To transition into what many call “real life,” I decided to go out and get my own apartment. This means three things:
- I have more bills to keep track of and pay every month
- I will be cooking for myself instead of going downstairs for a all-you-care-to-eat deal every night
- I have more space!
My place is located in North Campus (away from all the parties — I need my beauty sleep on the weekends) and has a gas stove and oven! I am particularly excited about that because gas ranges are hard to come by for some reason, and I’ve always loved gas-powered stoves. Here are a couple of pictures of my new apartment:
As you can see in the picture of my kitchen, there is NO microwave. Let’s see how long I can survive without one.
AT&T hell, Time Warner Heaven
I wanted to get dry-loop DSL from At&T for the apartment, but it turned out to be one of the biggest travesties in the flurry of settling down in the apartment. It all started on Monday (Aug. 18) when I moved in. I called AT&T to check on the status of my order. Even though I properly input all the data in the online form, my order was missing my apartment number because someone actually has to put that data in and may have missed it. After an hour on hold, I supposedly had that fixed and everything was set to come on Friday, the 22nd. Meanwhile, I picked up a DSL modem from Best Buy. Friday rolled around and I plugged that bad boy in. Unfortunately, the red DSL light taunted me all day as it sat there, blinking, saying “Ha ha! You do not have Internet service!”
I called back Monday to find out what is going on to determine my next course of action. After 60 minutes of holds and transfers, the system hang me up. I proceeded to call back to cancel the order. The rep proceeded to suggest that my line may need repair, so I gave that a go. Unfortunately, the system disconnected me again, and I approached my breakdown point as I called back to (definitely) cancel. I was close to sobbing as I told the rep that I do not have infinite cell phone minutes or time and that I had it with the transfers, disconnects, etc. as I told him my entire story. Needless to say, he was convinced that he needs to cancel my order… nothing more, nothing less.
Right afterwards, I headed to Time Warner Cable’s office to establish my new account. I waited for about 30 minutes in line, spent about 10 minutes with a rep, got my modem, and drove home. As soon as I plugged in the modem, I was up and running after 15 minutes on the phone. GOOD JOB, TIME WARNER!
What AT&T did a good job of was checking back on me every couple minutes. Nevertheless, I believe that telecom companies should have some sort of local presence for people to turn to.
Camera Disassembly
While at Grand Teton National Park with my family, I dropped my Canon PowerShot S3 IS right on the retracting lens assembly. A secondary impact broke the LCD screen. Fortunately, my parents brought their camera with them, and I continued taking pictures using that. After settling into my new apartment, I got my hands on a digital SLR and called Fred (because he loves taking stuff apart). After treating him to fried rice (that I cooked myself), we busted out the screwdriver to take apart the camera and see how things worked. The both of us slowly took the camera apart as we marveled at its intricacy and identified which board does what. Contrary to what many of my friends thought, we did NOT get shocked by the 330 V flash capacitor. As a matter of fact, that was one of the first things we identified and said “no touchie” until we could safely discharge it. Here are just a few pictures:
Gone To Texas – Rocking the House!
One phone call was all it took for a friend to whisk me away from Engineering Fall Gathering and to Gone to Texas, a welcome (back) celebration for students. After that bit, there was a party with live music. She started dancing, and I followed suit to not look like an idiot. Meanwhile, I continued shooting pictures (I pride myself in that ability). By the time we left, everybody was dancing. We would sure like to think that we started all this!
1st Floor of RLM = Texas Petawatt Laser
In my head, there is a list of things I would like to do before I graduate. It goes something like this (in no particular order):
- See the first floor of RLM
- Get Professor Hallock’s dog (Jessie) to bark
- Drive the solar car
- Be an orientation advisor
- Participate in the Texas 4000
- Be an RA
To my fortune, the automatic controls class got canceled for the day, so I was able to go to my apartment, grab the camera, and head on down to see the Texas Petawatt Laser on the first floor of the RLM. Not convinced? I even took a picture of a sign for evidence!
This is going to be a good year. Many challenges await me, and I will divide and conquer with the help of my friends, family, professors, God, etc.
