Tralfaz

Author: geoffand

  • The Drive

    Over the 4th weekend, I took a couple of days off (Thursday and Monday) to drive my dogs from Tucson, where they were staying at a pet lounge, to our new home in San Jose, California.

    The drive was fine, we rented a big Dodge Grand Caravan, as we wanted there to be enough room for the boys, and all the crap they need (beds, food, water, our bags, etc). Although Barbara was worried that it would not have enough room, it was surprisingly cozy in the back, with well partitioned areas for the boys.

    Chillin' in their rented van. This is the life
    Chillin’ in their rented van. This is the life

    We settled in to an easy lope across Arizona. Starting later than I had hoped (surprised? Ha, you don’t know Barbara very well, do ya?) we made pretty good time. A stop at the junction of Gila Bend to top up the tank (we had been driving the van around all week) and to potty the boys, grab some Subway sandwiches, and off we went.

    Smooth sailing until we hit Quartzite. One of those famous Arizona monsoon pattern dumps, we ended up parking in a Chevron lot for 20 minutes until the deluge passed. I will miss that.

    Barb takes over driving, and we head to California. As we were approaching Palm Springs, and it was already 6:30 PM, it seemed like a good time to find a place to stay. So I pulled up my trusty iPhone, searched for dog friendly hotels, and the top recommendation was the Best Western Date Tree Inn. Setup the navigation, and we are 20 minutes out. Cool.

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  • Airport blues – 27th edition

    I travel a lot for my job, so I try to NOT fly when I don’t need to for personal things.  However, sometimes it is essential. Alas, as it is often around holidays or other “busy” times, I often get to see some insanity. Today is one of those days.

    First, with the merger between US Airways and American Airlines, my Star Alliance gold lever no longer gets me perks on US Airways.  Suckage. It is nice to not be relegated to the last boarding group, and to have my bag checked for free. I would have carried on, but I know that as being in boarding group 5, I am screwed, and will end up checking it. Additionally, I no longer get to pick an aisle or window seat without an extra charge. Fuck that, it is an hour and thirty minute flight, I will take a damn middle seat.

    All that is expected and grudgingly tolerated as part of the air travel theater. But invariably there is some insanity in the checkin process.  To wit:

    In front of me at the bag drop was a “loosely knit” family. 6 people with 3 last names traveling with about 15 bags, and two cat carriers. All kinds of dickering was going on to allocate the baggage fees to minimize cost (saving maybe $15).  I sat there for over 20 minutes before the agent just checked my prepaid bag.  As I was walking away, I was still listening to this “family” try to arrange the baggage allocation to minimize the cost.  Sheesh.

    However, there is a bright light, being TSA PreCheck makes the security process awesome. No mm wave back scatter, no removing computer/shoes/belt.  Security like it used to be. Bliss

  • Nightmare: Computer edition

    At work, we are being split into two companies. A week ago, my computer was supposed to be migrated to the new domain. So I followed the directions to the letter, and naturally it failed.

    That night, I had a nightmare. That instead of just switching domains, that my laptop automagagically upgraded to Windows 8. Metro interface and all.

    <shudder>

    Fortunately, when I woke up, I found that I was still running Win 7 Pro. Phew.

  • The Day of Reckoning: Apple abandons Aperture

    Not quite yet, but the winds are blowing that Apple will end support and sales of Aperture, their “pro” photo application. A recent story on Wired gives a brief outline. “Photos” will take the lead, and it will be all about getting all your images into iCloud, and managing them there.

    I had smelled this stink coming for a while. The updates to Aperture have slowed down, and the last major one definitely turned into the wrong direction, more integration with iOS, and iCloud, your photostream, and all that. Sigh.

    About 6 months ago, I started migrating to Adobe Lightroom. I looked at it way back when I moved from iPhoto to Aperture, and at that time it was almost 2x the cost, and it pretty much lacked capability.

    But in version 5, Lightroom has become a lot better, and it comes free with my CC subscription to Photoshop. I have installed it on my Mac’s and on my work PC, and am getting the feel for using it. In many ways it is similar to Aperture in capability, but it also has some significant differences, particularly around storage and file handling. Where Aperture created large libraries and buried the images and version inside them, LR seems to use the native file system. A bit confusing, but in the long term it will be better I am sure.

    I can understand Apple’s strategy shift, and their migration away from the pro applications that really brought the power to their system. The all unified, iOS/MacOS world is a good goal, but I will be taking a pass at the upcoming Photos application.

  • Relocation Saga, Part 97

    Our timing was impeccable. All through the last year, the housing market in Phoenix was literally on fire. Values were rising, houses were flying off the shelf, and we saw that our home had some serious appreciation.

    Then we put it on the market. SLAM that door shut. Suddenly inventory went from less than 4 weeks to more than 6 months, and it turned from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market. Almost over night.

    So, even though we priced it to sell, and we were aggressive up front, and being in a good neighborhood with great schools, and desirable location, our house has languished for almost 3 months now.

    We took the plunge and moved, hoping that being unoccupied and clean would help traction, but alas, no, so we are in temporary housing, and have a little more than 3 months until our company will buy our house for market value.

    A bad place to be.

    Options are bleak:

    1. Stay in temporary housing and keep our household goods in storage. It is tight, being in a 1 bedroom apartment, and it is in a good location, about 4 miles from the office, and a counter commute, so that is a positive. But the bad news is that after July 15th, I have to start paying out of pocket. At $159 a day (minus fees and taxes). Gulp. That is nearly $5500 a month for “rent”. Add in the almost $1,000 a month to store my household goods, we are quickly approaching $7K a month in out of pocket expenses (not counting our mortgage, and utilities we need to keep up on the house in Phoenix). Groan.
    2. Rent a temporary place. Find a pet friendly place, and rent. Seems easy, but we do have two greyhounds, large (yet calm) dogs makes this difficult. Rent will be much less than the cost of the temporary housing, and we can get our “stuff” back. So that is cool. But we have to sign a lease for a year.

    Not really a choice. Burning through our savings at $7K a month will wipe out our down payment before my company “buys” my house in October. Then we won’t be able to afford a down payment. So we rent.

    Found a complex that is “pet friendly” and a reasonable price. We will sign the lease shortly, and hope to move in in the next couple of weeks.

    The irony: the management company asked if we had a rental history. Uh, no, we have owned for almost 16 years in total…

  • Comcast Sucks

    When we first moved to Arizona, I splurged and bought a Tivo. It was an old one, and it was wonderful. Worked great, super intuitive interface, great integration. Back then it had to call Tivo every day to get the latest listings.

    In 2006 or so, we went HD, and upgraded to a Series 2 HD, with the cable cards. With the exception of a failed HD in 2012, replaced via Weaknees, it has been wonderful.

    At both our places in Arizona, we had Cox cable. It was reliable, reasonable, and it gave us absolutely awesome internet speeds.

    Fast forward. We have moved to the San Jose area. Our stuff is still in storage, and we are in temporary housing. The apartment we are in has Comcast Xfinity service. Internet, TV, and telephone.

    I guess I should be happy that it has a DVR, but the UI is so fucking primitive, it is painful to use. It is slow, non responsive, and the search function truly sucks ass. Yes, there are lots of channels, but unless you search precisely right, it will not return anything, and then you get to go back to square one.

    I can only hope that we have a choice wherever we end up, but I suspect that we will have the choice between Comcast and AT&T U-Verse.

    I guess I will once again go back to Tivo.

  • Another day in Paradise

    What a shock. Where I USED to live, it will be 106F today. Here (Santa Clara) it will be 79. The local people will bitch about it being HOT.

    I have a lot of DMV stuff to do, alas, California is nowhere near as efficient as Arizona is/was. When I first relocated to AZ back in 2003, I walked into the local MVD office in Tucson at about 11:00AM, took a number, and before I could sit down, I was called. I re-registered my car, got my driver’s license, transferred the title on my motorcycles, and was out of there in less than 20 minutes, plates and driver’s license in hand.

    Not likely to be replicated in California. Hoops up the wazoo, probably 3 trips (hopefully with appointments) and a lot of money out of pocket. Sigh.

    Drivers

    Both states have their share of asshole drivers. But they are different in their bad practices. I need to recalibrate to account for the beemer drivers who seem to like to pass on the margins here. Without signals. Far over the posted speed limit.

    Life is good. If only we could sell out damn house in Chandler…

  • The Mothership – Working at the main office

    Intro: I recently was relocated from our satellite office to the mothership in Santa Clara.

    I was expecting it to be different. Of course I had visited before, so I wasn’t a babe in the woods, but it is a culture shock to go from a small ~ 100 employee satellite office to a site with a few thousand employees. 5 buildings, lots of hallways, and a lot of long timers.

    Observations:

    • Coffee: We have awful coffee here. There are multiple coffee stations with big brewers, and they buy decent coffee (Seattle’s Best), but it seems to never be fresh. Also, being large brewers, you use multiple satchels of coffee grounds, and inevitably some sadist used 4 or 5 instead of the recommended 2. So it is too strong. Yes, there is a cafe where you can buy a good cup of coffee, but it is a 15 minute walk, and it costs money. In Chandler we had a simple single serving machine, that while it wasn’t great coffee, it was decent.
    • Work hours: I am an unapologetic morning person. From my current temporary housing, I can get to the office in about 10 minutes, and I get here by 7:15 or so. Our hallway is empty at that hour. People start rolling in around 8:45 and are at work at 9:00. I guess that is good, as I can get an hour or more distraction free work done. But by 5:00 the office is pretty empty. I guess it is really a 9 – 5 job…
    • Fat pipe: Working in the Chandler office, we were remote to the file servers. A lot of files I needed to access were in our Santa Clara or Colorado Springs data centers, and accessed via a thin connection. Opening an excel file from the server could take a couple minutes or more. No longer. It is almost faster than opening from the SSD on my laptop. Wow. Love it, this is a huge benefit.
    • Cubicle Life: I used to sit about 8 feet from my boss, but I had a partially enclosed cubicle. I could lower my head and get things done, and see distractions coming. Now my back is to the aisle, and when I put on my headphones, I don’t hear people walking up besides me. Yikes, getting surprised that way sucks. I will need to buy a little mirror so I can monitor the traffic. On the positive side, I have slightly more space in this cube, so I don’t have to feel as cramped.

    All in all it is what I expected.

  • Welcome to California

    Well, it is technically a “welcome back”, as I grew up here in Silicon Valley.

    My job relocated us to Santa Clara, and over the last week, we made the “move“. The positive is that the movers rocked, and really got our stuff packed and loaded in record time.

    After spending the weekend on a leisurely drive from Phoenix to Santa Clara (via the Hoover Dam, Las Vegas, and Lake Tahoe) we got to our temporary housing Monday morning.

    Our last relocation to Tucson in 2003 found us put up in a decrepit Extended Stay America in Tucson. Shudder. Here our digs are a bit better (ok, a LOT better). We are in an Avalon apartment, well furnished, and a reasonable size. Sure, it has lousy appliances, and the washer and dryer sound like a mac truck is driving through, but it is very serviceable.

    Our first trip to the grocery store was expensive (over $400). Partly because groceries are more expensive here, but mainly due to the need to stock up.

    When I picked up my car, I lamented the fact that it needed to be less than 1/4 full of gas. First thing, a fill of premium. Gulp, it’s about $.70 a gallon more than in AZ. Sigh, might be time to buy something more fuel efficient than the S2000.

    The weather is pretty awesome. Mid to upper 70’s during the day, and very pleasant at night. Humidity is high compared to what I am used to (low teens in AZ).

    Tuesday was the first day in the office. The apartment is a hair over 4 miles from the office, a straight shot down Lawrence expressway. And I am going the counter commute direction, so it is a short commute. Sadly, the house we will likely be able to afford is not going to have such a wickedly awesome commute. Sigh.

    Oh, and California finally figured out how to time their traffic lights. Today I didn’t hit one red light on Lawrence.

    We do miss our dogs, so I am looking forward to picking them up in Tucson over the 4th of July weekend.

    Now we just need our house in Chandler to sell. We are still priced the lowest of all the SE valley single stories, a good $12 – $18 per sqft under the area.

    Fingers crossed.

  • Car Wash Madness

    I own a nice car, a 2005 Honda S2000, and about 99% of the time I wash it in my driveway. With the move and the selling of our house, I have neglected it, so prior to it being loaded on a transport truck to get it to my new home, I took it to the local car wash.

    Ugh.

    It reminded my why I prefer to wash it myself.

    1. They do a terrible job.  The amount of crap they don’t get off is astounding. From the insect droppings, to just whiffing on my hood, I am completely unimpressed.  I would have asked them to run it again if I wasn’t headed out of town, and it wasn’t going to get on a truck.
    2. Even after doing a terrible job, they expect a tip. I know it is a crappy job that pays minimum wage, and I normally don’t mind tipping, but the effort that they put in, in no way justifies a 20% tip. But they expect $3 on a $15 wash.
    3. Even when you tell them no scent, they friggin’ spray it with “new car” scent. Really?  Is it that hard to just not spray anything in there?
    4. Upselling.  I just want a basic interior and exterior wash. I don’t want the extra undercarriage spray. I don’t want the faux spray on polymer sealant. I just hand waxed it a month ago, so I don’t want a mini detail. When I say no, I mean NO. 
    5. 3rd party harassment. I live in Arizona, the king of cracked and dinged windshields. I drive a 9 year old car, with the original windshield, so it has been dinged and repaired many times. Having someone who puts the high pressure sales pitch to replace your windshield, and who argues that the repaired dings need to be repaired again. I think I had to say no four or five times to that asshole.

    I will go back to my 3 bucket hand wash, and 2x a year bringing out the polishing tools.