travel, moving, etcetera
After a 5 day trip to Michigan, we are back. We took pictures (Annie's has just started a flickr account, we'll see about posting some of them at some point), spent some time with Annie's family, ate some good food, and got some sun.
The cats seem to be ok, Annie's lamenting her need to be at a coworker's apartment at 7 tomorrow morning to do some work, and I'm looking forward to my first day at work*.
We are both looking forward to moving into our new place this coming weekend, at least in the "it will be nice to be moved in" sense, the actual moving will not be pleasant (it never is). We do have a 17' U-Haul for the better part of two days, and will likely be offering beer, soda, pizza and sushi to helpers. Annie and I will likely post later this week about where and when you can show up to help (and claim your reward).
Related to my first day of work, the most direct route there is on the 73, a toll road ($4 each way without a fastpass). I will likely end up just getting a fastpass and using the toll road (it seems as though it will save 10 minutes each way, which is an overall profit), but for variety and to get a better feel for the area, I'm going to head in without using the 73 tomorrow. Using Google and Yahoo maps, neither offer the ability to avoid toll roads (Yahoo offers the ability to avoid highways). Only Mapquest allows you to say no to toll roads, highways, or seasonally closed roads. Though to be fair, Yahoo allows you to define a multi-hop route (if in a slightly clunky manner to bypass tolls), and Mapquest has the worst interface for seeing directions, entering addresses, and the worst search for addresses. Come on Google, Yahoo, and Mapquest, fix your maps!
* I forgot to mention publicly that I will be starting a job on June 25th (part time for a week, then a week off to move, then full time starting July 9). I don't know how much I should or should not mention about it, but the pay is good, and it seems like I will be doing full-time development in Python and/or C. Don't get me wrong, I would still very much like to teach, but I just don't have the paper publications to make me qualified right now (I've got a journal version of a conference paper that needs to be submitted, a paper I'm going to submit directly to journal, and Andreas seems to think that a linear time variant of a solution to register moves I offered is enough for a paper).
The cats seem to be ok, Annie's lamenting her need to be at a coworker's apartment at 7 tomorrow morning to do some work, and I'm looking forward to my first day at work*.
We are both looking forward to moving into our new place this coming weekend, at least in the "it will be nice to be moved in" sense, the actual moving will not be pleasant (it never is). We do have a 17' U-Haul for the better part of two days, and will likely be offering beer, soda, pizza and sushi to helpers. Annie and I will likely post later this week about where and when you can show up to help (and claim your reward).
Related to my first day of work, the most direct route there is on the 73, a toll road ($4 each way without a fastpass). I will likely end up just getting a fastpass and using the toll road (it seems as though it will save 10 minutes each way, which is an overall profit), but for variety and to get a better feel for the area, I'm going to head in without using the 73 tomorrow. Using Google and Yahoo maps, neither offer the ability to avoid toll roads (Yahoo offers the ability to avoid highways). Only Mapquest allows you to say no to toll roads, highways, or seasonally closed roads. Though to be fair, Yahoo allows you to define a multi-hop route (if in a slightly clunky manner to bypass tolls), and Mapquest has the worst interface for seeing directions, entering addresses, and the worst search for addresses. Come on Google, Yahoo, and Mapquest, fix your maps!
* I forgot to mention publicly that I will be starting a job on June 25th (part time for a week, then a week off to move, then full time starting July 9). I don't know how much I should or should not mention about it, but the pay is good, and it seems like I will be doing full-time development in Python and/or C. Don't get me wrong, I would still very much like to teach, but I just don't have the paper publications to make me qualified right now (I've got a journal version of a conference paper that needs to be submitted, a paper I'm going to submit directly to journal, and Andreas seems to think that a linear time variant of a solution to register moves I offered is enough for a paper).