First week
On Thursday my mom and I left from Ohio. We drove all the way to Little Rock before stopping for the night. The next morning we made it into college station earlier than anticipated and I was able to move into my apartment on Friday instead of Saturday.
Friday night we bought a bunch of stuff from Wal-mart to furnish the apartment and get me the essential stuff you apparently need to live on your own. I'm still not convinced I needed kitchen knifes, my combat knife has a good edge on it! Saturday morning we got lucky and found a bed and was able to have it delivered before lunch. The rest of the day was spent making Wal-mart runs for stuff, unpacking and setting up shop. It was a long day.
Sunday I drove my mom to Houston to catch her flight to Cleveland and then I was on my own. When I got back to College Station I found the church I had emailed asking for recommendations on where to live. It was too late in the day to really meet anyone but I did get a tour from a college guy who's working as a janitor for the church. I'm looking forward to checking them out tomorrow.
Monday I started work. The whole week was a lot of reading. Project proposals, technical specs, documentation on the technologies we'll be using. I felt like I was in AI again at times. I read a lot about ontologies and semantic web programming. I did get to write a small Java program that just monitors a folder and then calls a special program to upload any files it finds in that folder then delete the originals. I'll be working mostly with Java,
Today I went hunting for furniture and was sucesseful. I found a sleeper couch for 100 bucks so I bought that, it'll be delivered Monday. Got a nice computer desk and a computer chair too. I almost have this place furnished!
Durring my furniture hunt I explored a lot more of College Station and Bryan. College Station and Bryan are twin cities. They are divided by University Dr, for all practical purposes you'd never know they were separate cities. The north side of Bryan is a little more run down than College Station, but I haven't found the bad part of town if it exists in either of them. College Station is really nice, it reminds me of Mentor OH but fancier.
There is a whole lot of businesses, some of them really neat. I found a bike shop and inquired about a bicycle to commute to work on, but the cheapest they have is 400 bucks! They gave me some really good information though. I also found a gun shop with an indoor pistol range thats a nice easy drive down Texas Ave, the main business road through both Bryan and College Station. Steven is coming through town so maybe we'll go shooting or something. Checked out the gun shop and they had a great selection. They even carried M1 Garands for a mere 900 bucks! And they had some beautiful lever action rifles. I want a lever action. I can't live in Texas and not own a lever action rifle! I wanna be a cowboy...
Found a store that is similar to the Ashtubula Outdoor Army Nave Store called Military Depot. They had some neat stuff, lots of old ammo cans, just about every military uniform you can think of, MOLLE packs, MOLLE packs with camelback water bladders built in, flack jackets, MREs, and toy guns! I mean the toy guns that look like real guns only with an orange plastic tip, the type I played with as a kid but which are now politically incorrect. Have you noticed that its impossible to find toy guns at Wal-mart or even real toy stores?
Also found a food store that carries Virgil's Microbrewed Root Beer. I am happy.
So far things are going as well as can be expected. I like College Station/Bryan. Work is okay though I haven't really dived in yet. I'm learning to get used to the heat, my apartment AC is set at 75 and it feels cool to me now. The only thing I can really complain about is how far away New Hampshire is. Well and Ohio for that matter.
Friday night we bought a bunch of stuff from Wal-mart to furnish the apartment and get me the essential stuff you apparently need to live on your own. I'm still not convinced I needed kitchen knifes, my combat knife has a good edge on it! Saturday morning we got lucky and found a bed and was able to have it delivered before lunch. The rest of the day was spent making Wal-mart runs for stuff, unpacking and setting up shop. It was a long day.
Sunday I drove my mom to Houston to catch her flight to Cleveland and then I was on my own. When I got back to College Station I found the church I had emailed asking for recommendations on where to live. It was too late in the day to really meet anyone but I did get a tour from a college guy who's working as a janitor for the church. I'm looking forward to checking them out tomorrow.
Monday I started work. The whole week was a lot of reading. Project proposals, technical specs, documentation on the technologies we'll be using. I felt like I was in AI again at times. I read a lot about ontologies and semantic web programming. I did get to write a small Java program that just monitors a folder and then calls a special program to upload any files it finds in that folder then delete the originals. I'll be working mostly with Java,
Today I went hunting for furniture and was sucesseful. I found a sleeper couch for 100 bucks so I bought that, it'll be delivered Monday. Got a nice computer desk and a computer chair too. I almost have this place furnished!
Durring my furniture hunt I explored a lot more of College Station and Bryan. College Station and Bryan are twin cities. They are divided by University Dr, for all practical purposes you'd never know they were separate cities. The north side of Bryan is a little more run down than College Station, but I haven't found the bad part of town if it exists in either of them. College Station is really nice, it reminds me of Mentor OH but fancier.
There is a whole lot of businesses, some of them really neat. I found a bike shop and inquired about a bicycle to commute to work on, but the cheapest they have is 400 bucks! They gave me some really good information though. I also found a gun shop with an indoor pistol range thats a nice easy drive down Texas Ave, the main business road through both Bryan and College Station. Steven is coming through town so maybe we'll go shooting or something. Checked out the gun shop and they had a great selection. They even carried M1 Garands for a mere 900 bucks! And they had some beautiful lever action rifles. I want a lever action. I can't live in Texas and not own a lever action rifle! I wanna be a cowboy...
Found a store that is similar to the Ashtubula Outdoor Army Nave Store called Military Depot. They had some neat stuff, lots of old ammo cans, just about every military uniform you can think of, MOLLE packs, MOLLE packs with camelback water bladders built in, flack jackets, MREs, and toy guns! I mean the toy guns that look like real guns only with an orange plastic tip, the type I played with as a kid but which are now politically incorrect. Have you noticed that its impossible to find toy guns at Wal-mart or even real toy stores?
Also found a food store that carries Virgil's Microbrewed Root Beer. I am happy.
So far things are going as well as can be expected. I like College Station/Bryan. Work is okay though I haven't really dived in yet. I'm learning to get used to the heat, my apartment AC is set at 75 and it feels cool to me now. The only thing I can really complain about is how far away New Hampshire is. Well and Ohio for that matter.