Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Moving

The word of this post is "moving", lets see how many things I can talk about related to the word moving.

Moving...

...to a new place in Waterloo. Well, I should say have moved. Just over a week ago, I managed to free myself from the grasp that was shitty housemates, and moved to a far nicer and cheaper (or as my mother would say, "more economical") two bedroom apartment. I've moved in with a fellow physics student, which other than the obvious benefit of being able to have physics related discussions, has the unrelated side benefit of living with someone who cleans up after themselves more often than once every two months. Oh internet, I'll be ranting about that on another occasion. But I digress; the move took the entire weekend. Saturday was full of cleaning and box moving, while Sunday was all about renting a truck to move the larger items (bed, shelf, dresser, table, etc). The new place is also a little further away from the IQC than my previous arrangements, so after walking in to work on Monday I was pretty tired.

...my internet connection. This has been the biggest struggle of my move so far. I called the Friday before I was going to move. Now, my ISP is Teksavvy. I've had great experiences with them so far. For just under a year actually. That said, the man that I was talking to in order to move my service was not a help at all. So after telling me it would be 5 business days to move the dry loop (which is really out of their control, and not their fault at all due to it being Bell's issue) and explaining the moving charges ($20...which is lame) I agreed. I was also informed that I would be receiving confirmation via email within 2 business days, ie Tuesday. So when Tuesday rolled around, and I hadn't received any emails, I called them up. The lady told me that they were very busy, she brought up my file (well, she said she did) and told me that everything was fine. So when Thursday came by, and I still didn't hear anything, I called them again. This time, I was told something different. I was informed that my account only had the address updated, and there was no move order issued the Friday that I did call. If it wasn't for the fact that this lady was very nice and helpful, I probably would have started yelling at her. She made 100% sure that the order went through while we were still on the phone. The bad part was it was going to be another 5 business days.....so 1 week. I'm still waiting.

...my blog address. I decided to ditch the old address, so for now its pmcandl.blogspot.com until I think of something better.

...my ass to Boston for a week. I'm leaving this Saturday with my lady friend to visit her family. I'm pretty excited. Well, excited minus the airport part. I am very much against the full body scanners and the ability of the TSA agents to do things like search your laptop hard drive. Rant for another time...

...my computer into a new case! I got myself a shiny new Antec P-183 case, and holy crap, it is definitely MUCH better than my old case. When the CPU fan kicks into high, the dB increase is so much less than my old case. The only issue I had was that since the PSU is now under the motherboard, the +12V 4pin CPU power can't reach the socket on the top of the motherboard, let alone be routed properly. I had to do some creative thinking just to get the cable to reach it. The 24 pin EATX cable can reach the connector fine, but can't do that while being routed properly. I'll have to get some extension cables next time I'm at the computer store. Oh, and pictures of how I got it to work will follow soon(ish).

Monday, August 2, 2010

Continuing at the IQC

So I confirmed with my boss the other day that I will be able to do my 4th year research project at the IQC. He already has an idea as to what he will be having me do, but I don't know too much about it at this point, so I'm not even going to try to explain it :P.

I'm pretty excited though.