Friday, February 1, 2008

I'm Moving!

On April 7, I get the keys to my new apartment. This is important for several reasons. In no particular order:

- I will be freed from the mold-ridden, flood-prone craphole that is my current apartment.
- I will no longer be living on the first floor, and hence less prone to water issues.
- I will be moving into a 1-bedroom apartment, and therefore once again living alone.
- The new apartment is in a brand new building. I will be the first person to ever live in my unit.
- The new apartment is big at 862 square feet, and cheap for comparable units in the area.
- I will still be close to work. Only about 2.5 miles each way.

Here's an official floor plan, borrowed directly from their website:

Official Floor Plan

Get a good look at that? Good, because that's not at all what my unit will look like. I'm going to have a mirror-image flipped version of what you see above. I took the liberty of flipping the image horizontally so you can see what my unit will really look like. Note that the text in the image isn't so kind as to magically stay put.

My Floor Plan

Now that this is settled, I can start furniture shopping. I've only been putting that off for, oh... 3 years. Should be painful and expensive.

Hoover Dam

On my last day in Vegas, I decided it would be a better use of my time to head out to Hoover Dam and take a tour, as opposed to spending another crowded, sweaty day insaide the show halls at CES. Plus, it would be very un-like me to rent a car and put less than 50 miles on it... I average a lot closer to 2,000 miles per rental, after all.

The drive is about 20-30 minutes or so, even when going the speed limit in my bright Orange cop-magnet of a rental car. I managed to walk right up to the Visitor's Center at 10:50 on a Wednesday morning, and immediately get onto the 11:00 Dam Tour. Normally, people have to wait all day to get one one of those things. Ah, the advantages of traveling alone...

The gallery contains about 100 pictures from inside and outside of the Dam. Enjoy!


Nevada Generation Room

1930's-style waterproof light switch

The Hoover Dam Complex.

My Cop-Magnet rental car

CES 2008

Inside the gallery are a few pictures from inside CES 2008. Unfortunately, none of the pictures I was able to snap off adequately convey just how insanely packed the Convention Center was -- I am fairly certain I have never seen so many people in one place in my entire life. And with over 3.2 Million square feet of space inside the convention center, stuff was still spilling out into the parking lot and into other hotels! Pretty insane.

R2/D2 Home Entertainment Center

People, People Everywhere...

Las Vegas at Night

This gallery contains all the pictures I took when I was in Vegas for CES... but not actually on the show floor at CES because it was nighttime. The first night I was in town, I took a stroll on foot starting at my hotel and working my way through the Hooters Hotel and Casino, followed by the Tropicana and MGM Grand. From there, I took the Monorail to Bally's and walked through that and Paris. I then went across the street to the Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino and the attached Miracle Mile shops. After all that walking, I was beat and headed back to the hotel early to get some rest for the long day ahead of me on the show floors at CES on Tuesday.

Paris Las Vegas.

Christmas Tree and Skylight

Pictures in this gallery:

- The Dog.
- The new enormous fake Christmas tree.
- The skylight that blew off the roof.

All pictures taken on either 1/1/08 or 1/5/08.

Enormous Fake Tree.

Christmas Lights

On Christmas Eve, Mom, Nicole, and I went for a drive to go looking at Christmas lights. There's a court nearby in Citrus Heights that goes pretty overboard with them, so of course we had to go there. This gallery contains the pictures that came out OK.

The Grinch!

Iron Mountain Hike

On December 22, 2007 I went on a hike with John, Kristine, and John's parents at Iron Mountain. Other people were supposed to come too, but they chickened out... or something. I forget why exactly they didn't make it.

View from the top.

2007 LIAI Holiday Party

Photos from the LIAI 2007 Holiday Party, which was held at the Prado in Balboa Park. In November.

Me, getting ready to eat dinner.

Flooding and Wildfires

Some photos from the aftermath of the most recent La Regencia "Flood" and the soot dropped from the San Diego wildfires. Photos taken between 10/19/07 and 11/10/07.

I <3 La Regencia Maintenance.

Nasty post-fire air filters.

Mission Trails Hike

Pictures from a hike I took on September 30, 2007 at Mission Trails. Nothing really exciting here, but it's time to start flushing out the backlog of photos.

Amusing sign.