One of my two favorite sisters, Andrea, tagged me on some blog meme of sharing eight random things about myself. Such that nothing horrible befalls my loved ones, I suppose I’ll need to play along. To make things easy, I’m going to borrow her format in places.

1. I am exceedingly difficult to make angry.

2. Here are the places I have lived:
* Willingboro, NJ until I was through second grade
* Medford Lakes, NJ until I finished high school
* Allentown, PA for most of my undergraduate time in college
* Minneapolis, MN for the summer of my sophomore year, doing a research program at U of MN
* Coventry, UK for my junior year abroad that the University of Warwick
* State College, PA for grad school at Penn State
* Cupertino, CA for the summers of grad school spent at Apple
* San Francisco, CA, where I live now while I continue my career at Apple

3. If I hear something a few times, and my vocal range allows for it, I can reproduce it. As a result of this, I can do a number of cartoon voices, impressions, and sounds.

4. I have poor depth perception due to an eye condition called strabismic amblyopia wherein I am essentially ignoring the input from one eye. I will never be able to see the image embedded in a “Magic Eye” poster. Yet, I have very good eyesight, 20/15. I can close my right eye and see fine out of the left, but if I reopen my right eye I’ll switch back over to it quickly, or else I’ll get a headache.

5. I apparently stopped eating mushrooms one day when I was young. If I can’t recognize them (e.g., veggie burgers), I eat them with no problem. I’m gradually warming up to the idea of eating them whole again, because I don’t have a good reason other than visual aversion and smurf nightmares.

6. My biggest pet peeve is when people complain. Life is much too short to be doing something you don’t want to do. (Not that I am complaining about their complaining, mind you…)

7. Several people have questioned me as to whether or not I actually sleep, because even when they’ve seen me apparently sleeping, I am so easily awoken (by sound or light) and so alert when I am awoken that they swear I was never asleep to begin with.

8. I collect etiquette books as a hobby.

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When you want to put in punctuation, tap the .?123 key, and without lifting your finger, slide over to the punctuation you want. When you lift your finger, your selection will be inserted and you will be returned to the alphabetical layout.

WWDC is now behind me, and so I have a bit more time to continue settling in to the city. I received all of my stuff from State College two weeks ago, and other than a few boxes of books that I need to cart to my office, I’m basically unpacked. Getting furniture has been a bit more difficult, as I work during business hours and like to go out on the weekends. I think I’m settled on the couch and mattress that I want, and will be fetching those things over the next few days, along with ordering a bed. Hopefully soon enough I’ll really be able to call the new place home! In the mean time, I’ve been sleeping on my futon mattress on the floor… classy!

I’m safely in California, despite my continued hubris of getting onto multi-ton pieces of metal crudely shaped like birds. I’m settled into my apartment at least partly, but I won’t have most of my furniture and possessions until Tuesday. They are ready for delivery now, but I don’t have time to deal with them.

Right now I am very busy with some final WWDC preparation, and I’m on call over the weekend to support keynote rehearsals should anything go wonky. I’m modestly confident that everything will go well, and that I can use the calm before the storm to finally get out and buy a mattress and some other furniture. Not that there’s anything wrong with sleeping on the floor, mind you.

Don’t know when I’ll be back again.

Levi and I selected an apartment last night, and are putting through the final paperwork today. It’s a unit at a brand new building called The Palms, modeled after similar buildings in West Palm Beach, FL and Los Angeles.

Right now the building owner’s son is squatting there, so there’s some furniture in there that will be replaced with our own stuff, and obviously we need to put in some lighting beyond the recessed ceiling lights. Here are some photos Levi took last night (a Flickr slideshow is below). We’ll post more after we’ve moved in and decorated it ourselves.

The monthly rent is right in the middle of our budget range ($3250 split two ways), and it includes some pretty fantastic amenities: a fitness center, a reservable 20-seat movie theatre, a conceirge, a doorman (security), a well-appointed lobby, an included parking spot, and a nice enclosed courtyard/park. The Palms seems to aim for somewhere between the yuppie crowd and the American Psycho crowd in clientelle, so I should have some interesting neighbors. Also, it’s literally a three minute walk to Caltrain, along with being conveinently close to Whole Foods and Safeway, which is perfect for picking up fresh groceries for dinner on the way home from work. I’m glad to finally live in my first real city.

There is going to be a lot to do to transform our apartment into our envisioned swank bachelor pad. Fortunately we’re already set on technology and most furniture, though it will be nice to eventually upgrade to an HDTV. Furniture-wise, I’ll be getting a new bedroom set (I’ve used my current one for nearly two decades since it was handed down to me and want a bigger bed), and will be looking into a baller leather recliner and sofa. All in all, Levi and I are totally stoked about our new bachelor pad!

Back on the previous incarnation of my blog, I had elaborated on my moving plans, and noted that relocation of my vehicle was covered in my startup package at Apple. I presently drive a 1993 Ford Explorer, a SUV which, while handy in the snowy winters of central Pennsylvania, gets only 20 miles per gallon of fuel.

Ultimately, I’ve decided not to take the car with me. It’s worth less than it would cost to move it, it probably won’t pass CA emissions inspection without costly repairs (though it did pass in NJ and PA, so maybe it’s ok), and it lacks an airbag. However, I’ve also decided not to replace the car.

First, there’s the matter of cost. I’d nominally be looking at around $800 in monthly expenses between the car payment, the insurance, the parking fees in San Francisco, and fuel costs. That’s half my rent!

Second, I don’t think I could bear the “soul-crushing slog” back and forth between San Francisco and Cupertino, even I carpool with friends. The daily commute was the straw that broke the camel’s back for ex-co-worker and decent human Buzz Andersen. Quoth Buzz:

…As the stress and hours increased at work, my 45 minute commute down 280, which I had initially thought of as a reasonable (even pleasant and scenic) drive, became a soul crushing daily slog. With most of my social life in San Francisco, but my demanding job an exhausting drive away in Cupertino, I started finding it harder and harder to keep up relationships. As a recent article about commuting in The New Yorker put it:

“I was shocked to find how robust a predictor of social isolation commuting is,” Robert Putnam, a Harvard political scientist, told me. (Putnam wrote the best-seller “Bowling Alone,” about the disintegration of American civic life.) “There’s a simple rule of thumb: Every ten minutes of commuting results in ten per cent fewer social connections. Commuting is connected to social isolation, which causes unhappiness.”

My plan around such isolation is to ride the train into work, which will be a fairly social experience, given that my roommate and a variety of my other work friends will all be taking the same train in. The train back at night can even be happy hour. During my morning commute, I plan to put some of the time into work on my dissertation, and with the upcoming introduction of free wifi to the Caltrain, I can even trim some time off from my Cupertino workday by doing email and updating some bugs from the train.

My third reason for ditching the car has to do with restoring some simplicity to my life, which I alluded to as a goal in my previous post. As a mass transit commuter, I’ll be kinder to the environment. As a person who will have to get up and walk to the train station or to the grocery store, I’ll be kinder to my body.

My plan for getting around will ultimately involve renting cars for the weekends that I really want to get away to distant destinations and cabs for those nights out in the city. Even if I were to do that every weekend, it would still be cheaper (~40/day plus gas) than owning a car!

I suspect that eventually I’ll leave the city for cheaper real estate. In the mean time, I’m going to enjoy the perks that the city offers with respect to commuting alternatives and corner stores. If you think you too can live without a car - without its impact on your budget, body, psyche, not to mention its impact on the environment - I highly recommend giving it a shot.