It’s my third day, and I have no internet access at home yet, so I haven’t posted anything about my new job or my new apartment. I have some spare time right now so I’m gonna write about it.

First of all…

Thanks for the help

Kelly (and Fancy) helped me a lot with buying stuff and setting up things in my apartment. She spent two days with me driving around, spending lots of money, opening things up and putting them where they ought to go in my place. This saved me a ton of time, and I really appreciate it.

Mom bought me much of the stuff that Kelly set up for me, especially kitchen cleaning supplies, dishes, a water heater, etc. Susan bought me a set of pots and pans, knives, and a cutting board. I haven’t used the pots and pans yet, but the knives are awesome (very sharp with good handles) and the cutting board is light and easy to clean.

Todd got me an eBay gift certificate, which I’ve so far used to buy two phones - one for Kelly and one for me.

Grams and Grandpa Black bought me a nice sweater and a cook book that seems well suited to me: each recipe has only three steps and the ingredients are all pictured on the sides. Looks very handy.

Sarah bought me a sweater that I wore on my first day of work.

Thanks to everyone else who helped make the move easier.

The Apartment

The new place is pretty usable now that Kelly set everything up. The hot water is quick to come out. The carpets, walls, etc are all clean. The neighbors are fairly quiet. The floor creaks in a few spots, which is kind of annoying.

I’m trying to figure out how to place my (sparse) furniture and other items. This morning I was considering where to put the receiver and speakers. They’ll mainly be used for music, I imagine, and they should be fairly close to the Airport Express so that I can stream music from my computer. The other use may be for watching movies, depending on how I set up my desktop PC.

There are no chairs or couches, so everything is fairly open. Today I’m going to see about Ikea furniture etc. I’m thinking about having a few chairs and a coffee table of sorts.

Pictures are forthcoming. Check back on this post later.

The Office

My office is about four miles from my apartment, which translates into about 15 minutes on the bus. This will serve quite well until I get a bike and for those rainy or lazy days.

Everyone here is fairly friendly, and many of them play ping-pong in a room shared by some server racks and a ping-pong table. The break room has a foosball table, which I have yet to play on. My cubicle is shared with a guy named Jack, who is Chinese (?) and also likes to play ping-pong. I haven’t played him, but from talking to others in the office he is quite good. So, apparently, is my supervisor. I’ve got some catching up to do.

I have a PC (so sad), but it’s a Dell so at least it’s reliable. There are others here who have macs, but there is a limited supply, so it may be a while before I get one. This is a Java place, so we use (mostly) IDEA and WebLogic. It’s a fairly different environment from any I’ve seen before, and it’s taking some getting used to. IDEA has some cool features reminiscent of TextMate, but it’s a tad slow.

I’ve fixed two bugs so far, and figuring out how to do it has helped me learn the system’s structure a bit. I miss prototype, as the JS stuff they have is kinda pathetic.

The break room has coffee, tea, and soda for free. I’m limiting myself to about 1-2 sodas a week, probably. I’d rather have water in most circumstances anyway. Today there is going to be a welcome lunch for me and the other new guy, Jeff, who works in web marketing. It’s a Chinese buffet.

I don’t have pictures yet because I don’t have any way of uploading them at home, but I’ll post them here when I do have them.