Jackelopette

I live, I am well, and I have had an excellent holiday season. It is extended by another few weeks – David comes home soon for mid-tour leave.

I can’t wait.

Well, at least not patiently.

Thus, I direct you to my Twitter feed and Flickr account for the details. I’m finding it far easier to do short-form writing and posting these busy days.

Holidays were spent first in Ojai/Ventura/Santa Barbara, then the Bay for New Year’s Eve. I highly recommend spending the Eve in San Francisco with friends, though buying club tickets ahead of time is something I will do differently next year. See Flickr for partial, unculled proof.

Where to start, where to start…

I suppose I’ll just do some bullets and explain as needed… or perhaps I’ll simply let you ask for clarification in comments and other emails.

* David forgot his passport.
* We missed our shuttle bus, so we parked near the airport and left the car there for two weeks.
* At first we didn’t get upgraded, so we hung out in the lounge.
* Got upgraded to upper business class, with the sleeper cubicles, nice blankets, free food and drink and copious entertainment.
* Saw The John Snow pub, and the pump, on our first night there.
* Rode the London Eye and toured Westminster Abbey.
* Went to Bristol and saw the Banksy takeover of the City Museum there.
* Visited Covent Garden and its lovely shops.
* Rode horses in Hyde Park.
* Saw Godot banner outside the theater in Haymarket.
* David waited in line for a few hours to get us tickets…
* Wandered the Greek and Egyptian exhibits at the British Museum, which was delightfully near our hotel.
* Saw Waiting for Godot with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. For ten pounds each, we were just a couple of feet from the stage, at eye level with it, and close enough to be spat upon. And we now have a signed poster. Magical.
* Tower of London.
* ER Visit. Then more wanderings along the river, a food faire, and more Tower.
* Packing and Covent Garden again.
* Flight to DC.
* Lunch with Bob
* The Buying of Beers. Many beers.
* Dinner with Elizabeth, Maria, and Dawson.
* Taxis, the Mall, and other shenanigans with the family.
* Katie and the Congress Members Only elevator.
* Aunt Cindy arguing with Elton Gallegly.
* The F-22 filibuster.
* The incessant photos. Also “don’t worry, everyone can tell anyway”…
* The car chase.
* 4-H people at Union Station.
* Cigars on the roof.
* Train to New York
* Burritos
* Subway riding to Ground Zero
* Meeting Heather at Times Square
* Outstanding dinner at the Greek place for Restaurant Week
* Early departure for West Point
* Confusing directions
* West Point Tour – imagination and stories collide
* Lunch on our own
* BBQ with family
* Harry Potter
* Reunion – we took Joby
* Squirt guns
* 4-square
* Web access
* Beer!
* Frisbee
* Pool
* More beer, and pizza
* Brunch with Eliz’s brother’s family
* Puddlejumper with Buffy
* Long flight with the young private
* Home.
* Unpacking
* Repacking
* Dinners
* Departures

Goodbye for now, love. See you in half a year, or two seasons, however we choose to measure the time. Help me make it go quickly?

It’s pretty cool, actually.

Google Voice Info

For me, remaining Stateside, it’s been a breeze to set up and configure, using both my browser and my personal cell phone.

Some of the perks:

• Permanent forwarding phone number for as long as Google Voice exists… (chances are good that you’re reading this via Facebook and can get my number there, or I’ve already given it to you)
• Can ring multiple phones according to a schedule I set. This is important later.
• Free SMS/texting from Google Voice to any phone, can receive and store free texts. So, now that David has an account, I can text him with my thoughts of the day and get a response whenever he logs in.
• Voicemail transcripts texted and/or emailed to your phone (depending on your settings)… though if you’re not careful, saying “Google Voice Account” can become “Good Boy Scout” in the transcript! Voicemails can also be forwarded or downloaded. Transcripts also have a “thumbs up/down” rating system, which helps train the transcribing program.
• Free US calling, cheap international calling.
• Routing phone calls based on who’s calling and which phone you want to have ring… so I don’t *HAVE* to be notified when an ex or the dentist calls!
• Screen or block calls based on caller, and change the voicemail greeting for whomever it is… so David gets his own greeting if he ever bothers to use this number. I’m still recording others for my friends and family.
• Conference calling, recording, and phone switching… so if one phone’s battery starts to die I can switch to another without losing the call.
• All the additional perks of Google contacts, email, etc… linked to your Voice account. Think calendars and conversations. Win.

All in all, it’s been a fantastic service and I need to make more people use my Google phone number rather than my established personal phone number.

I had to wait a month or two on the waiting list to get my account, but they’re moving rapidly through the list and giving priority to anyone with a .mil email address. Which brings me to my next point…

Google Voice for Service Members

As I said above, gVoice requires a physical phone to forward calls. Here’s the catch for my poor deployed David … he disabled his T-Mobile account for the duration, although he did get reception in Kuwait before his account expired. So he’s without a physical phone/number right now, and gVoice won’t let you complete the setup process until you’ve entered a phone number that it can call to confirm the account. >.<

I was able to game the system by using my Crackberry to activate his account. I then tried to remove the Crackberry from his account but was told that I had to have at least one actual phone on the account – and to add an alternate phone requires the call-to-confirm step. So I can’t untether the Crackberry from the account until gVoice lifts that requirement or David adds another phone-that-works.

Fortunately, I can tell gVoice never to call the Crackberry on “weekends or weekdays” and can place a “do not disturb” on that phone from David’s account. So it’s not a dealbreaker, but I imagine that several military users are facing greater challenges with the requirement. If Google responds to my tech support email on this topic, I’ll post any helpful info they give me here.

In short, I give it a 9.5/10 for my personal account (the transcripts and mobile interface need some work, and I’m sure they can find a way to work around the smartphone app blocks through a better mobile page) and an 8/10 for David’s account, ’cause of the deployed military setup issues.

Go forth, enjoy. And let me know your account number, if you get one.

In lieu of actual text, I’ll remind you that I have a Flickr photostream. You can also see a mini preview in the navigation bar to the left.

<<— over there.

I have had a busy, busy month.

I’m now living in a 1-bedroom apartment, in Davis, with my beloved cat and my very own bills. While I have the basic furniture, I’d really like a couch. The bedroom, kitchen, and dining room are all functional, but I have no place besides the floor to crash and watch movies.

That said, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to contemplate the lack of couch. The first weekend back in Davis I spent arranging all my many boxes of stuff and acquiring more stuff to store said stuff and basically settling in to my revised life. Then there was Picnic Day – I entered one of the Alumni Association drawings and ended up with a new duffle bag filled with stuff. Not bad, but more stuff to arrange.

I left for San Francisco the Monday after Picnic Day for the Web 2.0 Expo with my colleagues. Not a bad trip in the least, but it did mark the first of several overnight trips away from my new nest. We spent the majority of the time in meetings with our developers and ironing out bugs… but the eating was good and the company enjoyable.

Two weeks ago Grammy passed away.

I had just returned from San Francisco when I heard, and was looking forward to a trip to Seattle. I ended up heading back to Ojai instead. I won’t say the weekend was easy, but it was surprisingly relaxing in many ways.

I sang Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus at the funeral, and spent most of the weekend reconnecting with all the family members I haven’t seen in a year or more. It felt a little strange at first, but the overall consensus was that Grammy always wanted to be in the middle of wherever the family party was taking place, so it was our duty to give her a good party. There were a few who missed the proceedings, but I think we gave Grammy a good send-off.

About 30 minutes after I returned home, I started a lovely bout of digestive upset. It knocked me out for the bulk of Monday and Tuesday of last week. After a frenzy of catch-up work, I headed up to Seattle for the first purely relaxational weekend I’ve had in a long time. Oh, it was lovely.

Now I’ve returned to Davis once more, and perhaps this will be a normal week. No, in fact it won’t.

I’ve come down with a cold.

So a couple of weeks ago, as I was in the throes of my homesickness, my boss (who is awesome) offered me the chance to return to California. Specifically, Davis.

So all my plans got tossed in the air, I’m moving in less than two weeks, and I have the joy of coordinating all the ACCESS stuff plus packing and finding an apartment and dealing with the moving of all my stuff between Ojai and Davis (again), aaaand oh yeah. Steven and Allison are getting hitched on the 5th of April. I depart DC with all the stuff I’ve accumulated here on April 3. On April 8 I head north from Ojai with said stuff, plus all the stuff from my previous residences.

Yup.

Color me busy.

Visited Mount Vernon today with a new friend from Council.

Much fun was had, sarcasm exchanged, and general merriment made.

Highlights:

• “Welcome to Mount Vernon Airlines…”
• George Washington was a 4-Her ahead of his time… he even planted clover to aid in crop rotation!
• “Please do not photograph George Washington’s dentures.”
• “Your Exalted High Mightiness… Mr. President.”
• Cavies and sheep. ‘Nuff said.
• The two primary house slaves at Mount Vernon… names in common with folks I know now, in (dare I say it) somewhat similar positions.
• A Dargan’s-style Irish pub in Old Town Alexandria. Need I say more?

Actually, it’s not all that bad.

But I’m still without my computer, and likely to remain that way until at least November 27th. Take that, all my glowing thoughts of HP’s service centers. I’m afraid your reputation is somewhat tarnished.

Things that have annoyed me about this repair:
1. Having to call THREE times AND chat with a technician to ensure that the ship-to address (once the repair’s completed) is NOT the ship-from address (i.e. Oak View).
2. Still not being completely confident that the address change made it through.
3. A 2-week delay that wasn’t communicated until the original “completed repair” delivery date.
4. Much as I like to think of myself as culturally tolerant, the current outsourcing of techs to other countries doesn’t work all that well for me. Mostly it’s because I have had some MAJOR difficulties in the last three weeks communicating my problems to techs whose English is not fluent. Especially when I use alternate terms for technical things… (i.e. “power strip” vs. “surge protector”).

Other than the computer rage, I’m settled in, I’m tweaking webpages and working on a lot of random little projects, and so far my life in the DC area seems to be going well. Quiet, very quiet, but well. Boston for Thanksgiving will be a welcome change – even if it’s quiet, it’ll be quiet in the fun kind of way I’ve come to expect from good friends. I hope.

I’ve made it into DC twice so far (this past Saturday and Sunday). I’m still processing what I saw and heard on Sunday – I was there for the 25th anniversary rededication of the Vietnam Wall. I stood in a crowd of thousands of veterans on Veterans Day, and listened to the stories told by people who lived it, and felt myself moved. The English major in me wants to sift through the layers of emotion and meaning I found, but then I feel that to overanalyze might weaken the effect it had on me. So I’ll say that I was there, and that afterwards I told my grandfather and my uncle, and that I sincerely hope I won’t forget it.

This weekend I’ll explore some of the Smithsonian museums – Air & Space is first on my list, then I’ll explore the rest as the mood takes me.

The Holocaust museum is also high on my list, but I’ll be careful of my mood before I go. From all tales, and from my own experience at the center in Los Angeles, I know that this one will be an intense visit.

So yes, friends and family, I’m here, I’m doing pretty well, and I’m feeling at home enough to challenge myself by seeking sights and sound and adventure. I’ll post again when I have more to say, and certainly when my thrice-accursed computer finally shows up.

Announcement:
While it’s all very much still undecided, I do have an opportunity to do a 3-month internship at the National 4-H Council in Chevy Chase, MD. Once I get a few more of the details worked out, I intend to go do it. I’m excited. It’s about time.

Boston was a good trip. Very few of my plans worked out as expected, but it ended up being a fun fun time. Essentially, I tweaked my back and ended up staying out late, so my planned tours didn’t exactly happen the way I’d intended. So, some highlights:

• Mrs. Hoye look-alike on the Midway-Providence flight. Quite disturbing, for any of my readers who went to VPS. *shudder* And she was directly ahead of me in the SWA line.
• Staying with a couple high school buddies whom I don’t get to really hang out with that often… things change but fun stays the same.
• Harvard Yard was an instance of major deja vu – geography is very very similar to Trinity College. I lolled and people-watched. I may not be a Harvard or MIT grad, but at least I have used the same toilets as the finest minds of my generation… now what does that say about me?
• Eating dinner outside Fenway Park during the Sox-Angels game and watching the fans. Also laughing at the t-shirts.
• Harvard Bridge and Smoots.
• MIT Hacks. I got the first-person commentary on a few of them from Jason…
• The MIT Great Glass Pumpkin Patch. Pretty pretty glass pumpkins.
• I didn’t do the full Freedom Trail but I did manage to wander around Boston Common with an old and a new friend. Horses need diapers.
• Air Force guys are highly entertaining. So are engineers. Commentary becomes comedy…

Now that I know what to expect, my next visit should encompass everything I missed and more. It also got me quite interested in the DC thing. I can’t wait to see more of the east coast… consider me hooked.

Here I am, in Boston, hanging out with a couple good friends… and by sheer coincidence another (completely unrelated) friend happens to be in town too. So I’ve gone from no set plans to an abundance of wandering-buddies.

…Excellent.