Category: moving

/ geoffand / 2 Comments

Moving notes

Been a bit radio silent this last week. The move has been in progress since Tuesday, and the time since then has been a blur. Each day was at least 12 hours of shifting boxes, packing, loading the van, unloading, and finally unpacking.

There is no graceful way to move. If you have beaucoup bucks, you can pay someone to do all the hard stuff (packing, loading, moving, unloading, unpacking) but there is always some effort and pain involved.

Since we aren’t rolling in the dough, we did a lot of the work ourselves.

Since we moved from Phoenix to the bay area, and have lived in an apartment for most of a year, a LOT of our belongings were in storage. But a ridiculous amount was also crammed into 1100 sqft of our apartment, complicatind somewhat our move.

The early move era

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/ geoffand

Relocation: The Commute

Recap: I have been relocated to the San Jose area after living in Arizona for 11+ years. I grew up here, so I am not too shocked at what we have come back to. Today I will offer my observations of the commute, and the drivers, particularly how they have changed in the last 11 years.

When we left California in 2003, we lived in a small condo in South San Jose, near 101 and Bernal Road. I was fortunate that I worked at Cisco then, and I was able to ride the Light Rail end to end. About 45 minutes, restful, and it was paid for by Cisco.

Alas, I am not so lucky this time. We are not far from where we used to live, but I work in a pretty unaccessible spot by transit (well, not inaccessible, but it requires at least two bus legs and a lengthy light rail trip). Shortest travel time is 1:56, the most convenient connections is 2:17 in transit. And my employer doesn’t pick up the monthly pass.

Bollocks

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/ geoffand

Apartment Life – the less pleasant bit(s)

I forgot how much “fun” it was living in close proximity with a wide demographic. That was brought back into focus last night around 11:40.

The master bedroom is facing the street (boo) but it also is over the little patio we have on the back. At about 11:40, there was a bit of a family feud going on. Drunk Boyfriend was yelling at the kids. Something about not putting something else away or some such crap. Yada yada. Then the mother gets into it, and off to the races. It turns into a monster screaming match until almost 1:00AM.

No physical violence, but enough 4 letter words and motherfuckers to peel paint.

Sigh

Reminds me of the Condo’s we lived in back in 2003. South San Jose near Bernal and 101. Not a bad place, and we owned (I don’t think there were too many rentals there).

Our neighbor across the walkway was a single asian-american woman, real nice person when we talked to her. But she played the field. There were at least 3 boyfriends who would come and spend the night. And every Sunday morning there would be a fight. We used to call it “Sunday Morning Fights” and listen in while we were eating breakfast.

This was different, yet it was the same.

I have to remember that we are renting, and as such are transitory here. As is every other tenant.

Still, I am saddened by the argument last night, and hope it doesn’t repeat. Alas, I will not be surprised to have it replay frequently.

/ geoffand

Apartment Living Part Deux

Settling into apartment life is interesting to say the least. There are benefits and detriments of course in the life. This episode I will be just have some random observations.

The people

We are lucky that all our neighbors are pretty friendly. We wave and say “Hi” and they all say “Hi” back. This is easy for us, as we generally try to befriend our neighbors wherever we are.

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/ geoffand

More Comcast Love

I felt a little bad in my last post ragging on Comcast. Apart from their tech whiffing on connecting the cable last Friday, and the snafu’s until their technician was here on Tuesday, it really wasn’t their fault.

Today, I have more awesomeness to report.

We had far too much stuff in our small apartment, so until Thursday, I hadn’t even unpacked our Plasma TV. Naturally, I hadn’t been ready for the Cable TV install.

No big deal.

Of course, I assumed that in our hall closet (that is deep, and our movers piled with boxes) our AV cables were. BZZT, thanks for playing. I did have cables for the XBox 360, so Friday I hooked us up to Netflix streaming (friggin kick ass), but my wife wanted the cable hooked up to watch the Tour de France.

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/ geoffand

Cable Awesomeness

I know recently I ragged on the Comcast service in our temporary house for slow internet and the shitty DVR they provide.

So, I feel that I must mention my awesome experience today.

We signed our lease on an apartment. We are going to live there for a year, and thus I need cable and internet. The only option was Comcast Cable or AT&T UVerse service. No choice really.

A week ago, I tried to navigate the maze to order online, even using the damn chat service that wasn’t helpful. I gave it up, and gritted my teeth to go into their local store.

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/ geoffand

Realtor Insanity

We are relocating, and consequently our house is in the market in Chandler. No surprises there. Back in April we signed a 3 month (90 day) contract, as dictated by our relocation company.

Fast forward to late June. 90 days is up, and we re-sign with the agent we selected to continue the contract. Unfortunately a snafu happened, and the update didn’t get reflected that evening, and our listing “expired” for about 8 hours.

Ho-lee shit Batman, what a zoo ensued.  First I got an email from my agent letting me know that we might get some calls, and to not be worried. No big deal.

Except that whole day I had other real estate agents contact me about picking up my listing. I stopped counting after the 6th distinct agent called.

It was madness. There is a glut of houses on the market in the Phoenix metro area, and while I used to get fliers hung on my door to see if I was interested in selling, I had no idea that real estate agents were vultures.

Just yesterday, I got two formal mailed inquiries, dutifully redirected to my new mail address.

I guess I am glad to not be an agent.

/ geoffand

The Drive

Over the 4th weekend, I took a couple of days off (Thursday and Monday) to drive my dogs from Tucson, where they were staying at a pet lounge, to our new home in San Jose, California.

The drive was fine, we rented a big Dodge Grand Caravan, as we wanted there to be enough room for the boys, and all the crap they need (beds, food, water, our bags, etc). Although Barbara was worried that it would not have enough room, it was surprisingly cozy in the back, with well partitioned areas for the boys.

Chillin' in their rented van. This is the life
Chillin’ in their rented van. This is the life

We settled in to an easy lope across Arizona. Starting later than I had hoped (surprised? Ha, you don’t know Barbara very well, do ya?) we made pretty good time. A stop at the junction of Gila Bend to top up the tank (we had been driving the van around all week) and to potty the boys, grab some Subway sandwiches, and off we went.

Smooth sailing until we hit Quartzite. One of those famous Arizona monsoon pattern dumps, we ended up parking in a Chevron lot for 20 minutes until the deluge passed. I will miss that.

Barb takes over driving, and we head to California. As we were approaching Palm Springs, and it was already 6:30 PM, it seemed like a good time to find a place to stay. So I pulled up my trusty iPhone, searched for dog friendly hotels, and the top recommendation was the Best Western Date Tree Inn. Setup the navigation, and we are 20 minutes out. Cool.

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/ geoffand

Relocation Saga, Part 97

Our timing was impeccable. All through the last year, the housing market in Phoenix was literally on fire. Values were rising, houses were flying off the shelf, and we saw that our home had some serious appreciation.

Then we put it on the market. SLAM that door shut. Suddenly inventory went from less than 4 weeks to more than 6 months, and it turned from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market. Almost over night.

So, even though we priced it to sell, and we were aggressive up front, and being in a good neighborhood with great schools, and desirable location, our house has languished for almost 3 months now.

We took the plunge and moved, hoping that being unoccupied and clean would help traction, but alas, no, so we are in temporary housing, and have a little more than 3 months until our company will buy our house for market value.

A bad place to be.

Options are bleak:

  1. Stay in temporary housing and keep our household goods in storage. It is tight, being in a 1 bedroom apartment, and it is in a good location, about 4 miles from the office, and a counter commute, so that is a positive. But the bad news is that after July 15th, I have to start paying out of pocket. At $159 a day (minus fees and taxes). Gulp. That is nearly $5500 a month for “rent”. Add in the almost $1,000 a month to store my household goods, we are quickly approaching $7K a month in out of pocket expenses (not counting our mortgage, and utilities we need to keep up on the house in Phoenix). Groan.
  2. Rent a temporary place. Find a pet friendly place, and rent. Seems easy, but we do have two greyhounds, large (yet calm) dogs makes this difficult. Rent will be much less than the cost of the temporary housing, and we can get our “stuff” back. So that is cool. But we have to sign a lease for a year.

Not really a choice. Burning through our savings at $7K a month will wipe out our down payment before my company “buys” my house in October. Then we won’t be able to afford a down payment. So we rent.

Found a complex that is “pet friendly” and a reasonable price. We will sign the lease shortly, and hope to move in in the next couple of weeks.

The irony: the management company asked if we had a rental history. Uh, no, we have owned for almost 16 years in total…

/ geoffand / 3 Comments

Comcast Sucks

When we first moved to Arizona, I splurged and bought a Tivo. It was an old one, and it was wonderful. Worked great, super intuitive interface, great integration. Back then it had to call Tivo every day to get the latest listings.

In 2006 or so, we went HD, and upgraded to a Series 2 HD, with the cable cards. With the exception of a failed HD in 2012, replaced via Weaknees, it has been wonderful.

At both our places in Arizona, we had Cox cable. It was reliable, reasonable, and it gave us absolutely awesome internet speeds.

Fast forward. We have moved to the San Jose area. Our stuff is still in storage, and we are in temporary housing. The apartment we are in has Comcast Xfinity service. Internet, TV, and telephone.

I guess I should be happy that it has a DVR, but the UI is so fucking primitive, it is painful to use. It is slow, non responsive, and the search function truly sucks ass. Yes, there are lots of channels, but unless you search precisely right, it will not return anything, and then you get to go back to square one.

I can only hope that we have a choice wherever we end up, but I suspect that we will have the choice between Comcast and AT&T U-Verse.

I guess I will once again go back to Tivo.