I got a job (no really). Working for a distributor of high end kitchen appliances as Senior Desktop Support/Junior System Administrator. Start Friday.

http://www.purcellmurray.com/

So I was very lazy in the first 2 months that I was here. I just started applying for a job early January and I actually had a phone interview with a company in Santa Clara yesterday. Tomorrow we are going to schedule a time for me to go down there and have a face to face interview. Hopefully everything goes well and I get the job so I can start making money again. My savings will last a long time to come but really don’t want to use it all.

If I haven’t been applying for jobs, what have I been doing? Left 4 Dead. It’s you and 3 other people vs hordes and hordes of zombies. And not “Night of the Living Dead” zombies. We’re talking “21 Days Later” type. Also been hiking. Here are some of my hikes plus random pictures. There are so many places to go hiking that I can go hiking for a few years and not hit all the places in a 60 mile radius of the city. I also started using the P90X workout routine and let me tell you, it is hard. Very hard. I couldn’t even finish the first two day’s workout. However the last two day’s haven’t been as tough. You basically have to scale back and do less reps than they are doing on the video and work your way up.

Moved into my new place today. It really is amazing how much stuff you can fit into a Civic and how tired you get after bringing it all back down 3 flights of stairs. I need a chair though because typing from the corner of the bed is no fun. I also need to go through my clothes and really determine which clothes I can donate because I will probably never wear half of them.

Another thing is that parking is really bad in some places. I have to leave before 9am tomorrow because the only place for parking I could find was on the side of the street that has street cleaning tomorrow. That’s alright because I need to go to Target anyway to pick up a few things. Once I get back though, I’ll be starting my job hunt. Here is my short checklist

1. Buy a chair
2. Buy a fabric steamer (it is amazing how wrinkled clothes get when left in a space bag for 3 weeks)
3. Buy bus pass
4. Buy some groceries
5. Determine what stuff needs to be unpacked
6. Donate old clothes
7. Review resume

Finally found a room. It is on Mission St at Geneva Ave and will be sharing the house with 3 other people. The guy I’m subleting the room from is visiting Mexico for a few months which should give me enough time to do some job hunting and then move closer to wherever that is. Moving in December 1st.

In my search, I saw places with rooms the size of a large closet, huge rooms in the scary areas of the city. Places where the smell of weed or potpourri is overpowering. I didn’t go to it but there was also a free room in exchange for light cleaning and wearing fetish outfits during parties. There were a few nice places that I waited to long on deciding and missed out on though.

Once I move in, I’ll be starting my job hunt.

My mistake for now updating sooner. I wasn’t able to update on the road and once I got here, just sort of forgot. Anyway I’ll do a recap of my trip.

Photos from the move

Day 1 – After spending most of the night packing and continuing to pack in the morning, I set off at 7:30am for Lafayette to take the BSCI exam. I thought I would have had more time studying so I wasn’t very confident in passing the test. I did better than I thought and made a 745/1000. Need to make a 790 though. I know what I have to study more now so I will pass it in my next attempt in a couple of weeks. After the test I had lunch with a friend and headed off to Wichita where my cousin lives. I thought I could make it there around 10pm but I was wrong. A really bad rain in Dallas slowed me down but I made it there around 1am. They have two big dogs but they were really good once they stopped barking. I feel asleep easily. I had been awake since 5am.

Day 2 – My goal for the day was to make it to Denver and headed out around 10am. The day was mostly uneventful. Kansas is boring. I did stop and take some pictures of snow I saw on the side of the road. While I was stopped and working with my phone, a state trooper had pulled behind me and knocked on my door. I was startled but he was making sure everything was alright. Once to Denver, I stayed at a hotel and had a bison steak for dinner. The waitress suggested taking I-70 instead of I-80 if I wanted to see snow. Shouldn’t have listened.

Day 3 – As I left Denver early in the morning, the mountains were amazing. I had to go through winding roads and eventually I started to see frozen water trails coming down the side of the mountains. While I filled up for gas, the little city was covered in snow. Apparently driving in snow is harder than I thought. As I stopped at a rest area, I was driving on a road and needed to turn left. Well my wheels turned left but my car kept going in the same angle. Object in motion stays in motion. Well thankfully there was a snow bank on the side of the road and a pole as I hit both and was stuck. I showed that pole though because I knocked it down. About 10 minutes later somebody came and pulled me out. I drove much slower after that.

Once I left the snowy mountain, I was driving across Utah towards Salt Lake City where I planned to stop. It was a nice drive but was still light when I made it there so I decided to keep going. Around dark, I had made it to some city in Nevada and stayed in a casino for the night. It was no Vegas casino. After checking my GPS, I figured I could make it to San Francisco in about 10 hours so I went to sleep.

Day 4 – Last day of travel. I headed out and for being a desert, Nevada isn’t all that bad. There were some nice mountains in the distance but was pretty boring overall. Stopped in Reno for lunch and crossed into California not long after. You could see the mountains that had been burnt by wildfire but it was a really nice drive. It had just gotten dark about the time I passed Sacramento and after getting lost a couple of times, I finally made it to Keith’s. We unpacked all of the stuff in the car, carrying it up 4 flights of stairs and went to sleep some time later.

So now I’m in San Francisco, sleeping on Keith’s couch and I spent all yesterday sending emails inquiring about available rooms. We are planning on going to an LSU bar to watch the game today.

So after a not to good LSU game, and a long weekend, I’m just about ready to go. There are a few last things to pack, such as this computer but I still have to study for the Cisco test. Did the whole last visit to family and friends and now I just want to sleep because tomorrow will be a long one.

The path of my trip will go this way. It will take me 5 days since I will only be driving about 8 hours a day.

Baton Rouge
Lafayette
Shreveport
Dallas
Wichita
Denver
Salt Lake City
Reno
San Francisco

Google Maps

Decided to go this route to avoid the deserts and for a chance to see snow. My first day will start with leaving at 7:30am, driving to Lafayette for 9am, taking the Cisco test, eating lunch with a friend, and then heading to my cousin’s in Wichita for the night. Apparently my timing was off as it will be around midnight and not 10pm when I get there. Unfortunately (or thankfully if the midnight time is right), nobody will be there as she will be in Little Rock and her husband will be at work. Google Maps Day 1

I’m also going to be recording via GPS my trip. Every night I’ll upload the trip to Everytrail.com so people can track it. It is not real time tracking like I wanted but this will work out. Here is my profile where you can see my progress.

For now I have to finish packing, do the last load of laundry, and continue studying. I am 90% sure I am going to fail this test.

I’m in the middle of packing and studying. A few months ago I decided that I wanted to get more into the network side of my work and took ICND1, the first of the Cisco certification exams. I became an CCENT, Cisco Certified Entry Networking Technician, after passing the exam. What that basically means is that I am certified to turn on a router or a switch. Cisco created the exam because the CCNA was too hard and too many people were failing. In mid-October I took the ICND2 exam and passed that. Now I’m a CCNA, Cisco Certified Network Associate.

The exam I’m studying for now is the BSCI, Building Scalable Cisco Internetworks, which is the first of four exams for the CCNP, Cisco Certified Network Professional. The problem is that I’m in the middle of packing, visiting with family and friends, and being lazy about it. The best part is that I’m taking the test on Monday. Yup the same Monday that I move to San Francisco. On the way through Lafayette, I’m stopping for 2 hours to take the BSCI.

Thankfully, I know going into the test I will most likely fail so if I do fail, it won’t be a big disappointment. But if I pass, it will make my drive a lot easier.

August 2000. I had been accepted to go to Georgia Tech but due to the cost, I decided to go to LSU. A week before the school started, I told my mom that I was going to move to Atlanta, become a resident, and then I could go to Georgia Tech as an in-state student. Mom was not too happy. But I did move. While I was there, I didn’t do much besides drive 45 minutes to work and back, go to Drew’s dorm and hang out there, and sit in my purple painted room. Notice how eating wasn’t mentioned. While I was there, I was so poor I could not afford anything besides Ramen noodles and oatmeal. After I lost 30 pounds in 3 months, I decided to move home. Mom was happy. I was not ready for the real world.

August 2006. I finally graduated from LSU and am now ready to enter the real world for the second time and I wanted to move. So I started looking at where. Los Angeles and New York had too many people so I looked at the other end. Vermont. It looked good on paper. They had nice weather during the summer, and snow during the winter. I’ve seen snow on the ground once in my life. But the more I looked, the more it didn’t seem like a good idea. Businesses were normally small and there was almost no people. The largest city of Burlington had a population of 45,000 which is half of what Death Valley sits on any given Saturday during football season.

So I looked around that area. Boston, Connecticut, and a few others. In the end, I decided to stay in Baton Rouge a few years and get some work experience before I make another mistake like Atlanta. Well in the mean time, some friends moved away and settled in San Francisco. They kept raving about how nice it is blah blah blah. Ok, I’ll bite. I have thought about San Francisco before. The area is overflowing with tech jobs, the climate is great year round, and it is about the size of a city I’m looking for.

July 2008. For the July 4th holiday, my friends said I could stay at their places. I hop on a plane and arrive at Midnight and stayed with Keith and Terri. The next day few days, I walk around San Francisco while they are at work and at night we go around town to see more stuff. The last few days I stayed at Trey and Shani’s. We did more traveling around the East and North Bay so I got a chance to see a lot of San Francisco. One thing I didn’t do was “touristy” stuff. I really don’t care for that plus this was an audition. I had a week to decide if San Francisco was where I wanted to move. If you can’t tell by the name of this post, it passed.

November 2008, Today. I’ve had this page for a long time but never could think of anything to do with it. I figure this would be a perfect use. The best part is that I can be as long winded as I like (I have a problem keeping stories concise when I talk). During the move I’ll try to keep this updated at least once a day.