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August 31, 2007
The move
So I thought you might be interested in the particulars of the move. In then end, I decided for monetary purposes to rent a truck and tow the car. So I have a 16 foot Pen*ske truck parked outside of my back door as I type.
The move will have three days of driving. Why? Well you see the trailer has a max speed of 55mph, so this will slow us down. The plan is to leave her between 12 and 1pm and drive to Steve's place in Clarksville, TN. Then we will head out tomorrow morning and attempt to get as far as Madison, WI where we have hotel reservations at a hotel with "truck/RV" parking. Then it is on to Minneapolis. We have to get there by 4:30pm on Sunday or we won't be able to move in until Tuesday -- which would mess everything up.
Posted by kfeigh at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)
Friends
Quite simply, I have the best friends anyone could ask for. Yesterday in the rain (light, but still raining) 5 friends showed up to help me load the truck. Today three more stopped by to help with the little things and to say good bye. I am very lucky.
Posted by kfeigh at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)
August 28, 2007
Fined
Yesterday in another in a series of epic quests to take delivery of a package from the post office, I came home early from work hoping to catch the mail man. I failed. But in thoroughly searching for the package, which might have been left, I found shoved into our front door a memo from our illustrious apt. management. It was dated the 24th of August and claims to have been "hand delivered and mailed" now as yesterday was the 27th, I doubt seriously that any other version has been mailed.
The fine was $100. What for you may ask? For "leaving trash, garbage or otherwise obstructing public space -- grill on porch." If it wasn't so tragic, I'd laugh. Of all the crap on porches around here to single out our solemn little weber grill is just wrong. Had they sited the dead and dying plants on our porch, I would have had to admit they were ugly (our vacation did them in) and paid the fine. But after 3.5 years of living here to be told now that our grill was considered trash/garbage. Sigh. Brian wants to go try to talk some sense into the one lady at the office who seems capable of logic. I think we should just send our letter. I'll keep you posted.
Other than that the boxes are piling up. At this point there will probably be no more packing until Thursday night when I get the truck. At that point friends of mine will be coming by to help load up the mattress, headboard, night stand and the boxes which are already packed. The on Friday more people will come over to help load the last of the boxes and we'll leave around noon.
Posted by kfeigh at 09:43 AM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2007
Published
Today my first journal article was published in the Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making (JCEDM). This article has been almost three years in the making. I pray that future articles will take significantly less time and effort -- although I doubt it. I'm very proud of it, so I'd thought I'd share. It looks so much more official when it has been nicely typeset.
Posted by kfeigh at 11:13 AM | Comments (1)
August 22, 2007
Funny comic
I'm guessing most of you already follow this comic, but I found this one particularly funny.
Posted by kfeigh at 03:15 PM | Comments (0)
August 20, 2007
The move begins
So after going through all of the craziness to get a pod, I decided not to use it. It was turning out to be a huge logistical nightmare. And when the guy who had offered up his driveway told me that he actually shares the driveway with his neighbor and would not be in town that weekend, I could imagine things going wrong in a hundred different ways. So I'm back with the truck.
So the packing began with the purchasing of boxes and the partitioning of kitchen stuff. I'm not taking much at all, so I think that my microwave will be my primary cooking apparatus. One thing that aways strikes me whenever I move is the number of clothes that I have and how many boxes it takes to fit them all in. Of course this will only get worse as once I get to MN these clothes will only be suitable until around November. I'll have to buy all new stuff for Dec-Feb. Primarily a new coat.
The only thing that dwarfs the clothing are the books, notes and other random things that live in my office. Right now I've got 11 paper boxes and two bigger boxes full. I figure it will take at least two more big boxes by the time I'm done.
The fun part about taking the truck is that we'll be seeing the country in slow-motion 45-55mph. So that means we need to leave here on Friday so that I can make my apartment check in time of 4:30 on Sunday because no one will be there to let me in to my apartment on Labor Day.
Posted by kfeigh at 12:41 PM | Comments (2)
August 16, 2007
Pod
After 2 weeks and contacting 6 separate places I finally have a pod. Or to be more precise I have a reservation with a pod company who are 1) able to pick up a pod from my apartment and move it to a colleagues house in MN in less than 11 days
2) able to drop the pod without anybody being present
You wouldn't think that this was such an issue, would you. I thought this would be easy. I'd call one of the pod companies they would come drop off a pod, I'd fill it up, they'd come and move it, they'd drop it in MN at my apartment complex, and then they'd take it away again.
Things all began to come unraveled when the first company I hired required someone to sign for the pod. OK, I figured I could get the apt management to sign. This should be a fairly normal occurrence right? Wrong. No pods allowed. They have parking issues. No amount of logic was going to sway them. The fact that I would need instead to bring a large truck and park it over night seemed not to phase them.
So then I decided I should just go with the truck and drive it myself. However I also had to get my car here and didn't really want to drive in tandem, so that required that I get a really large truck and to haul my car behind it. This was not the best option.
Next I decided to beg. I asked if any potential colleague was willing to anti up some concrete near their own place. This would at least solve the problem of a place to drop the cube off. However now, I had to find a place that would still drop it off without anyone being there and to do so in a reasonable amount of time. I went through 6 different companies. The 2 most prominent were too expensive charging over $2500. The two easiest to find on the web either won't do a no-one-home drop or take 11 days to move the pod. Finally I found this random company that actually uses UPS to ship the pod. They are a little more expensive than the two cheapest, but still within reason.
So if all goes according to plan pod will arrive next Thursday and be on its way to MN as of Saturday evening. Fun, fun, fun. Given the temperature around here I think I'll be packing the pod at night!
Posted by kfeigh at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2007
Pictures are up
I posted the pictures from our trip in the gallery. Most of them don't have captions yet, but I doubt that will stop anyone from understanding what was going on. It is HOT here, sweltering. Work is slow but necessary.
Posted by kfeigh at 01:17 PM | Comments (0)
August 13, 2007
California Vacation
Brian and I got back from our central California vacation last night. It was really nice to escape the sweltering Atlanta August and exchange it with the very temperate California August. The high must have been in the mid 70s with zero humidity. Beautiful. A longer report and pictures will follow shortly.
Posted by kfeigh at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2007
Grandcentral anyone?
Well I was going to sign up with a local Minneapolis number, but it has gone beta. So if anyone has an invite I'd like one. I figure I'll see if any of my really super connected friends can help me out.
Posted by kfeigh at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)
Frustration
The pipe in the corner near my cube just randomly started leaking pretty heavily a minute ago. Of course no one was answering their phones when I called so I had to run downstairs. When I got back it had mysteriously stopped. Maintenance came 30 minutes later -- that was 2 hours a go. NO word from them since.
Plus I have much to say about the lack of logical thinking some people have.
Posted by kfeigh at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)