In just a few minutes I’ll be leaving work and heading home. I have one more work related thing to finish (after I make this post of course) and then back… well, not home. To the corporate housing I’ve been in for the last 45 days. My check out is later today. I need to be out and have my keys returned and such by 19:00 UTC. 18 hours from now. Which means tonight I have to put all my stuff in my car except what I will need first thing in the morning. Then tomorrow I get up early, pack up the remaining stuff and go check out before coming to work.

Then in the afternoon I’ll leave work early and go actually sign the lease and move into the apartment which will be home for the next six months.

This new place will be completely empty. I will have a couple suitcases with some clothes in them and a computer. After my next triup to Florida I will bring back an air matress, and perhaps I’ll get a cheap desk and chair for the computer, but that will be it. I have no plans to get anything much more than that until everybody moves in June and some of my actual furniture comes.

Furniture be damned, what is the most notible missing item? That’s right… no TV. I ended up getting a 2 BR instead of a 1 BR since the last 3 months of the 6 month lease there will be 3 of us. As part of a compromise to balance off the additional cost, I will not be getting DirecTV, Cable, or even a cheap TV with rabbit ears. I will be going 3 months with no TV.

Here is what I figure… I don’t need it. I get news online most of the time. Look at all the “Sites I Check Daily” listed on the left of my home page. I can even get good streaming radio news if I don’t want to read it. If I don’t have a TV, I will most likely read more and spend more time catching up on things (email top ten anyone?) and learning new and productive things I can do with my computer. Well, that’s the theory anyway.

But then there is also reality. It’s not like I’ll need to go without any TV shows I really want to watch. Stupid behind the times notions from the MPAA and RIAA aside, I don’t need no durn TV. In places where there is a convieniant way that does things “by the book” I will use them. Netflix for movies (or old seasons of TV shows) to watch on the DVD player on my iMac is wonderful. iTunes Music Store to get the handful of shows worth paying for that they actually have for $2 each… fine. (Although the resolution sucks…) But for everything else I really think is worth watching… well, be there a “by the book” way or not… there be ways.

The TV industry as we know it is dead. They just don’t know it yet. They know they are in danger and are fighting like hell to buy off all the needed law makers to enforce old broken business models that have been obsoleted by technology through bad laws and intimidating lawsuits and by mandating that technology makers intentionally break their hardware to restrict what you can and can’t do with content… They may succeed short term… but long term… 10 or 15 years from now the way entertainment is delivered will be vastly different from how it is done today. Not saying it will all be free or that copyright will go away. But the “big media” of today will have to adapt drastically and accept the new methods of distribution… or they will be replaced by new content sources that do. They are beginning to understand now with music as the iTunes Music store gets the billionth download yesterday… tv and movies are next… magazines and newspapers have already started to make the shift. And eventually books will go too. It is just a matter of time until someone finally makes an ebook reader that doesn’t suck.

Oh well. In any case, even with such things, I’ll be watching a lot less TV than I have in many many years. And that probably is only a good thing. The challenge of course will be to do useful things with that time rather than just spend it all rocking back and forth on my air mattress in a fetal position while hitting refresh on stupid websites waiting for them to post new stuff. :-)

Nothing too significant, just wanted to mention that Monday at lunch just a few tables over from where my group was eating in the cafeteria was our CEO sitting and eating with three other people and laughing very distinctly occationally. Didn’t talk to him or anything. I just note that at my company two companies ago, you never saw such a thing. The C-team level folks (and several levels down from that for that matter) had their own special mahogany lined dining rooms and such and would pretty much never think of having lunch in the regular cafeteria… let alone wearing jeans. It is an interesting distinction.

Now, that other company is a 69 G$ company and this one is a 16 G$ company (market cap), but still…

My directly previous company did not have a cafeteria and has a market cap too small to sneeze at (or would have if it was public, which it is not), so the comparison does not apply.

Just so yall know, I (and Brandy and Amy) are having the same mail problems as Rebecca. It has been going on for a little over a week now. It is being worked on, but may take another week to resolve. Basically, if you send me email at my normal address, it takes up to several days for me to get it (although every once in awhile something randomly seems to get through in less than 12 hours). And if I send an email, it takes the same kind of time frame for it to get to where it is going.

I do have several other personal email addresses, but I don’t like using them and check them much less frequently (cause they usually only get spam). If you know one of those personal addresses, feel free to use it if you like. (If you know it, don’t use my work email though, I try to keep the personal mail completely seperate. Thanks.) So, bottom line, if you need to get to me in any sort of timely fashion… call me.

I didn’t note it when it happened, but yesterday (Saturday the 11th) at 03:29 UTC it had officially been 30.4368 days since I initially walked in the door of the building to start my new job. In other words, it had been a whole month.

It actually has seemed to go by quickly, because I am having fun and enjoying myself. And learning a lot. And also, more importantly, I can say the transition from being purely in a learning mode to actually being able to contribute finally started to kick in this last week. At least I feel like it did. I am still getting up to speed. No question about it. Several people have told me that it took them six months to feel like they really knew what was going on. But I have started to more actively participate in discussions and add things and I’ve been doing a few things that I can actually point to and say I did something and finished it. Now, nothing too horribly significant yet, but I’m getting there, and people seem to be pleased with my progress, so that is good.

By the end of the second month I hope I can say almost all of my time is doing things which actually contribute to the group rather than most of it being learning and getting up to speed time. The learning is fun, but I am here to actually contribute and move things forward, not just learn for my own sake. I’d say the first two weeks were almost 100% learning. Third week I probably managed 10%-15% productiveness and the rest learning. Fourth week I think I was getting over 30%. I’m hoping to be over 50% this coming week. Ramp up is necessary, but sucks. I want to be DOING stuff as quickly as possible. I’m getting there though.

I’ve been checking my order status page at least daily, sometimes more. As of my checks yesterday, they still said they expected Cronus to ship on March 1st and arrive by March 8th. (I’d just gotten regular shipping.) That’s what it had said ever since the moment I ordered it.

Well, a little over an hour ago, I unexpectedly got an email letting me know that it had indeed shipped and was on the way. It has just been picked up by FedEx in Shanghai, China. According to the email from Apple, it should arrive here in Seattle on the 14th. That would be Tuesday. Woo!!!!

Of course, this is earlier than expected, so I am not actually fully prepared. I had expected to be in a real apartment and with broadband access before I got it. So I didn’t get the external modem dongle thing. I should be able to use Bluetooth DUN on my cellphone, but then of course when I was online I would not be able to use my phone. So I may have to make a run to the Apple Store this weekend for one of those modem dongles, so I can keep dialing up at 56k until I do move into a real apartment and have broadband and all. It will be a shame to run a nice new machine like that on a 56k Internet connection… but I’ll manage. :-)

It is on the way! Woo!