As it turns out, I don’t think my electric bill will be as cheap as I thought next month. I looked more closely at my bill and noticed that the meter reading didn’t change for some reason. And the $2.96 that I was charged was for a baseline minimum charge for electric service.
I guess I jumped the gun. Oh well. I still love it here though.

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We got our first utility bill the other day. Granted it was only for a half a month’s service, July 2nd to July 21st, but it is awesome. Gas usage was $10.64 and electric usage was $2.96. That’s a grand total of $13.60 meaning we have about a $26 utility bill to look forward too next month. Very nice. Last night we had the windows open to cool the place off but we had to close them because it got too cold. Again, very nice.

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Sorry I haven’t updated in a while, I didn’t really see the point in making posts that just said “Work was boring… struggled to stay awake through more presentations.”

On Thursday night, there was a happy hour for all the n00bs. I’m not exactly sure why they called it a happy hour since it was set for 9:45 and all the drinks seemed to be full price but, whatever. I took Sarah along and we went to this bar called Nola in Palo Alto. It seemed like a really hip and trendy place and when we got there it was completely packed. All the people I knew were just standing outside. Sarah and I decided to navigate through the hoards and get to the bar for a drink. I squeezed between a few people at the bar and Sarah stayed behind me. After I got our drinks I turned around and there was this guy talking to Sarah. He reminded a lot of that guy who played the coffee shop waiter in Friends who always had a thing for Rachel. Anyway, once I turned around and looked at him and looked at Sarah he got a really confused look on his face and then just kind of walked off. Turns out he had come up to Sarah and told her, “You know, you’re the most beautiful girl in this bar.” Sorry pal, pay more attention next time and maybe you will only hit on the single girls. Dumbass. So once we got back outside with our drinks and started talking to my coworkers, everyone decided that that bar was too packed and they wanted to go a few blocks over to Blue Chalk Cafe. So there we were, holding our nearly full drinks and everyone was leaving. Chug-a-lug Donna. After we got to the next bar and got more drinks, we had a good time talking to everybody. I honestly didn’t think I would have as much fun as did. I didn’t plan on drinking as much as I did either. It actually wasn’t that much, but I haven’t been drinking that much lately so it hit me pretty quick.
On Friday there was a n00b field trip sort of thing to mark the last day of bootcamp training. We all met at the Caltrain station by my apartment (score, walk to work) and then carpooled to San Francisco. After about 20 minutes of work related stuff we went to Buca di Beppo. Since there were about 17 people in our group, we got to sit in the Pope room. That was cool except that in the center of the table was a big lazy susan to spin all the food around. In the center of the lazy susan was this painted bust of Pope John Paul smiling. It really creeped me out every time his face was looking at me and I had to spin some more to make him look at somebody else. After what was surely an expensive lunch, everybody went a block over to the Metreon. This is a huge entertainment complex with arcades and shops and stuff and a movie a theater. Half of the people wanted to see The Bourne Supremacy. Me, Sarah, and a few other sensible coworkers decided it wouldn’t be right to see the sequel to a movie that none of us had seen. So we all went and saw I, Robot. Not surprisingly, I really liked this movie. Most of the time, if a movie has enough cool looking special effects and gunfire, I will like it. Plus I’m a really big fan of Will Smith. But in spite of the fact that it was a blockbuster type of movie, it was actually really good. After that, Sarah and I ditched the coworkers (actually, they ditched us) and we went shopping. I got some new pants. Yay! Then we hopped on the Caltrain to head back to Menlo Park. After we got our seats and the train started rolling, Sarah decided to call a friend. There was this lady who was sitting across the aisle from us. After about 2 or 3 minutes of Sarah talking on the phone, this lady gets up, and says to us, “You know, that’s really rude,” and then she goes off to find another seat in a different car. I’m guessing that she thought Sarah talking on the phone was rude. Which is completely retarded. Sarah’s voice wasn’t any louder than it would have been if just her and I had been talking. And this lady didn’t tell the other people who were talking on the on the train that they were rude. So, obviously, it’s rude to talk on the phone on a train. Again, dumbass.
After we got home, (sleeping on the train isn’t fun) we headed over to the BBC which is really close to our apartment. The food was average and overpriced but it had a cool look and feel. I guess I should really learn to accept that stuff is simply more expensive here and stop calling everything overpriced. Oh well.
Today we got up and drove 12 miles to the Red Lobster in Fremont. I know that sounds lame since we’re in a completely new and different place and there countless other places to eat here that we haven’t been to before, but I was craving it. After that it was naptime. Then we got up and went and saw Anchorman. Funny, funny movie. So many good quotes in that movie. And so that brings us to now. Here Sarah and I are, on a happening Saturday night, sitting at home making drinks and updating our blogs. We are crazy-insane party animals.

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According to Mike, members of the animal kingdom, and not just people, hate smokers. This is his photographic evidence of a trap that was set for an unsuspecting, nicotine addicted human.

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Well the trip to Sacramento wasn’t that bad. The drive took about 2 hours to get there this morning. However, the drive back took 3 hours because of traffic. It turned out to be really hot there, about as hot as it is in Austin right now but without all the humidity. Regardless, I’m glad it’s over. I don’t like having to be anywhere at 6:15 in the morning, except for in bed.
On another more annoying note, I had had my car here for about 2 days total. Our apartment only comes with one parking space but that’s fine because there’s plenty room on the street. So I got up the third morning I had my car and there was a cute little yellow courtesy notice on my windshield from the Menlo Park police. As it turns out, you cannot park your car on the street from 2:00 am to 5:00 am, the magical 3-hour window of time when it is the worst possible time to have a car on a street in Menlo Park. For those who are unable to read and understand all the legal mumbo-jumbo in that courtesy notice, I will summarize:

Hello and welcome to Menlo Park. We would like it if you would please pay us money to park your car anywhere in our city. In order to make this easier for you, we have created a law to ensure that you have no choice but to pay us. Thank you. And again, welcome to Menlo Park.

Fortunately, I am one of the lucky few who are allowed to purchase a parking permit for the curb in front of my apartment complex. Unfortunately, in order for me to be able to buy a parking permit at $90 per year, my car has to be registered in the state of California. In order to be registered here, it has to pass the Smog Check. I seriously doubt the poor little Flantra stands any chance of passing that test without a good chunk of expensive repair work. Therefore, the whole registration thing isn’t going to happen anytime soon. At least not until I get a few paychecks.
So… I had to get an additional parking spot in my complex. It’s $30 a month, way more than the $90 a year, but until I get registered, that’s where it will have to go. Welcome to the Governator’s state. And again, welcome to Menlo Park.

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Not really much to report lately. The past few days of work have been a lot of not too interesting presentations. So far there has been very little in the way of training. But that should all change a week from now when we get assigned our projects. Tomorrow morning I have to be up at the office by 6:30 so I can meet a few other new hires and drive to Sacramento where the customer service office is. I’m not very excited about this.

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I got off work early today, around 3:30, and that worked out perfectly because the people at DAS called me to say that my car had arrived and was ready to be picked up. When Sarah and I got there, there was this man there with his son dropping off his son’s Ford Explorer. When they brought my car around front, they told me to look at it make sure they hadn’t messed it up or anything and then I could go sign off on it and take it home. While I was outside looking over my car, that kids dad came out with a somewhat worried look on his face and asked if the DAS people had done that to my car. By that he meant all the dents, broken bumper, missing grill, etc. I told him no, that my car was a piece of crap when I gave it to them, and that it actually looked better now because the DAS people had washed it.

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Well my first day of work went fine. It wasn’t as much work as it was orientation and HR stuff. They also gave us all a grab bag full of work goodies like a t-shirt, mechanical pencil, a stapler, and some of those climbing hook things that people use for key chains rather than hooks. It’s kind of funny, the hooks have “not for climbing” etched into them. I got my finger prints taken and got my ID badge too. Filled out a bunch of paper work had some free Quizno’s sandwiches slathered in mayo (which I hate) for lunch. Tomorrow should be the start of the actual training.

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Sarah has a blog now too. It is sarah.pausebreak.com. So far there is only one post but there will be more to come so check it out.

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I’ve added a lot of the older photos to the gallery. Most of these are nothing new and you’ve probably seen them before if you ever visted Sarah’s old site. They’re all awaiting Sarah’s witty captions and half of them need to be rotated so give it some time.

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Last night we went into the city to have dinner and drinks with some of Sarah’s former coworkers who were in town for some big semiconductor thing. We had dinner at The Stinking Rose which has the slogan, “We season our garlic with food.” The food was over priced but it was ok. After that we walked a few blocks to Enrico’s Sidewalk Cafe. It had a pretty cool bar and some liquor company representatives were there pushing their particular brand of gin by offering free drinks and stupid little credit card holders. We stayed there for a while until we had to leave in order to catch the 10 o’clock train back to Menlo Park.
I had met Dan and Brielle before at Jeff’s party and of course Sarah had known them for a while. It was good to see some familiar faces and I know Sarah had great time “shop talking” even though she doesn’t work there anymore.

Anyway, there’s only a few, but the pictures are here.

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After sitting on hold for 30 minutes I finally found out today that my car is somewhere in Arizona and there was no hope of me getting it today. So with that news, Sarah and I decided to take yet another road trip to Monterey and Carmel. Monterey was cute and fairly pretty but it seemed extremely touristy. I don’t have a problem with tourist stuff, since that’s what I’ve been for the past few weeks, but if it goes too far it just takes away from the natural attractiveness of a place. Carmel was absolutely beautiful though. Though I haven’t seen many, the beach we went to was the prettiest I’ve ever seen. Plus I got to take a picture of a beached jellyfish.

The pictures from today are here.

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By the way, Sarah and I took a little road trip last Tuesday to Big Basin Redwoods State Park. We both really wanted to see some redwoods but didn’t feel like driving the 4 hours to the one with the avenue of giants and stuff. Turns out Big Basin was pretty cool and really pretty. The pictures are here.

We went and did a 1.7 mile hike on a trail that was supposed to lead to some waterfalls but it turned out once we got there it was just a really lame drip into a sad little pool. But that was ok, the hike itself was fun.

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The Move

For those who are interested, this is a log of the move to California, as much of it as I can remember and about as organized as a pile of gravel.

Pictures we took along the way are here. Sarah was nice enough to take the time and add all the descriptions for the photos.

Monday June 28th.
After completing all the packing and cleaning of the old place, we headed over to Mike’s just before midnight. Meaning to get up and leave early in the morning, I naturally stayed up past 4 am talking to Mike.

Click to read more …

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Woohoo! No more “borrowing.”

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We made it here just fine. We got here around 5pm (PDT) on Friday. We’re almost done unpacking everything and we even went to Ikea yesterday and got a few things. There is an Ikea just a few miles away from our new place. Very cool.
As far as Interweb is concerned, Time Warner isn’t available here so we have to go with Comcast. The service seems basically the same except DVR isn’t available yet. Our cable and Interweb should be set up on Thursday or Friday. Yesterday we went to the public library around block to sign up for library cards so we could use their computers to check e-mail, etc. Turns out they were about to close but they had a WAP and it would be running all through the holiday weekend. So last night we drove up to the parking lot and used laptop. When I got home, I decided to check to see if one of my neighbors happened to be running an insecure wireless network. Lucky me.

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Right now I’m sitting in a room at the Hampton Inn & Suites in Phoenix Arizona. So far everything has gone fine and driving with a trailer attached to a rental truck hasn’t really been that big of a deal. Yes there are pictures but I don’t feel like screwing with that right now. I’m about to go to sleep and dream of all the wonderful happiness that will occur when we undoubtedly hit Los Angeles in the middle of rush hour tomorrow.

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At the end of every day, you get everybody’s favorite star, our very own center of the solar system, playing a friendly game of irradiate and destroy your retinas.

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