3501

The hippie family that my boyfriend lives and works for invited me to go down to Georgia for the week. The parents are big time peace activists, and we will be going to the annual School of Americas Watch outside Fort Benning.

I didn’t know much about the School of the Americas, and I’m not much of an activist myself, but I thought it was be interesting to experience. The SoA supposedly train soldiers who routinely cause human rights violations, coups, war crimes, etc.

The whole family is going, but the parents are the only ones who are serious about it. They’re both convicted felons in relation to their peace activist actions against the government heh. The dad is an excommunicated Catholic priest who would go onto military bases with other peace activists to hammer on jet planes, throw blood on things, and other crazy shit like that. The mom does a lot of organization and advocacy stuff, as well as plays get away driver -_-.

Really interesting people. We’re going to be making a bunch of puppets and signs once we get down there to the hippie commune. The BF, the kids, and I are just going to watch from the sidelines when the real protest begins. Hopefully nobody gets arrested like last time.

3502

I bet a bit of Google Investigation™ will tell you that. It’s expensive but not more expensive say, than living in a nice hotel room for a month. :)

3503

Yeah, I could Google it but I figured we were having a conversation here. :) Thanks anyway…

3504

That actually sounds pretty interesting and fun. Many of the folks who have came out of the School of the Americas over the years have been pretty nasty people.

3505

That building is gorgeous Guap. It’s a nice chunk of change, but if you can afford it I can think of few better ways to spend it. :D

In interesting news (that has happened to me!) a few days ago I tweeted about how I signed the lease for some office space:

office.jpg450×600

The details are thus:

[ul]
[li]415 sq. feet of office space on the first floor of a building owned by an electrical contracting company. The building:[/li]

[li]Access to their kitchen:[/li]

[li]Access to their conference room (sadly, no Sbarro’s in the area. I had to settle for Subway):[/li]

[li]Floor-based heating[/li][li]24/7 access[/li][li]Access to their broadband connection[/li][li]Access to the overhead doors in the warehouse during business hours for loading/unloading equipment and stuff[/li][li]Use of the common areas and office for parties and networking events with prior approval[/li][li]Two reserved parking spaces, plus access to their lot and streetside parking[/li][/ul]

Plus other stuff I can’t think of right now. I am so excited. I’ve been running this business out of my basement for years and the space constraints and fact it was more of a workshop than an office has really been a limiting factor in my growth. I’ve hit an upper limit on how much work I can take on with my current work area, equipment, and manpower. Now I’ll be able to snag myself an intern, maybe get an apprentice, and start to pick up more work than I could manage before.

Sooooooooooooooo excited!

3506

Totally! I only live an hour from Columbus. If possible, I’d try to make that party for sure. Looks like parking might not be easy, though. Do you validate, Guap?

3507

I imagine that El Guapo will spring for complimentary valet parking for that QT3 gathering.

Ryan, looks like an awesome space, congrats.

3508

Why would he spring for parking when he’s sending out Limo’s?

3509

This afternoon, I was reading on a bench by a sort of canal called Mission Creek — it has houseboats on it and runs behind my building in downtownish SF. All was quiet, except for the occasional pelican splash-dive, when I heard a loud sort of WUFF sound from the water and looked up.

It was a pair of sea lions surfacing and swimming a few strokes before casually snaking down into a new dive. They had to be eight or nine feet long…They came up a couple more times, and as I watched them two little girls ran up screaming “SEA LION! SEA LION!” In the middle of a city!

3510

He’s right, you know…

I’ll do it for you! Only $3,300.00 per month, which is actually $1,200.00 less than they were asking last year. Judging from the photos in the first link, it’s a totally bitchin’ pad.

3511

Hell, Pittsburgh’s three hours. That’s doable for a Bruce Wayne penthouse party.

3512

Only $3,300.00 per month, which is actually $1,200.00 less than they were asking last year. Judging from the photos in the first link, it’s a totally bitchin’ pad.

For $3,300 a month it BETTER be a totally bitchin’ pad. It better come furnished with a live in chef and butler, FFS.

3513

What kind of business is it that you do? Would you consider hiring from across the ocean? :)

3514

Shameless plug: Computer service, repair, and consulting.

My biz is hyperlocal, and I think my first hire is gonna have to be within short driving distance because their primary job duty will be to help me handle more short-notice emergency work.

I’m still small-time, it’ll be a while before I’m thinking about flying candidates in from across the pond. ;)

3515

Ohhh, shame :(

I’d love doing that kind of job again. Keep me in mind for some point in the future, if you whish :)

Living & working in the USA: big dream of mine.

3516

Next week I have an interview lined up for a company that specialises in atmospheric science. This is awesome because it is one of the things I would have loved to have studied if I could have afforded to and I’ll have the chance to branch off into embedded systems programming.

3517

Uh, you haven’t lived in New York or other large city, have you? 3.3K will get you a modest place in a modest neighborhood. Nothing to write home about. Your “chef” is the corner restaurant.

That’s seems remarkably reasonable for relatively unique living arrangements.

3.3K is a middling mortgage on a decent house here in the SF Bay Area. That’s a steal- ElG should definitely go for it.

3518

Yeah, in Boston, SF Bay Area or NYC, 3.3k will get you a nice 2 or 3 bedroom, but no where near totally bitchin’. :(

3519

Spent a couple hours this morning dealing with a computer virus that came out of nowhere. Most likely culprit seems to be browsing Newsrama. I tried multiple products including Malwarebytes, Ad Aware and Avast, but strangely enough Microsoft Security Essentials turned out to be the most useful. I was still left with the odd problem of Google search results not sending me to the correct sites and wasted some time poking around in my browser configuration files until I thought to look into the hosts file.

3520

It’s surprising how confined everything is when you get up that high and the tower narrows down. Still awesome, of course.