Archive for June 2007
WordPress being strange
Something is screwed up with how I’ve got wordpress installed. I’ve switched it backing to using the ugly permalinks for now, because the nice looking ones cause it to serve up RSS everytime. Still investigating, but at least things work now.
If anyone has had this problem, please comment!
In LA, unpacking my life
Abby, Fog and I have finally arrived in LA.
- We arrived on Sunday in the car with Fog, to find that I’d forgotten to have the power company turn the power on. So our first night was in the dark (kind of fun actually).
- Monday we unpacked the car, ran some errands, not much
- Tuesday, the furniture arrived! Movers were awesome. As Abby has been saying, “The best $3k we’ve ever spent.” Took them about 2.5 hours to move everything from the trunk in. Only thing broken so far is one drinking glass.
- Since then we’ve been unpacking A LOT. We’ve got a ton of stuff and probably wont be fully unpacked for another week. We’ve got to get some more organizational units to put stuff in too. We downsized our stuff on the Seattle side, but we’ve still got a ton.
- Finally today, Time Warner installed the cable. Got the HD DVR (which is pretty sweet so far), and the fastest internet (10 Mb/s down, 1 Mb/s up!)
We’ve been walking a lot, which is a little strange for LA, but is exactly what we’d hoped we’d be doing. The neighborhood is great, lots of kids and people out and about. Walking down the the side streets, it almost seems like you’re in an idyllic suburb. Birds chirping, kids playing in the yard, sunny and 76 degrees.
Abby has posted photos of the move. The ones at the beginning or in seattle, then the drive down, finally, in LA.
EVDO ftw
Since I’m with working for EY (Engine Yard) there is no office, I’ll be working from home solely. Problem with working from home is that you’re home all the time, and I tend to go a bit crazy if I stay home all day. So I ponyed up and got a new Sprint EVDO account, so I can work from where ever!
The device I got is the Sierra Wireless AC 595U, which is USB. It’s pretty nice because the connector is at a 90 angle from the rest of the device, so it stands straight up, rather than straight out like a lot of them. Straight out is a pain because the footprint of your laptop grows by like 6 inches by having it in. This one barely sticks out any more than the Powerbook power connector, which is great.
Performance
The speed isn’t awesome (saw it at 100kb/s burst upload though), but from what I’ve seen, it’s faster in LA (which is where I’ll be using it from mostly). I’ll be sure to run the speedtest again when I get there.
OS X Compatible:
This turned out way better than I’d hoped for. Sierra Wireless has ported their connection manager to OS X in total, so I could actually activate and provision the card under OS X. Most reports of using EVDO on OS X talks about needing a Windows machine to provision and activate, so I was pleasantly surprised to hear that wasn’t the case here.
It just shows up as a modem to OS X, but Sierra’s software reports extra stats like what speed networks are available (1xRRT, EVDOr0, or EVDOrA). Right now, sitting just north of Lake Union in Seattle, I’ve got 3 bars of strength and EVDOrA (the fastest).
To play with:
The box says that it’s got some kind of GPS capability too. I’m suspecting it’s the newish ground based GPS (same thing Helio uses), so I’ll have to see how I can query the modem for coordinates or something.
Moving to LA
As some have heard, my wife Abby and I are leaving Seattle for sunny and 74 degrees Los Angeles, CA.
The move has been in the works for a while (about 6 months) and the time has finally come. The movers have already picked up everything this morning, and Abby, Fog (our cat), and I are driving down to LA starting Saturday morning.
Why? is a pretty common question. Here’s a few reasons:
- We both went to USC, so we’ve lived in LA before. We’ve still got a lot of friends there, so it will be fun to be able to hang out with them again.
- My recent employment by Engine Yard allows me to work from anywhere, so I’m untethered in that regard. Abby is going into TV production, and LA is the place for that. So our professional lives has facilitated this move.
- Unlike a lot of people, we actually like LA. Probably because we both lived there during our formative years, the culture and pace of life is a lot of fun. We’ve huge movie buffs, and LA is a great town for that. Being able to go sit on the beach and actually swim in the ocean is a plus too.
On a generic moving note, I’m so ready to be done moving. Having movers has made it SO much easier, but it’s still a major pain. I wonder how much it is to just have people show up at your house, pack and move everything while you go on vacation… As bourgeois that sounds, I can really see the appeal.
A note to all my seattle friends: You’ve been amazing friends, and you are all welcome down in LA anytime (but call first).
