Rough Draft

Bay Area Concerts

I haven't had a chance to look into the concert situation to deeply out here yet, so anyone out there know of any good shows coming up in the Bay Area that I should be checking out? A lot of the bands I want to see are on the Warped Tour right now, but I did see Fall Out Boy is doing a show at Slim's this Thursday. Anyone interested in hitting that show? Leave a comment or send me an email.

2004 Civic

I finally decided to go with a 2004 Civic EX rather than the Golf mainly because the Civic should be more reliable and was less less expensive. I was able to get the car at the dealership which is less than a mile from my apartment which will be conveinent when I need to take the car in for maintenance. I was also able to get a good price on the car without too much haggling. First, since its the end of the 2004 car year prices were already reduced and by emailing and calling various dealerships for price quotes I was able to get the dealership here to match the lowest price I could find. The car drives nicely and should last me quite a long time, especially because I don't expect to put a whole lot of miles on it per year, especially given the fact that I'll be biking to work most days.

Some interesting things I've seen while driving so far include a duck crossing sign and a license plate that said BLOGGIN.

I also want to add some kind of iPod connectivity to the car. The instructions here look promising. There's also the Alpine iPod head unit that ships in September for $100, but that will also require me to sink another couple hundred into an Alpine CD head unit so I doubt I'll go that route.

From California

Now that I've been out here in Cupertino for 10 days it's about time I update this thing. I arrived at the San Jose Airport at 9:45 on July 8th with my mom and grandmother. They stayed out here for a week to help me get some stuff done and so we could do some sightseeing. The first few days here were pretty long since most of the time was spent driving around and making appointments for such things as getting a bank account, looking at cars, getting car insurance, etc.

As far as sightseeing stuff, we went to the Winchester Mystery House on Sunday. The estate is absolutely huge, we walked approximately a mile inside the house without visiting the same room twice. As huge as the place is, you feel incredibly cramped inside. Mrs. Winchester was only 4' 10", so most of the ceilings are really low and the staircases are really narrow.

On Tuesday we went up to San Francisco and spent a majority of the time at Pier 39. We also took a boat cruise that went by Alcatraz, and under the Golden Gate Bridge. We were also going to take a trolley tour of the city, but the last tour apparently leaves at 4, so we ended up missing that. So I definitely want to do that at some point and I want to take the tour inside Alcatraz.

After they left on Thursday I went to the DMV and got my CA driver's license. It wasn't too busy when I went, so I was there a little under an hour, but I still had to wait in no less than 4 lines. I was also really surprised when I found out their written test is done with paper and pencil and corrected manually. Pennsylvania has had computer exams since at least 1996 when I took my test.

So far I've really enjoyed being out here. The weather is perfect, as expected. Hopefully my furniture and stuff from PA will be delivered later today or tomorrow evening and then I'll be pretty well setup out here.