Hidy ho there…. neighbor?
Posted by Mike
Aren't neighbors great? One of the highlights of apartment living for me is the opportunity to have so many close neighbors. Where else but an apartment complex can you pay extra for the ability to share walls with someone else? Not in them thar fancy houses, no sir! I personally think that's why most mortgages are so low; you're not getting to share walls/floors/ceilings with other people! With an apartment you're paying for the privilege of living near everyone. By that logic I wonder how much it would cost to live in a sardine can.
Of course there's a downside to this shiny happy sharing world- sometimes, very rarely, you get bad neighbors. Maybe they throw wild parties and don't invite you, or hang pictures all night. Yup, just pounding away at the walls with hammers in a rhythmic fashion. Definitely hanging pictures. Whatever the case may be everyone has had them and everyone has had to deal with them. But what happens when YOU'RE the bad neighbor? I've never thought of myself as the bad neighbor. I've definitely thrown a few shindigs in my day, listened to my fair share of gangsta rap too loud at night (west side!), and certainly I've cranked the bass for the occasional testosterone-and-explosion movie fest from time to time. Despite all of that I've never once had a complaint lodged against me in all my 10 years of apartment living until last week.
It started innocently enough. A voicemail popped up on my cell Monday morning from my apartment complex letting me know that "a neighbor" had complained about noise from my apartment over the weekend. They were very helpful, even going so far as to give me a few tips and pointers on how to move my subwoofer away from the walls so to not disturb others. "It's not the actual VOLUME you understand, just the bass every now and again. Thanks for looking into it!" I'm sure it's just a random coincidence that I had finished running the wiring for my surround sound setup the day before, and had felt the need to test it a wee bit. I shrugged it off with a laugh and a mental "oops" and went about my week. "Boy", I thought. "How lucky am I to move into an apartment complex that offers surround sound hookup advice?! Who needs GeekSquad? Not me buddy! I got Mission Ridge."
Friday night rolls around and I'm deep into my latest addiction- internet pr0n. Kidding... that's my fallback addiction. I'd been squeezing in a few hours of Dragon Age: Origins between work and gym nights, so I was looking forward to an uninterrupted romp through the game. Instead I got a visit from my upstairs neighbor at 11:30 at night. Talk about immersion breaking yeah? Nothing like opening the door to a barefoot schlub wearing pajama pants and an Affliction T-shirt to get you out of the RPG mood. Maybe he should have shown up dressed as Elrond (or his daughter, rawr!) and I'd have been more receptive. Instead the conversation went more like this:
Him: "So uh, like, hey. We can sorta hear some noise from down here? We think it's the bass from your stereo. It's definitely not the volume though, no question!. You seem like a nice guy even though I just met you and..."
Me: "Hrm, that's weird. Can you hear anything like now? I mean my door and windows are open, did you hear anything outside?"
Him: "Upstairs, yeah! But not out here. Want to come listen?"
Me: "Not really. I mean, it's 11:30 at night...."
Him: "Um... right.. I mean...
Me: "Kbye!"
Understandably I was confused; what kind of magical sound could travel through the floor, walls, ceiling, and air to reach out and disturb these poor people and yet not be audible from eight feet away. Clearly witchcraft was afoot or I was being framed. Or both... those crafty witches, always out to get us techno-savy regular folks. Obviously a case of techno-envy. If it wasn't the witches then certainly this was a fluke right? To be on the safe side I lowered the bass, treble, and overall volume on the subwoofer, but apparently that wasn't enough as someone began pounding on my ceiling at 9:30 on Sunday night. Now THAT was some magical floor transitioning noise.
By Tuesday I'd found a letter on my door. Reading between the lines (and the grammar issues) its obvious that he's been complaining to the apartment complex again. I'm going to call them in the morning to see what we can do to straighten this out. Between the letter, the neighbor harassment, and reading things like this on the web, it makes me lean pretty strongly towards finding another place when my lease is up in March.
OMG hi 2 u!
Posted by Mike
Hey! It's been a while hasn't it?
I'm sorry I haven't posted more. Life in California is pretty busy, so I don't have a lot of free time to hang out on the internet. It's somewhat ironic to me that I feel busier here than I did in Alabama when by and large the culture here is far more laid back and relaxed. Work hours start later and are far more relaxed, holidays are longer and there are more of them, and no one really ever appears to be in a hurry. I don't know if this is true for most jobs here, just tech jobs, or just "game industry" jobs of which I'm on the very periphery of.
So what's keeping me so busy you ask? The biggest push for me personally has been re-furnishing my pad. When I left Alabama I threw out just about everything that I didn't personally pick out, or furniture that I didn't like. I took pictures of my old apartment right before I left of everything packed up. It's pretty drastic that when moving from a 989 sq foot, 2 bed/bath apartment to a 830 sq foot, 1 bed/bath apartment almost everything I moved fit in half my living room. I had 86 "items" for the movers to move. That's it. I threw away a lot both physically and mentally to make this move, and one of my first orders of business has been to get my sense of "home" re-established. It's still a work in progress, but I'm done enough to actually show it to people and not feel like I'm living in a dorm room. You can see the full album on my photos page. Here's a few samples:
Some of my free time has been devoted to working on my official blog of course (www.thefirestarter.org), working on my dad's photography site (www.thruthelenz.com), and I just finished a website for Dennis my old personal trainer (www.1on1personaltrainingnow.com). Website work is sort of hit or miss for me, I don't generally enjoy it and have to be "in the mood" to get anything done. I need to finish Thru the Lenz and one more site for a friend's computer consulting gig before I can quit for another year or two. Hopefully. What's left of my free time has been split between gym, various social events, reading, and a renewed interest in gaming. I'm still trying to find a good multiplayer (co-op) RPG, so if anyone has recommendations I'm all ears. Gym is indirectly taking up more time than I'm used to; eating 3000 (or more!) calories a day while trying to bulk is not as easy as I would hoped. There's food prep time, sleep time, longer gym sessions.. but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think it was worth it and didn't enjoy every minute of it.
The only thing I'd like to do more of that I haven't is hiking. I got to do a quick 2 hour trip to Torrey Pines a few weekends back (photos here), but I haven't done any real stuff yet. I'm trying to get a group together to do a hike at Volcan Mountain this weekend but those pesky social obligations I mentioned keep cropping up =). Along with the hiking comes photography of course, but that's still very much a shelved project until all my website work finishes up.
Next post will be sometime this week and will probably be a Rogaine update. Stay tuned!
The Weekly Roundup #1
Posted by Mike
My first full week in San Diego! It was lots of things, but most of all, it was normal. I don't think this is a bad thing by any stretch, in fact I find it reassuring that after picking up my life and shaking the dust out of it, I'm able to feel comfortable enough to be resume normality in my new environment. People who don't travel often may not understand this phenomenon, but after any move (even across town!) it normally takes me at least a month for the day to day stuff to settle back into a routine. My belongings were delivered last Saturday and the final box was put in the closet Friday night. I'm not saying I'm done unpacking, I'm just as done as I can get right this minute. I'm in a slightly smaller apartment and I'm lacking some storage I'm used to, so not everything fits yet. I also don't have some key furniture items (entertainment center, couch, TV) so there's that too. My relocation reimbursement can't get here soon enough.
So what have I been doing in this fine fine city you ask? Not a whole lot! I kid you not. Last weekend was a nice grownup (ie, there was wine and no IHOP involved) dinner and dessert with some friends, but other than I've been a real homebody. I'm still adjusting to my slightly different work schedule and my new daily commute routine. Unpacking has taken up quite a bit of time naturally, then there's gym time on top of that. In my free time after all that I've been sucked into a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon thanks to my buddy Rob, and THEN there's the Xbox. I'm pretty psyched about Dragon Age coming out in November from Bioware. Thankfully to help fill the time until then Brutal Legends launches in October. While normally the theme of the game and Jack Black's presence in it would be two strikes, the demo was unbelievably fun and somehow he wasn't that annoying. Probably because it was just his voice. I've made a promise to myself to finish both Afro Samurai and Castle Crashers before buying any more games. Tales of Vesperia? I'll get back to you. Fallout 3? Yeah.. uh, you're scheduled for a quick trip to Gamestop to trade-in. Sorry!
Before I forget, let's talk about the commute. Many people have scoffed at me for living 25 miles from work, especially when my gas mileage is between 15-19 mpg. To you people I say "THPBPBPBPB." I live two miles from the beach (but it's getting too chilly damnit) in a kickass city. Encinitas is just north of San Diego so you get all the convenience of living in American's 7th largest city while still maintaining a tiny beach-town atmosphere. The commute doesn't bother me either, in fact I've actually come to look forward to it. I just plug in my iPhone to the stereo and relax the entire way. How many people can say they take an hour out of their day to stop and just enjoy music? Lately I've been exploring classical more as it's cheap as hell on iTunes. There are tons of albums with 50-100 classic pieces for between $9-15, and so far the only downside is ending up with a few copies of the same song. I think I have at least 4 copies of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons". If you're like me and tend to drive to match your soundtrack, then it's doubly as awesome. So far the William Tell Overture is taking first place in my classical driving playlist, with the 1812 Overture a strong second. Strangely enough Ride of the Valkyries was not in my top five. The timing is just a bit off somehow.
That's it peeps! I realize there's a significant lack of anything even remotely exciting, but next weekend's roundup should be more interesting as I begin to explore my new home. I've also got another 2-3 posts written for this week, so I seem to be staying on top of this whole blogging thing.
Ants in the pants
Posted by Mike
Ants in the pants? ANTS IN THE PANTS?! YOU SONOFABITCH! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO GET ME THE RED MEGAMAN YOU CHEAP PIECE OF CRAP I HATE YOU! -Cartman (Damien, 1998)
My very first exposure to SouthPark so many years ago was this episode; Damien the son of Satan comes to earth to herald he arrival of Satan. It also happens to be Cartman's birthday. This episode and "Pinkeye" were on a VHS tape that was a birthday present from my sister Theresa. I think this particular tape was given to me sometime in 2000... yeah, I got on the SouthPark bandwagon kinda late.
Let me start by saying I'm not normally a light sleeper. Certain things (my cat, gym trips, hurricanes) have changed that for the worse. You would think I should sleep better with a cat constantly walking on me but somehow, that's just not the case. Last night I had another issue: ants. That's them in the picture up there.
You know that state of sleep, right as your about to fall asleep? Where you always think you're about to roll off the bed and you jerk, waking yourself up? Yeah, that one. I couldn't manage to get past that because every time I'd doze off, I'd feel like something was ever so slightly brushing against me. My arms. My head. My leg. I'd swipe at it and doze back off, only to have it happen again. I finally stumbled out of bed at 3am and turned on the light. Sure enough I hadn't been dreaming something was definitely touching me. Ants were crawling all over my comforter and me and I had been swatting them in my sleep. I can't begin to describe the level of "freak the fuck out" that hit my sleep addled brain at 3am in the morning.
Now I don't have anything against insects in general, but anything that bites pretty much gets nuclear winter declared inside my house. I got pushed into a fire ant bed as a kid and had too many "lawn mower meets ant hill" incidents while growing up to be nice to ants. Luckily California ants don't seem to bite much, and are generally just looking for water. Call me an ant racist, but I smashed all the ones I could see (black ants on a dark wood bed half asleep at 3am!), threw my comforter in the corner, and dragged my mattress, pillow, and a blanket off to sleep on the floor. I've only been here 10 days and had my own bed for the last 4 days and now somehow I'm back to sleeping on the floor. I was just drifting back off to sleep (Wifecat curled up at my side of course) when I heard the little voice in the back of my mind say the Cartman quote. I managed to scare the cat into finding somewhere else to sleep by laughing my ass off.
I'm coming back from work with Raid though. No mercy!
I like pie!
Posted by Mike
That is some tasty, tasty pie you see there: apple pie ala mode with caramel sauce. Today was a pretty good day so I decided to celebrate a bit with room service.
I'm up in LA for a few days getting to meet the development teams I'll be working with and trying to absorb all the knowledge of my predecessor. I drove up yesterday evening after 8 and I gotta say; driving in LA was fun! 8 lanes of traffic, average speed of 70-80mph, and tons of traffic all dodging and weaving. It was like driving in a high speed go-kart track.
While up here, I managed to get my truck delivered ahead of schedule. The movers were in the area doing another drop off and called me to schedule the San Diego delivery. I talked them into dropping it here at the LA office instead and turned in my rental car a day early. Hurrah! It only took about 6 phone calls and twenty minutes to actually FIND the movers but we eventually did. My truck is filthy, smells like an oily boot, and the seat settings are all jacked up. But it's mine. Further fun factoids? I didn't realize until the day I drove up to LA that they only take payment in cash, money order, or cashiers check, and I'm nearly 1200 miles from my nearest bank branch. I'm probably the whitest looking person to ever appear to be doing a drug deal by giving him a wad of cash on a side street near the freeway.
After the truck trade we went up to the main Sony Pictures lot/campus in Culver City to meet some of the dev teams; we ran into them at The Commissary so we joined up for lunch. We got to hang out some afterward and see some product demos. It's a kickass experience to watch technology like this in action and to realize it's running on "my" platforms. Everyone I've met has been great so it sucks that I'll be 100 miles away and not able to be up this way more often. The eye candy wandering the Sony Pictures campus is a pretty nice fringe benefit too.
Looks I'll be heading back to San Diego a day early due to some network maintenance Thurs night / Fri morning. It looks like the rest of my belongings should be arriving this weekend too so hopefully I'm gonna be pretty busy. It'll be nice to have ...well a bed for starters. Maybe Wifecat will stop giving me dirty looks from across the room.
Food coma is catching up to me so I'm making an early night of it.
About Me
Lackadaisical writer, amateur photographer, professional grump, and all around spiffy IT guy.
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