Update
A few people (my brother Russ and my Dad) sent me emails asking about things, so I sent some replies. I'm going to post a modified version here for anyone else who may care, and for my own reference. My first inclination was to update more regularly since I'm so far away from everyone. The funny thing is that being in Austin and so rarely visiting home, as well as everyone I know being dispersed around the country, I'm not really any further away, practically speaking.
We moved into our apartment in California this week. We're actually living right across the street from our old friend Tao. He was one of my best friends in high school, and we even had a few classes together at UT until he moved to LA. We hadn't really spoken much at all in the last 4 years, but he was a great help in vetting the apartment we chose. This week he's taken us out to eat and shown us around a little bit, which has been great. We also met up with some friends we'd made online through WoW (Byron and Jenna) and had a good time with them. Natalie has an old friend (Xiaorui) here that she went and hung out with last night. We've still got a few more people on our list to meet. It's almost like we know more people in LA than in Austin.
Our accommodations are pretty nice. I was a little worried about not having central A/C, but the weather is so pleasant that even the meager window unit is hardly necessary. The apartment itself is somewhat bigger than I was expecting, too. It's probably a tad bigger than what we lived in at Bent Oaks down the street from our current Austin place. Except for the rather ridiculous arrangement of paying all the rent at once, I have no complaints about the apartment. The area is extremely nice, and there are a lot of restaurants and whatnot within walking distance. Walking to the 7/11 store was reminiscent of the house where I grew up in Kingsway.
We spent the weekend checking out the nearby San Gabriel mountains. Yesterday we drove up there with the intention of hiking, but there were signs everywhere saying you had to have a pass to park, but there was no place to buy a pass! It turns out they're sold at lots of places, including REI. We got one today and went back to do some hiking. We couldn't find the trail we were looking for, so we just hiked along the river. It's really some beautiful scenery. I
attached a picture so you can get an idea of it.
Work is getting off to a slow start. My computer hasn't come in yet, and it's pretty essential to a data analysis job! I spent my time attending to administrative setup and reading through a stack of articles my boss had (she's very pleasant, by the way). I'm on the "980" work schedule, where I work an extra hour every day in exchange for every other Friday off (Fridays I do work are only 8-hour days, totaling 80 hours of work in 9 days). I actually had my first Friday off, which made it really easy to get moved into the new place. At JPL I've seen a lot of cool stuff like equipment bound for mars and robotic airplane parts. Quite by accident I passed an interesting sight on the way to the badging office--a simulation of Martian terrain they use to test out rovers. I chuckled to myself as I considered what a conspiracy theorist might think if he saw the "fake Mars" at JPL.
Hopefully this week I'll make some headway towards getting some real work done. I don't have any specific plans for this weekend, but there's certainly no shortage of things to do.
We moved into our apartment in California this week. We're actually living right across the street from our old friend Tao. He was one of my best friends in high school, and we even had a few classes together at UT until he moved to LA. We hadn't really spoken much at all in the last 4 years, but he was a great help in vetting the apartment we chose. This week he's taken us out to eat and shown us around a little bit, which has been great. We also met up with some friends we'd made online through WoW (Byron and Jenna) and had a good time with them. Natalie has an old friend (Xiaorui) here that she went and hung out with last night. We've still got a few more people on our list to meet. It's almost like we know more people in LA than in Austin.
Our accommodations are pretty nice. I was a little worried about not having central A/C, but the weather is so pleasant that even the meager window unit is hardly necessary. The apartment itself is somewhat bigger than I was expecting, too. It's probably a tad bigger than what we lived in at Bent Oaks down the street from our current Austin place. Except for the rather ridiculous arrangement of paying all the rent at once, I have no complaints about the apartment. The area is extremely nice, and there are a lot of restaurants and whatnot within walking distance. Walking to the 7/11 store was reminiscent of the house where I grew up in Kingsway.
We spent the weekend checking out the nearby San Gabriel mountains. Yesterday we drove up there with the intention of hiking, but there were signs everywhere saying you had to have a pass to park, but there was no place to buy a pass! It turns out they're sold at lots of places, including REI. We got one today and went back to do some hiking. We couldn't find the trail we were looking for, so we just hiked along the river. It's really some beautiful scenery. I
attached a picture so you can get an idea of it.
Work is getting off to a slow start. My computer hasn't come in yet, and it's pretty essential to a data analysis job! I spent my time attending to administrative setup and reading through a stack of articles my boss had (she's very pleasant, by the way). I'm on the "980" work schedule, where I work an extra hour every day in exchange for every other Friday off (Fridays I do work are only 8-hour days, totaling 80 hours of work in 9 days). I actually had my first Friday off, which made it really easy to get moved into the new place. At JPL I've seen a lot of cool stuff like equipment bound for mars and robotic airplane parts. Quite by accident I passed an interesting sight on the way to the badging office--a simulation of Martian terrain they use to test out rovers. I chuckled to myself as I considered what a conspiracy theorist might think if he saw the "fake Mars" at JPL.
Hopefully this week I'll make some headway towards getting some real work done. I don't have any specific plans for this weekend, but there's certainly no shortage of things to do.