I slept through the one the week before, and I didn't notice the one or two small ones I've technically been through in Oregon. It was strange, because I mostly heard it, rather than felt it, so I was sitting there trying to figure out what someone could be rolling around above my office that would make so much noise... it sounded like a truck. So that was kind of fun, alough I'm glad I was 120 miles or so away, since I don't think being right on a 6.0 would be so much fun.

Then, to round out my California experience, Cupertino had a power outage on Friday (although to be fair it wasn't a true California blackout, but instead the more pedestrian someone-screwed-up-a-transformer kind of outage that was all too common back in Cleveland Heights). It was a new experience in that it was my first power outage while in a building with fire doors that all close automatically when the power goes out. Having all the lights go out then hearing doors slamming shut all around me gave me a momentary feeling of being in a supernatural horror movie.

So having had both an earthquake and a power outage in the same week, I think I can really start to feel like a true Californian. If I'd been more on the ball, I could have gone surfing this weekend and rounded out the experience.

Category: Life

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Apparently I had my first California earthquake this morning, but slept right through it. I would say I'm disappointed, but I'm not stupid enough to temp the fates that blatantly.

Category: Life

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A year ago today, the world became a much poorer place. A wonderful human being who touched many people, and should have touched many, many more, was taken away from us.

We miss you Skye, and think of you often.

Category: Life

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After several exciting hours of waiting in line at the DMV this morning, I'm now officially Californian. Once we get the new plates on the car, only the CWRU sticker and our pale complexions will identify us as out-of-state invaders.

Category: Life

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Today I delved into the exciting world of long-term financial planning. First I went to a very helpful little seminar on 401(k) investment strategy, and came out feeling like I knew what I was doing. Then I spent some time on the enrollment website, and came away feeling more like I picked things out of a hat. It didn't help that it felt more like, say, playing Sim City than determining the course of my retirement. But since they told us that 90% or more of long term results are due simply to the rough breakdown, which I now have a reasonably good grasp of, it should be fine.

Besides, if it turns out badly in the end I can just restart and try again, right?

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I've survived my first week at work without getting shrunk, turned into a giant blueberry, thrown in a garbage chute by trained squirrels, or anything else of that nature, so I'm counting it as a success.

We're still settling in to the area, and taking care of fun details like getting new licenses. I've read through the California driver's manual, so that I know the little details like what a white curb means, and I'm not at all concerned about the test. Interestingly, California allows people turning to turn into any open lane, which means that one of my pet peeves from home is actually legal here. On the bright side, if Josh visits I'll finally be able to win that argument about turning from one multi-lane, one-way street to another from one of several turn lanes.

Category: Life

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This is a quick belated note to say: We made it! We moved in early on the 23rd, the cable guy was only an hour and a half late getting our cable modem set up on the 24th, all of our stuff miraculously arrived on the evening of the 24th (we were sure that it would come much closer to the August 2nd end of the arrival range), and we've been settling in and wading through boxes ever since. Everything went more smoothly than could realistically have been expected.

It's good to be home.

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The top ten signs that you are ready to move across the country:

10. You've actually thrown away all that stuff that seemed like such a good idea to keep at the time.
9. You have given away several important pieces of furniture.
8. You can't see what furniture you have left because of all the boxes.
7. Your freezer isn't filled to capacity anymore.
6. You get a letter informing you that your rent would be going down next year (thanks to Murphy's second, lesser-known law: "Many things that can go right also will, but also at the worst possible time").
5. You have recently had lunch or dinner with just about everyone you know in the area.
4. You (or your spouse—thanks hon!) have talked to so many utilities and miscellaneous offices that you could write a detailed treatise on the current themes and trends in muzak.
3. Your task-list at work is actually getting shorter.
2. You spend hours making a detailed scale drawing of your new apartment, along with scale construction-paper furniture, so you can start arranging things.

And the number one sign you are ready to move:

1. You live in Cleveland.

Thank you, I'll be here all week—or at least until Thursday.

Seriously though, as much as I like to rag on Cleveland, there's plenty here that I'll miss (most of it in Cleveland Heights, but that's quibbling). But miss it though I will, I am definitely ready to leave. A new life awaits, so living out the last few days of this one seems empty and futile in many ways.

Category: Life

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