Settling into apartment life is interesting to say the least. There are benefits and detriments of course in the life. This episode I will be just have some random observations.
We are lucky that all our neighbors are pretty friendly. We wave and say “Hi” and they all say “Hi” back. This is easy for us, as we generally try to befriend our neighbors wherever we are.
I felt a little bad in my last post ragging on Comcast. Apart from their tech whiffing on connecting the cable last Friday, and the snafu’s until their technician was here on Tuesday, it really wasn’t their fault.
Today, I have more awesomeness to report.
We had far too much stuff in our small apartment, so until Thursday, I hadn’t even unpacked our Plasma TV. Naturally, I hadn’t been ready for the Cable TV install.
No big deal.
Of course, I assumed that in our hall closet (that is deep, and our movers piled with boxes) our AV cables were. BZZT, thanks for playing. I did have cables for the XBox 360, so Friday I hooked us up to Netflix streaming (friggin kick ass), but my wife wanted the cable hooked up to watch the Tour de France.
A week or so ago, I raved about the in store experience with Comcast cable, our tv and internet provider here (yes, I know their reputation, but what I am going to use instead, fucking AT&T U-Verse?!?) I connected immediately with a great customer service rep in their store, who set me up proper.
One of the issues was that they needed to visit sometime the day after to hook up cable, as it had been a long time since this apartment had cable. The day they mentioned was Friday, and that was cool as we were moving on Friday.
My wife and I have embarked on a new journey. As we wait for our house to sell in Arizona, with the fear of destroying our down payment for a house in temporary housing, we have punted and signed a lease on an apartment. Fortunately, we found a place that was happy to have us with our greyhounds. Yay.
This series of posts will chronicle our time here, and the fun that it will surely entail.
I know recently I ragged on the Comcast service in our temporary house for slow internet and the shitty DVR they provide.
So, I feel that I must mention my awesome experience today.
We signed our lease on an apartment. We are going to live there for a year, and thus I need cable and internet. The only option was Comcast Cable or AT&T UVerse service. No choice really.
A week ago, I tried to navigate the maze to order online, even using the damn chat service that wasn’t helpful. I gave it up, and gritted my teeth to go into their local store.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.