The Mandelbear's Musings

Somehow I appear to have missed posting last week. We've moved. (Looking at the notes for last Sunday, I'm guessing that the reason I missed posting was sheer exhaustion -- that was a busy day, and I'd done more lifting than is good for me.)

We moved into the new house on Wednesday. The movers, from Two Men And a Truck, were fast and efficient - we were out of the apartment in an hour and a half. Highly recommended.

My new phone, on the other hand, is not highly recommended. It's a great phone, except that because it was factory unlocked it doesn't support HD Voice and, hence, WiFi Calling. That's bad, because the cell signal here is rather spotty. It could be worse, except that I actually have a signal in the house, albeit a weak one at times.

I spent hours on chat with AT&T's tech support, and hours in their store, and a little while in the T-Mobile store, trying to get the damned thing recognized by the network. No dice. Now it won't even work as a WiFi hotspot, which sucks. I'll have to swap it again. I hate phones. I hate phone companies. H8 H8 H8. (Basingstoke.)

We are mostly moved in, except that our beds are in the second pod, which isn't arriving until next week. Oops. So we're still on the sofabed, which is in the living room because we didn't want to try to deal with moving it out of the bedroom. It's not merely heavy, it's huge, and won't fit vertically through a doorway.

The house is going to take some getting used to. The kitchen is lovely and open, but doesn't have as much storage as we expected -- in particular, there's only one rather narrow set of drawers. So that will take some refactoring.

The biggest problem, though, is the cats. Ticia is no longer being aggressive toward Cricket, but she's curious. Cricket, however, is terrified, and just hides. That's going to take some work -- it's not the usual case where one cat is being aggressive, so the usual procedures for reintroducing cats don't really apply.

Other than that, though, I like it here. There are a few other assorted inconveniences, but the place itself is lovely -- calm and quiet.

( Notes & links, as usual )

I spent most of the week sick, miserable, and barely able to breathe at times, but got quite a lot done regardless. Everything is now out of the West Seattle house, which I suppose could be called "Rainbow's Ended" now; the third and final pod has been taken away, and all of the paperwork for both the sale of the old house and the purchase of the new one has been signed, in sessions with the respective traveling notaries. The respective closings are Tuesday and Wednesday.

In other news, my final payment from Amazon arrived -- less than I expected because I hadn't allowed for social security and medicare -- but my promised health care still hasn't. Should have just started COBRA and asked them to pay for it, which is probably what's going to happen.

Oh, yes -- our sink fell down. It had apparently been glued to the underside of the counter with a thin bead of silicone; the maintenance guy came by and propped it up with 2x4s. I feel like I'm living on Desolation Row.

Yes I received your letter yesterday, about the time the doorknob broke,...
When you asked me how I was doing -- was that some kind of joke?
Right now I can't read so good; don't send me no more letters, no
Not unless you mail them from Desolation Row

OK, so it was the sink and not the doorknob. My poetic license hasn't expired yet.

I do seem to be experiencing less anxiety this week, and I'm starting to look forward to living on Whidbey Island. I still don't feel as though I'm getting as much done as I should, but I do note in passing that I've updated my resume and three of the five websites that most needed it. I've gotten out of the apartment at least five of the last seven days, though not necessarily on foot. The other two did include something that might count as exercise, however.

BTW I'm feeling quite a bit better (physically) today, though still not up to par. Psychologically I'm still having problems. It's like a break-up, or losing a pet -- I keep wondering whether there was anything I could have done differently. It's going to be a rough couple of months, until we can actually move in -- we gave the present owner a 60-day leaseback, though it's not entirely certain that he'll use all of it.

( Notes & links, as usual )

It's been a long month this last week.

• We are very close to buying the house on Whidbey Island. Just a couple of things we have to check.
• As of Friday, I am officially a Retired Person. (I've been a member of the AARP for 20 years. It's still weird.
• I had a couple of panic attacks. The fact that I know what they are, how they work, and how to deal with them is helpful, but they're still something of an ordeal.

I had a very nice send-off party from the team at work; another team member was moving to another team, so it was a combined affair, and of course combined with the weekly Friday "Beer 30". I will miss those people. Naomi was able to come up for the party, so we were able to do a little singing (set list in the notes). Damned good thing, too -- I had greatly underestimated the amount of stuff I would be bringing home. I would have had to call a cab.

For some reason I'm not seeing all that many events this week outside the house-related stuff. Oh, well. Maybe that's enough.

( Notes & links, as usual )

It's been a week. I accepted my retirement package. It's the same amount of money as if I kept going until my original target date; if the notice is too short, they should have thought of that earlier. They are going to have to do a lot of scrambling -- there's a lot left to do. My teammates are probably going to be shocked -- I think my boss was, too; he apparently found out about the deal only days before I did -- and I'm rather sorry about that. Not sorry enough to keep working for two more months without any financial incentive for it, though.

In other news, we got two offers on the house, and accepted the higher one (25K over asking price) with the second as backup. We will have to make some concessions; it looks as though there's some $30K worth of sewer damage. Hopefully it will still come out in the neighborhood of our asking price.

Notable among things that went missing during the move to the apartment were my Android tablets. I'd meant to pack the 7" Nexus, at least. And I packed at least two bluetooth tablet keyboards. Oh, well. With two extra netbooks (blackbird and purple), the mac mini (whitewood), the server (nova), and a spare laptop (raven), it's not as though I'll lack for compute power. Networking in the apartment is incredibly slow; not sure how much of that is interference, but both ethernet and the A band work a lot better. Unfortunately neither Cygnus nor Raven seem willing to talk 802-11a.

On the other hand, I found my missing ORCA card (in my wallet in the one compartment I had overlooked) and the missing tax forms (in a separate folder, so thin that I thought it was empty). Still missing at least one form, with the interest from my HELOC.

I finally (on Tuesday) started working on my taxes. For that I use my old Mac mini, in part because unlike the Windows 7 partition on my laptop it's still receiving updates. Next year is going to be something of a nightmare; I may finally have to send them to an accountant. For now, TaxCut works fine.

Yesterday we went out to look at houses again. Another dome -- I like them, but it was at the top end of our price range and would have needed another $50K to make it work for us. The other place, in Auburn, was perfectly respectable and undoubtedly the best we can find that close to Seattle. But do we really need to be that close?

I also spoke to a (different) lender - this one is a long-time friend of our realtor - about the change in plans around retirement. Looks ok -- my credit is excellent (for the first time in years, I think), and I'll be making somewhere between 70 and 80K/year. More if one counts N's contribution to the household as rent.

The major omission of the week was following up on C's humira -- they were supposed to have called me back Monday. I was also very late getting in a call to my financial advisor -- that will have to wait for Monday, since "Good" Friday was a holiday.

The idea of retiring is beginning to be a little less surreal, though I don't think I could actually call it real yet.

( Notes & links, as usual )

This was a week of settling in to life at Split End -- our apartment in the U District. Unfortunately, we took pretty much everything that was in the kitchen -- even after taking two boxes back there's much more than we have room for. Yeah, the boxes fit in the apartment, but...

Much sadness about leaving Rainbow's End. Yes, it's an adventure, and Naomi says that she likes the way that I almost always say "yes" to adventures. I grumble about them while they're in progress, but then find that they were worth while. And she's basically right. I worry, and I get down on myself for the decisions that seemed like good ideas at the time, and freak out occasionally, but apparently I keep doing it. So here we are.

I have, however, been having a pretty rough time of it emotionally. Near as I can tell, because alexithymia. (Which is to say that emotions are happening, but I can't usually tell what they are. Only that they hurt.)

We are preapproved for a $300K mortgage on a second home. We will probably make any offer we make contingent on selling RE just so we don't get stuck with two mortgages if it doesn't sell right off or the buyers back out after the inspection. But still.

We can haz internet. Went with Comcast, because they do service with no contract. Had the devil's own time getting connected, in spite of the fact that Comcast could see and provision my modem just fine. Turns out that the only way to get a DHCP lease is to *reset* the modem! Remind me to stay away from TP-Link equipment in the future. (It also took me a long time to set my router up -- apparently you have to reboot it after a hard reset. Otherwise it just hangs in the boot loader, possibly waiting for a TFTP load.

Saturday we went to look at houses in Snohomish. The first was amusing; we were basically run off the property after the owner drove by our van to let us in, and saw our Obama bumper sticker. Ooooookay then. Thanks for telling us what we needed to know about the neighborhood.

The second place was superficially attractive; it even had a ramp--in the pictures. They had apparently removed it. It was, however, in pretty poor shape, with water damage to the floors and foundation issues. So we'll keep looking.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Last weekend was Pride, and Naomi took me to the Capitol Hill block party on Saturday -- fun! I took Colleen's rolling walker, which has a seat. That meant that while N was talking to someone, I could sit down -- that made it all possible.

My leg is healing -- right now all the pain is coming from the muscles that are compensating for the damaged one. I'll probably continue using the cane for the rest of the week.

I spent most of Sunday on move-related stuff, clearing out the last of what was in the laundry room and fridge. Fortunately I had Chaos and N's ex to do the sorting and carrying. So, not as much fun as Pride would have been, but it needed doing.

At work, I moved back into the building I started out in. Meanwhile, I've gotten pretty good at using the cane to push the wheelchair access buttons.

Links in the notes, as usual.

It's been a l o o o n g month. But we're moved in! Naomi's move was today; there's still a garage full of boxes, but the main part of it's done. And we have a *tub* upstairs. A *big* tub. We won't be needing a hot tub.

We also have bookshelves. The Elfa set that I installed in the "office corner" of the Great Room, the Elfa in the MBR and the YD's bedroom, and now (at last) Naomi's bookcases. They look rather empty at the moment, but that will change. We also have boxes of books. Two households worth.

There's even a low bookcase/credenza in front of my desk, so I now have someplace to put the printers. OK, my "desk" consists of a piece of plywood on sawhorses at the moment, but it's the principle of the thing.

In other news, Colleen has been off her feet for three weeks now. It looks like she's in for another four. :( At least Park West is a hell of a lot better than White Blossom, where she stayed in San Jose.

I'm finding it a little hard to believe that Rainbow's End is home now.

I should post more often, shouldn't I?

It's been a long, rough month this last week. It started last Monday with Colleen's endoscopic procedure to clean out her bile duct. That was apparently successful, but left her very bloated (they pump air in to give them space to work). She couldn't burp it up, because she was hurting too much to sit up or move around. And did I mention the mobility issues?

As a result, she couldn't keep much of anything down. Friday she fell in the bathroom, having missed the scooter by inches. The EMTs arrived only 15 minutes after the movers.

Did I mention that we moved Friday? Yeah. Stressed much?

The EMTs helped her up, but her pulse was racing, and they were unable to get a good blood pressure reading. They called an ambulance and took her to Northwest, where they immediately started pumping a very dehydrated Colleen full of fluid. Oh, and did I mention the diarrhea?

In the afternoon, I got a call at work from Naomi - the movers couldn't get either of the recliners up the stairs. I called Acorn's tech support to find out how to get the seats off the stairlift, and then had to explain how to take the back off the smaller of the two recliners to get it in through the bedroom door. :P

Sometime that afternoon, Colleen was transferred from Northwest to the UW main hospital. Not clear why.

Saturday, Colleen's pain levels finally subsided to the point where she was able to notice the extra pain in her right ankle. She'd broken it in the fall.

The "holiday" weekend was spent alternately moving (we'd cleverly had the movers take only the furniture, figuring that we'd take the boxes and electronics in the van) and visiting Colleen in the hospital. There was more stuff left in the apartment that I'd realized. Growf. I was only able to manage two loads/day.

Yesterday we found out that Colleen's ankle is broken in such a way that she can't have a walking cast. So she's going to need 24-hour care until it heals enough to walk on. Great.

<whinge>

Devon went home this morning. The dishwasher appears to be broken. There are still a couple of van-loads up at the apartment; fortunately we don't have to be out until Friday. One of our sets of apartment keys is missing. My depression is back, enough that I'm walking slowly enough to notice. Did I mention that my left ankle hurts? My tax refund hasn't arrived yet, and I need it.

I miss Colleen. The compensation, such as it is, is that the house still isn't in good enough shape for her to come home anyway.

</whinge>

Sunday morning, just hours before my flight left for Seattle, our router finally became unusable. It had been deteriorating for quite a while; I have no idea what the problem was. It would be good for a while after a reboot, then the lags would get steadily worse. By Sunday the "while" was down to about five minutes. I spent the rest of the day struggling to recover.

By the time I had to leave I had gotten our Linux-based WAP more-or-less configured, but it turned out that I had neglected to test ssh-ing in from the WAN side. So I spent the entire week without access to the files on the inside of the firewall. Including my email archives and password database.

Fortunately, I was able to set up email forwarding from savitzky.net to my gmail account, so I didn't miss much. Next time, though, things will be different. I'll write about that at some length later, for the geeks in my audience.

The flight was paid for by one of the two companies I had interviews with, Zillow. They'd booked through the aptly-named cheapflights.com (and ended up paying more than they would have through Southwest); my flights out were on Delta, and back on Alaska. Bletch.

I arrived in Shoreline well after midnight, and flopped into bed.

Monday morning I went with Naomi to get my first look at the new apartment, and pick up keys. Spent the rest of the week slightly croggled by the idea; there's nothing that makes it quite as real as a set of keys and a tape measure (which I wielded on Wednesday).

Monday afternoon was my interview at Zillow -- several coding tests and a lot of data structure and algorithm questions. I think I did ok. Gorgeous view from the 31st floor, a block from the waterfront. Great atmosphere -- it would be a fun place to work.

Tuesday afternoon was Intentional Software. Tougher questions for the most part, no idea how I did on that one. Very opulent and quiet offices, which I guess is what you can expect with Microsoft billionaires bankrolling it. Brilliant people; on average an older crowd than Zillow.

We'll see.

Wednesday I ran errands with Naomi, and we had lunch in Columbia City at a diner called Geraldine's Corner. Yummy chili with a side of excellent hashbrowns. After that she showed me the huge Goodwill in that area. I'll be back.

Thursday morning I had brunch with Chaos at another diner -- Shari's in Lynnwood. Which left me with just exactly enough time to drive down to Seatac and return my rental car. The trip back was, mercifully, nonstop, so I was able to get home in time for dinner. And to finish fixing the network setup, which only took about an hour once I had access from the inside.

All in all, a good trip.

Quite a few links in the notes, such as one accumulates over the course of five days without an update. The New Map of the Solar System has all thirteen planets (counting the five dwarfs).