Status Updatus

Today marks the two-year anniversary of our arrival in the great state of North Carolina. Those of you who read our "regular" website know not much has changed, we're pretty much steady-as-we-go. Of course, the "outside" has changed a great deal, what with the economy in a tailspin, new technologies coming online (I'm even considering a Twitter account, just to see what it's like) and world events playing an even greater role. In two days our new President assumes the mantle of power, and even though I respectfully disagree with him on a number of his political philosophies, I wish him (and by extension, our Nation) every success. And in turn, dear reader, health, happiness and love to you as we go forward (yeah, a little late, but we were busy at New Year's.)

- Pete (and Sara and Rigby)

Rigby as fine art

I know, I know, no updates since February. Lots happening. Not much time to post, so posts are limited to silly things like this:



(created with Museumr)

Oh What A Beautiful Morning, Oh What A Beautiful Day

Current temperature in Holly Springs: 72 degrees
Current temperature in Los Angeles: 55 degrees
("I don't care where you from, thet's funny right dere" - Larry the Cable Guy)

Today has been lovely - nice and warm, sunny, a bit blustery but not enough to make things cold. This is the second day of unseasonably warm weather here in Holly Springs, and tomorrow things are expected to plummet back to more typical temps. However, I was standing outside last night, watching the quarter-crescent moon, listening to the crickets, and thought: "Ya know the Pirates of the Carribean at Disneyland, the section right across from the Blue Bayou restaurant? Yeah, that's what this is like. Pretty sweet."

(my buddy Mike, whose Mom once described North Carolina as the "Land of Bugs and Snakes" is probably falling out of his chair laughing)

So where the heck have our updates been, anyway? Welp, Sara and I have been spending a lot of time these past few weeks unpacking, dealing with new vendors (and trying to extricate ourselves from the old ones) and generally trying to ramp our new lives here in NC to a comfortable speed. In addition, I've been working on a project for the SANS Institute (it's a course on Web Browser Forensics, if ya wanna know) which should hopefully pull in some cash once it's completed. Of course, this has resulted in my being very derelict in my blogging duties. Those of you who subscribe to this blog's RSS feed will see that there's a new post; those of you who don't know what RSS is.... hopefully you haven't given up on this and will see the new post when you check back (if you have the new Internet Explorer 7, click on the orange-ish button in the upper-right-hand-corner next to the "Home" icon.)

At any rate, I'll try and update more often now that things have calmed down somewhat. We even have some new pictures and video, so stay... tuned? More like logged in, I guess.

- Pete

Day 2: Still tired from the move

Well California prices were more than Pete could bear, so Sara said “Pete, move away from there!” She said “Carolina is the place you oughta be” so they loaded up the truck and they moved to N.C. .....
(Holly Springs, that is. Yards larger than a postage stamp. Actual seasons.)

Current location: Pete and Sara (and Rigby) residence, Holly Springs, North Carolina
Weather: Mostly cloudy, 37 degrees
Wind: Calm
Forecast calls for clouds and sunshine, a bit warmer

Yesterday was a big day for us. In the space of a few hours, we:

• Got cable service (TV and Internet) hooked up by Time Warner. Scott the cable guy (I came THIS close to calling him “Larry” more than once) was quite efficient, especially considering the irrigation folks had apparently severed the outside cable lines when they installed the sprinklers in December. Through no fault of his, I'm still having trouble getting everything hooked up to every computer, which I'll explain below.

• Got a refrigerator, washer and dryer installed by Sears. Vince had to take both the door from the garage to the house and the front door off the hinges to get the equipment in, and still had to unscrew the refrigerator door handles in order to push it into place. His talent was evident in that he did so with nary a scratch to the fridge nor to the rest of the kitchen.

• Got phone service hooked up by BellSouth AT&T. Larry (his name actually was Larry) didn't even have to come into the house, just needed to run another line (apparently our sprinkler guys were busy.) These two lines, running across our yard, will eventually need to be buried, thus resulting in more dug-up grass. We may have to re-sod the whole thing.

• Got all of our stuff off the moving truck and into the house by Bekins. Scott (the driver) and Steve, George and Carl got our stuff in place in record time. The move was accomplished with only two major casualties; unfortunately, those two casualties comprised two of the biggest-ticket items we own:

  • My 32” Sony KV32V15 Trinitron TV somehow had its casing... well... shattered. It's something of a miracle that the picture tube survived, but now I'm afraid to turn it on lest I start an electrical fire.
    
    

  • Our Select Comfort Sleep Number bed was handled rather poorly. It wound up with multiple grime marks on it, a big (and still wet) water stain on the duvet cover, and a tear in the bottom of the mattress cover. Yikes! We can't even sleep on the thing right now. It appears that it wasn't even wrapped for transport, which is particularly odd since they wrapped the couch and chair (ya know, the ones we couldn't give away to charity since they were too old and worn) in plastic.
    
    
    Both items are being submitted with Bekins for an insurance claim. More as it progresses...

On happier notes, Rigs is increasingly enjoying the increased space, both indoors and out. Here's a video of him running around the bedroom the first night. (Note: Semi-big file, avoid if you're on dial-up.)

More pictures as I get the computers working better. Why aren't they working well, you ask? Welp...

WARNING: The following paragraphs contain totally geeky talk. If you're not a technology-savvy person, just consider this post closed and we'll catch up later.

Okay, so Scott The Cable Guy (git-r-done) comes over and shows me the punchdown block in our utility closet on the first floor. Note that the preinstall of house wiring was done by a subcontractor for the builder, and multiple attempts to contact them or the builder and get more info on the wiring rough-ins have met with limited success. Anyway, all the ports in the house say Cat5e so I figure I have Ethernet throughout. When I finally get the pre-wiring company on the line, the rep says they installed all of the ports for phone and only TWO rooms for Ethernet. Never mind all the ports are RJ45 and as before say Cat5e. So STCG shows me the PDB and says yeah, here you have two dedicated Ethernet lines, and the rest are for phones, but since they ARE Cat5e you can run Ethernet over them as long as you don't mind losing the phone service for that room. So my office, for example, will have networking but no phone, which is fine since I'll use cordless anyway. BUT, since the PDB is not labeled, nor are any of the Cat5e wires, I now have to do a guesswork experiment to see which cord goes to which room. Phooey.

And then the other reason I have trouble with the computers is that this particular laptop was originally used for one of my computer security classes, so I installed VMWare on it. All well and good, but apparently when you install VMWare it does something with the virtual networking that interferes with the real networking on the host machine. I tried just uninstalling it, but that apparently was the worst thing I could do, and I've been fighting with issues on both Ethernet and WiFi (like it taking away all of the network property settings and giving me a “file not found” error if I try to reinstall one) since late December. I'll just pull all the data off this laptop and reinstall from CDs, but in the meantime it's a major pain in the neck.

We're here, we're here! Let the bells ring out and the banners fly!

Yaaaay! We pulled into the driveway about 7:30 local time, in a light almost-freezing rain. Since we don't have an Internet connection as yet, there was a delay in posting news of our arrival. Ever the resourceful one, I'm coming to ya live from the Holly Springs Library. Of course, I promptly left the jump drive with all the cool pictures at home, so we'll just wait until Monday for the visuals. In the meantime...

How Music and Editing Can Affect the Tone of A Movie Trailer
"Mary Poppins" as a Horror Movie
"Office Space" as a Psycho-Killer Thriller
and the best one...
"The Shining" as a feel-good family comedy

For some strange reason it had to be, it was all a dream about Tennessee

Location: La Quinta Inn, Knoxville, TN
Weather: Cloudy, 30 degrees (feels like 25)
Winds from NE at 1 mph
Forecast calls for cloudy and a little warmer

Well, hopefully tomorrow's the day we pull into our driveway at home (it'll take some getting used to saying that and not thinking of an alley in Van Nuys.) I finally got the iPod charged so we had some appropriate traveling music (we used XM all the way there; good stuff, but not exactly what we wanted, although I take it as a good sign that we listened to Larry the Cable Guy yesterday.) Had a nice Italian dinner last night as we didn't want to overload on Tennessee barbeque two nights in a row. Ahead of us is some snow forecast in Raleigh, so we're going to tread very carefully. Note that we won't have Internet access at the house, so don't get scared if the blog isn't updated right away when we arrive. Here we go...

Slip-slidin' away - Then I'm walking in Memphis

Location: La Quinta Inn & Suites, Memphis, TN
Weather: Cloudy, 24 degrees (feels like 13)
Winds from NNE at 12 mph
Forecast calls for partly cloudy and a little warmer

Travel Day Four - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to Memphis, Tennessee
More uneventful travel. Much less ice and snow on the road, even on the sides. EXCEPT in Oklahoma City, where they seem to have neglected to plow ANYTHING. Rigs even had a skidding adventure in the hotel parking lot, but he recovered his dignity very quickly. Once back on the freeway, the road was clear and dry, tho we did pass an occasional wiped-out trailer or semi.

We had ribs tonight from Brad's Bar-B-Q (small TN family-run chain). Yummy. Unfortunately Sara managed to spill most of her side salad onto the carpet of our hotel room (hopefully we got it clean enough and it won't be considered a Rigby accident!) Sara did say it was the best banana pudding she's had in a while (not too sweet). Since we've had little time for sightseeing, we've been trying to have city/state-specific cuisine for dinner each night (hit or miss, depending upon the weather).

Tomorrow we'll head across Tennessee and show up in Knoxville near the border (one of those quick driving days I mentioned.) Heading east, Sara definitely has a preference for the landscapes of Arkansas and Tennessee over the tundras of the further west states. We plan to make it "home" to Holly Springs on Thursday. The moving truck with our belongings comes Saturday (or so?). Once we get to NC, then we're without a fridge, land line phone, cable & cable modem, washer & dryer until those deliveries/installations next Monday. Might have to blog post from the new local Holly Springs library...

Rigby certainly likes the more comfortable beds of the La Quinta Suites vs. just the La Quinta Inn. Note the special blanket we laid out for his enjoyment.