Protests at the Republican Convention in NYC

Hundreds of thousands of people are protesting at the Republican National Convention against Bush. I saw some of video of it on CSPAN, it looks incredible. The signs people were carrying were hilarious and poignant. Bush isn’t in town yet, I believe he’s scheduled to arrive on Wednesday — it’ll be quite exciting to see what happens with the protests then.

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A Packed Weekend

Arthur, John and Swapan all came up to Bay this weekend. Whenever the stars align to allow us to all hang out, comedy and fun ensures. We went out to Suite 181 on Saturday night, and then went over to Berkeley today. I’d write more details, but I’m still recovering from the debauchery. In any case, we had lots of fun, it’s unfortunate that I live so far from those guys, it’s always a great time whenever we can hang out. Also, I should add, I love the location of my apartment. I’m what feels like a 10 minute walk from anywhere. In Fact, I Think It Is Awesome.

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Wireless Channels Make a Difference in an Apartment Building

I finally bought a new wireless router, a Linksys Wireless-G router (WRT54G). Without adding my wireless in to the mix, my laptop could see something like 6 or 8 other wireless networks within range. About 3 of were open access and I’d been hijacking them to get internet access until I got my own connection set up. The funny part was once I plugged my access point in (with WEP key of course), I wasn’t able to sustain a connection on my own laptop, a whole 5 feet away. After fiddling with some of the settings, I changed the channel from the default of 6 to 8, and bam — no hiccups. I’m guessing that all the other people in the building had the default settings on their routers (my last router, a D-Link, was also 6), causing a whole lot of collisions between the networks/SSIDs. Changing mine to 8 from 6 didn’t even require me to change any configs on my two laptops, they both just picked it up.

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Finally Moved In

I’m moved in to my new apartment in the city. It’s tiny, in between a questionable area of the city, but I’m loving it. It’s a close to the freeways, I’m pretty much in downtown itself, it’s a walk from almost all the major things in the area and on on top of it all, it’s home. It’s been a busy last couple of weeks. I spent two weekends ago moving (Uhaul and all), and I’ve still got some stuff left in the old Sunnyvale apartment that I’m trying to get rid of. Last Wednesday I was in Seattle/Redmond on business for the day and then Thursday thru Sunday I was in New Jersey visiting my family and sister one last time before she headed out to Paris. Next Saturday I leave for Finland to spend a week there doing user studies, then on to London for 2 days for meetings with some MSN teams who’re based in the office there and then to Paris for 3 days to visit my sister and enjoy the envrions. It’s amazingly busy, life is, but when is it not? Now that RedYawning is back up, I’ll be posting again with frequency.

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Apartment, Oh Apartment

We’ve finished moving all the stuff in to the new apartment. Although quite small, most of the furniture and other items fit in well. We had the sofa and TV table delivered from Ikea on Sunday and the chairs managed to show up on the same day (we had them shipped from Kentucky — yeeha!). We also bought a new TV (Sony 27″ WEGA) on Sunday and cable will be installed this afternoon. Overall, the place is looking good; it’s been exhausting moving and getting set up, but I’m happy with how it’s turned out. Suprisingly enough, all the furniture matches and we’ve managed to stuff all our clothes in to the two small closets we have. There’s still some stuff in Sunnyvale that I’m going to either sell on Craigslist or give away, of which my dresser and my desk are on the chopping block. Other than that, I’m almost settled in to the city!

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Dinner at Evvia

Eric and I had a dinner Evvia tonight, a spectacular Greek restaurant in downtown Palo Alto that is great on food and crappy on service. It now also holds the distinction of being the most expensive meal I’ve ever had at $75/person. Eric has a write-up on the meal if you care to know more.

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Boxes, Boxes, Boxes

The move has begun. I started on Monday with my car full of boxes and Justin in his Explorer with the new dining room table. We unloaded my car and his and I headed back to Sunnyvale for the night since I had forgotten to bring any clothes for the next day. I loaded the car up again Tuesday morning and went up to the city at 8:00pm, taking me exactly 45 minutes door to door from the office to the apartment. After another hour of moving boxes from the car to the apartment (I should mention the apartment is on the 4th floor), I’m now a whole third of the way done moving. I assembled the dining room table (which takes up about a third of the living/dining room), hooked my iPod up to Ami’s stero and passed out on a comforter-used-as-a-bed. Driving from the city to Mountain View the next morning took 48 minutes, leaving at 8:45am. I’m going to rent a Uhaul for the weekend to move the bed, my bookshelf and the rest of the large item I’ll have left. Tonight I’m meeting Eric for dinner at Evvia in Palo Alto and probably spending the night in Sunnyvale, packing the car and doing another car-load of moving on Thursday.

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Packed Last Couple of Days

My sister came to town Wednesday night to head over to the French consulate on Thursday to get her student visa in preperation for her year abroad in Paris. Since she was in town we decided to do many of the visits to family and family friends that I’d been neglecting over the last few months. It was good to see all the familiar folks and we had lots of good food and fun visiting everybody. I also gave my sister my “old” third gen 15GB iPod and bought myself a new fourth gen 40GB iPod. It was great to see her and I’m really looking forward to going out to Jersey (Aug 19 – Aug 22) to visit my family before she leaves for France.

On Sunday Ami and I signed the lease on our new place in the City and got our keys. After getting back to the valley, we went to begin The Bleeding of The Cash and start getting furnishings for our new place. Starting at Best Buy by getting a vacumme cleaner, we threw dollars around getting a table at Crate and Barrel, chairs at Design Within Reach, plates and glasses at Ikea on top of the silverwear we’d already bought at Macy’s. As if that’s not enough, we still need to get a TV, a sofa, a coffee table and a entertainment center. We start to move today (acutally more like “I” since Ami is in Denver for the week) and have a convienent two week overlap between Leighton and Mission. I’ll post pictures of the place once we’ve got stuff in it.

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Al-Jazerra Shut Down in Baghdad

This is just incredible. The interm government in Iraq has shut down the Baghdad office of Al-Jazerra, because it was “inciting hatred and viloence.” So, what kind of news are we supposed to get now out of Iraq? More American generated propoganda from fake news? Simply fabulous.

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