The matrix has you. ZMatrix is a nice little variation on the Matrix-code style screensavers in that it runs continuously as your desktop background rather than taking over your entire screen. An extra nice touch is how it blends with your desktop wallpaper so that a matrix-codified version of the wallpaper appears after enough code has fallen. Fun stuff. I’ve been staring at it for a while now though, and all I see now is blonde, brunette, redhead…

In the interest of making up for lost time, here’s some completely spastic geeking out action: Sweet fancy Moses, do I love my phone!!! While I’m less than thrilled with Sprint’s apparent viewpoint that every single app, image, or ringer on my phone should be purchased through them, 3GUpload lets me get my own files onto my phone, which is the way things should be. Other websites are coming up with fun stuff to do with Internet enabled phones too. Today I just found that the online guide for Lawrence, KS (lawrence.com, go figure) will send a text message reminder for upcoming events, such as concerts, concerts, and well, ok mostly just concerts. Now that, I like. Since I still don’t know where some of the venues are, it’s nice that MapQuest can send directions to cell phones. On the other hand something that’s much better in theory than practice is AIM via cell phone. It’s nice to say I can do it, but not really useful for anything beyond that.

So this weekend I just said to myself: “Screw it, I’m going to Florida!” Next thing you know, I’m getting off a plane in Orlando and driving over to Ormond Beach. Of course, it just so happened that one of my cousins was getting married there yesterday and the rest of my extended family was going to be there as well but either way you look at it, I got to spend the weekend in Florida on the beach. It was like having a little micro-vacation. The weather was fantastic, the beach was great, and it was good to see the rest of my family since I won’t have as many opportunities to see them now that I’m out in KC. The wedding itself was nice too, but alas, dry. If I’m going to haul myself halfway across the continent, I expect free booze and plenty of it! I got some fun pictures out of the deal though so maybe I’ll let it slide.

I finally decided that rather than trying to come up with a brilliant comeback post, a new design, or even just a clever reason for leaving things to collect dust here for over 3 months that I should just post something and be done with it. So I did. I wish that I could say that I spent the last 3 months building a supercomputer out of 70 PS2’s but that’s just not the case. I did, however, build a really cool machine that plays the new Legend of Zelda game out of only a Gamecube, a television, and the Legend of Zelda game disc.

Now that I’ve got the rest of my stuff up here and my living room is slightly less bare I can start focusing on the real essentials of surviving in a strange city: finding the good record stores. I planned to hit up Recycled Sounds and Streetside Records in Westport yesterday, but it turns out that Recycled Sounds is closed Sundays so I’ll have to try that another time. Streetside was a pretty good store, not quite up there with Magnolia’s back in Columbus but pretty close. It took a little while to get accustomed to their filing system, but once I did I found plenty of good stuff and felt right at home. Even though its possible to order any album you could ever want thanks to Amazon, etc., I’m still relieved to find a good place to actually shop.

Since I’ve just found myself with some unexpected free time, I figured I might as well bring things up to date around here. I was supposed to be on a flight back to Columbus right now to pick up a U-Haul tomorrow and get the rest of my things out to Kansas City. That was the plan until some heavy fog showed up and got my flight cancelled. The next flight I could get on isn’t until 7:15 tomorrow morning so I headed back to my apartment rather than wait at the airport all night. Now it looks like I won’t be getting there until noon tomorrow, which should make the weekend a little more insane that it already was going to be.

Everything in Kansas City is going fairly well. I’ve got a nice apartment that right now holds just a card table, a lawn chair, and an air mattress. You can see why I need to go back and pick up the rest of my things. I really love my job so far, which is good since its really the only reason I’m out here. I finished my orientation last week and as of the end of this week I’m up to my eyeballs in code which is pretty much geek heaven for me. Its a lot to take in at once, but I’m loving it. I’m living in the northeast part of KC, near a suburb called Liberty.
Its a nice place and a really easy drive to work but its kind of further from downtown than I was hoping to be. I guess that’s what you get when you show up in a new town and have to pick an apartment in a day. I’ve been so busy between work and getting set up here that I haven’t had much time to check out downtown yet anyway. Thanks to Brett’s advance legwork I’ve already got a list of places to check out though.

Alright, its time for a road trip to KC! Except I don’t get to come back. Its kind of hard to believe, but I have no idea at all where I’ll be living 2 days from now. I’m finally taking my computer offline here after waiting till the last minute. Hopefully I won’t go too long without RoadRunner out there and I’ll be back on before too long.

mp3s stole my memories b/w new car

I noticed something when I was packing up all my cds the other day. Every time I grabbed an album that I had owned before I got an mp3 jukebox, I instantly got some kind of memory of a place, person, or event in my life from when I had been listening to that album. Even albums that I had never really listened to as much, I still could remember what had been going on when I bought them. When I would pick up an album that I got after the mp3 jukebox, that rarely happened if at all. I’d never even listened to any of those albums from the cd. Right after I bought them I would just rip them and listen on my computer or on the jukebox. Until now I hadn’t really considered a downside to the convenience of being able to listen to any song from any album at any time. I think I spend less time listening to albums sequentially and in their entirety, and as a result I’m not associating them with events in my life as closely. It’s a little troubling, but I don’t know what to do about it.

The other thing is that I finally got a new(er) car. Its a green 1999 Suzuki Esteem and its… a… well, there’s no other way to say it… its a station wagon. See, I needed a car to replace my ’83 Toyota, and fast. I leave for KC on the 30th, and I wasn’t really looking forward to trying to find a car out there in addition to all the other stuff I have to do. My parents found the Esteem through a dealer they trust and it was really cheap and in really good condition. I figured it’d be better to go with this than to rush into buying a more expensive car. Its… *sigh* …responsible. So now I’ve got a station wagon, at least until I get settled in KC and can do some real car shopping. Its not that bad really, its kind of rugged and sporty, and… still a station wagon.

One might assume that nothing’s been going on since it’s been almost a month since I’ve done anything here. One would be wrong. In fact, things have been pretty crazy. I would even go so far as to say that situation might be classified as full-on wacky. Its like this: I got a job. Ok, so I got two jobs but I could only accept one of them, which made me feel like a jerk but I’ll get back to that. I got the first job offer two weeks ago from Reflex, an internet design company here in Columbus. They’re a really cool small company and I was looking forward to working for them, but it was only a 2 month contract and it didn’t really involve as much software development as I had hoped. Still, I was really excited about it. Then everything went crazy-go-nuts. Last Saturday I got a package in the mail from Cerner. Yeah, that Cerner. The one that said no and crushed my hopes and dreams, etc. etc. Apparently, they decided to hire a few more people in the position I had interviewed for and they made me an offer. Its kind of been a blur since then, but as near as I can tell I’ve got just about 2 weeks to get myself and all my stuff over to Kansas City, MO. The difficult part was that I had already told Reflex that I’d accept, but that was before I had any idea that I would ever hear anything from Cerner again. I really would have liked not to have had to back out of that, but Cerner was pretty firm on how soon my start date would have to be. Also, the job at Cerner is exactly what I want to do, as opposed to just close enough. The other difficult part is that I’ve been in Columbus for 5 ¹⁄₂ years and its really started to feel like home. There are so many people here that I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to call friends. And just the thought of leaving Magnolia Thunderpussy’s and Used Kids record stores is enough to make me all misty. I’m going to be leaving so much behind that I’ll miss here, but I know that this is the right choice. I’m going to be a professional geek!

Comments

Comment by Chris on 2004-11-08 16:24:08 +0000

Hi Will, this page is the 4th page returned from googling “job at cerner”. I’ll be graduating in December with a Master’s degree in CS, and am now looking looking for a job. Cerner is high on my list. In fact, I have an on-site interview in KC next week. I’ve been looking through your site and we seem to have quite a bit in common. I’m curious how you find your job at Cerner after ~2 yrs. Do you enjoy working at cerner? If you have some time, shoot me an email, I would like to hear your thoughts.

-Chris.

When I’m in the mood to pound out awkwardly-strummed renditions of my favorite alt-country songs, (which, lets face it, is just about all the time) I’ve found altcountrytab.com to be just the thing I need. For those of us with poor ears, or that are just too lazy to sit down to figure out a song, (guilty on both counts) this is where it’s at. Let’s see, they’ve got Wilco, Johnny Cash, Whiskeytown, Neko Case, and… Jimmy Eat World?? I suppose that to raise some petty issues about where exactly the genre boundaries of alt-country lie would be to miss the point. The point is, I love this site.