Well, all of my stuff arrived today. Of course, when I say “all” I mean “everything except my bedframe, a box of tools, and no doubt several other things I have yet to realize are missing.” The good news is my TV and speakers suffered zero damage and appear to work flawlessly. Plus, not a single dish was broken. The bad news is that my computer desk was turned into a pile of broken wood and twisted metal. Same goes for my TV stand which was splintered and broken. Anyhow, I’ve started to unpack and hopefully everything will fit. I picked up a new TV stand after work today so I could set all that up. I still need to buy a couch. And a new desk, apparently.

I’m in my new home, albeit a very empty one until the movers come. I’ll take pictures once I have all of my stuff moved in.

Speaking of movers, apparently I’d underestimated the weight of my stuff by about 2,000 pounds (estimated 2500 pounds, ended up being over 4000) and therefore it will cost me about $1200 more than expected to move. Awesome! The movers will come sometime next week at which point I’ll be able to unpack and feel like I really live there… although Comcast won’t come until next weekend so I still won’t have cable/internet access until then. Thank god for Seattle’s wealth of coffee shops with free internet access.

Check out this employee profile. What a go-getter! No need to read through the whole thing and make fun of Marysharon line by line though, I’ve already done that.

We just spent the last night in Spokane, WA, so we should have a little under 5 hours of driving before we’re in Seattle. Montana and North Dakota were beautiful states to drive through. Western Montana and Northern Idaho were also nice to drive though, but seemed a lot like Northern New Hampshire.

On Friday my father and I made it into Toledo, Ohio, where we spent the night. When we woke up we went to Waffle House for breakfast. We noticed that across the streed was a gas station. Like most gas stations it had a sign with 3 prices on it. On this particular gas station, the prices were for: Unleaded Fuel, Deisel Fuel, and Marlboro Cigarettes.

Yesterday we went from Toledo to Chicago. We stopped in Chicago for lunch, and went to the top of the Sears tower just to check it out. It was very cool. It seemed like much of downtown Chicago (at least the area we were in) was closed on weekends. It was more professionally-oriented and catered to the office workers. We left Chicago and made it to Minneapolis. We stopped over and met Marysharon’s parents who live in Woodbury, MN. We had a good time and it was a nice break from all of the driving.

From what I understand, from here on out a lot of boring, Western states are in our future.

It all started yesterday. My plan was to have the movers come today, September 8th, and then my dad and I would begin driving out tomorrow. I get a call yesterday at 11AM from the movers saying “what time today should we come?” to which I replied “today?”. I told them I could probably be packed up by 5pm, and was actually pretty happy that they decided to come a day early rather than a day late.

They show up early at 4pm, and a guy named Avi comes in and has me sign all of the paperwork where I basically say they can break all of my things because they’re all worthless. I was aware this was coming which is why I purchased moving insurance separately. Avi and his friend (who’s name I never learned) worked on moving what I had packed while I continued to pack. I came to find out they live in Brooklyn, and Avi moved here from Israel when he was 26. He wouldn’t tell me how old he was now, but as he packed up my TV he said “I wish I had liked school more. Why? Why? Why?” I bought pizza for him and his coworker, who didn’t speak much English. Avi scolded him for having a slice of pepperoni because it contained pork. He kind of laughed it off and switched to cheese.

They were good guys. Avi’s friend was trying to teach me some phrases which sounded Arabic that I could say to women if I ever went to Israel. They ended up finishing around 8pm, at which point I started cleaning up. The apartment is mostly empty now, as you can see in the picture. I’ll turn in my keys today and the drive out West starts tomorrow.

Some of you probably know Joe, Cindy’s boyfriend. He started a school in New York City that is wrapping up it’s first summer session now, getting ready for the first full school year. They are the KIPP Infinity Charter School.

They have an Amazon wishlist you can use if you want to help buy them some materials for the school. There’s a lot of inexpensive stuff on there and it’s very easy to purchase. So, if you’re feeling generous, hook ’em up.

The products we’ve been working on at work won a few awards apparently. That’s pretty cool.

I’m shopping for a laptop, and one of my main requirements is high screen resolution (for the non-nerds, that means the text all ends up really small so you can fit lots of stuff on your screen). All of the terminology for screen resolutions is f’n confusing, but I’ve managed to assemble this table of what the codes mean:

Seems like if it starts with a “W” that means widescreen (sweet) and if it has a “U” in it, that means it has an Ultra high resolution (even sweeter).

I want a laptop with a “U” class screen. I don’t want it to be bulky, so the monitor should be less than 17″. It should also be pretty, otherwise I won’t be the envy of all the nerds. Does anyone have any suggestions? Note the G4 PowerBook, while it looks good, doesn’t make the cut because of the screen.

I’m currently considering the Acer Ferrari 4000 (even though the resolution is WSXGA+, that’s pretty good), the Sager 3880 (pretty much a bargain for what you get), and even the always crazy, Voodoo Envy n:522. That’s a little expensive though, and I’ve heard bad things about their customer service.

Any other recommendations?

With Callahan moving to Dallas and me moving to Seattle, we decided to have “The Goodfellas” get back together again for one last night. Since we spent most of high school together (with no girls to be found) it was only appropriate that the reunion was similar – although Allison was there as our official picture taker. She took this picture back when we graduated in 1997:

At that time, from left to right: Sarge was planning on going to UNH, after having gotten in to Holy Cross but screwed up the paperwork for financial aid. Deion was getting ready to go to Northeastern where hopefully he would meet his first girlfriend. Tom was going to Carnegie Mellon and I think was in the middle of a girlfriend breakup at this time. Callahan was going to UNH where he would live with Sarge because they’re BFF. Schulte was going to BC, and I’m sure didn’t believe he had any chance of meeting a woman. Ever.

Now in 2005:

We lined up in the same order because we’re complete tools, and Allison was once again the photographer. Sarge graduated from UNH, then went to BU for law school. He’s now a lawyer in Massachusetts, he went gay, and lives with his boyfriend in Lowell (where the picture was taken). Deion spent a trimester or two at Northeastern before dropping out and working a string of wildly successfull retail sales jobs. He now works at Best Buy in Concord and seems to have a good stream of electronic toys which we can only assume were purchased legally. He finally has a girlfriend. Tom got a Master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon, and after being a total nerd on the East Coast is reloating to the West Coast to continue being a nerd, but hopefully to a lesser extent. He’s dating a girl who works at Microsoft, which isn’t a good sign. Callahan graduated from UNH then went to Harvard (after a brief bit at Stanford) to get his law degree. He is making stupid money, he’s engaged [to a woman], and is moving to Dallas. Schulte finished up at BC, better late than never, and unexpectedly was the first person of our group to get married. He lives in a house in NH, participates in a bowling league, and for all intents and purposes his life is over.