GO GO GO!

This blog has certainly seen better days. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t travel to Europe much anymore.

My sister and I have made a pact that we will apply for a minimum of two jobs each per week. Not a terribly lofty goal, but it will be significantly better than the approximately 0 jobs I’ve applied for in the last month.

In other news I’m studying for the GRE. I don’t know if it grad school is in my future but I figure that it’s better to take the test now while I’m somewhat close to my college times so that I don’t forget too much how to study. I’m not sure if I’d go for Computer Science or what. I’m interested in teaching, so it might be a good path for me.

I still am very much interested in learning more German and living/working in Germany for a while is definitely something I plan on doing. Laura and I met up with a girl in her program who is German, so we’ve gotten some good practice there.

Life at REI is more or less the same. I got a raise but not because of good conduct, but rather because REI decided to raise the minimum that they pay employees. Woo. What a deal. My 6 month review is coming up in March so just about two months away, and that comes with another raise there too.

And lastly, I got a guitar for Christmas and have been practicing quite a bit almost every day. I already got an application for camp for this upcoming summer, and although I don’t know if it would work out, it is always tempting.

Well I think I say this every time but hopefully there will be more updates to be had here in the next few weeks as I start to get applications out there and get more settled into life here in North Carolina. Life is sure funny.

LinkedIn

I recently (tonight) joined LinkedIn, so if any of you that read this are on there, let’s get connected!

WordPress for iPhone

This post is being written from the WordPress (my blog hosting company) application for iPhone. I don’t think this will turn into a Twitter-like habit but I guess it’s good to have options!

Jordan Lake and my apartment

On Saturday Laura and her roommate Julie and I went to Jordan Lake, which is a large (I believe I read 13,000 acres of water) lake just about 15 miles from my place.  We went to just toss a Frisbee around a bit and get out of our respective houses. You can find the pictures from that here.

I also finally uploaded some pictures of the apartment/condo onto Picasa as well so if you’d like to see those, here is the link for those.

Enjoy!

Another experiment

I recently (yesterday) upgraded from Vista Business to Windows 7 Professional and am enjoying the new OS. It’s pretty similar to Vista, and truth be told, there aren’t a whole lot of differences I’ve noticed.

I’m going to use this opportunity of a wiped hard drive to also test out some new browsers. I’ve previously been using nothing but Internet Explorer. IE gets a lot of flak, some of it deserved, but I think IE8 was actually pretty good.

But in the interest of changing things up a bit I’m going to try out different browsers for a week at a time each. I’ll start with Google Chrome and see how that goes, following it up with either Firefox or Opera. Here goes nothin’!

Off the grid

I really am still here. I haven’t posted anything in quite a while. I’ve got a couple drafts here of posts that I’ve started and haven’t finished, mostly dealing with pictures I took long ago (April). I’d really like to get this blog going again. Although I don’t have a whole ton of news or information to share at this point, I do feel that I’ve been doing a pretty poor job of letting anyone know what’s going on, nor have I been very good about keeping up with anyone. I’d like to change that. Here goes.

He, he, he, he is alive!

I’m back from camp for the summer! It was yet again a great summer with lots of memorable events and people throughout. I’m sad that it’s over, but it was great while it lasted. I took about 1,000 pictures this summer that I will try and get uploaded to Facebook and/or Picasa sometime soon. I’m sure I’ll also mention more stories about the summer as I remember them, but for now I’ll just say that I’m back and it was a great summer!

The next adventure is that I will be driving to North Carolina with Laura and her sister Lisa on Tuesday. It’s 43 hours from Everett so probably about 32 or so from Shoshone. We’re going to be making the drive in her Volkswagon Jetta so it will be nice and packed with everyone’s stuff, I’m sure.

The plan now is to drive out there with Laura, job hunt for a few weeks, then fly to Portland for a mini family reunion, drive up to Seattle, get a U-Haul, and take all my stuff out of the storage unit and back home at least, maybe on to NC if I get a job lined up.

The road goes ever on and on!

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”

The above quote is from Thomas Jefferson. There are a number of quotes (linked to below) from various people: founding fathers, congressmen, senators, etc, and while I can’t say I’d agree with all of them, some of them make entirely too much sense.

What would you do with 1.5 billion? Obama is apparently asking for 1.5 billion dollars to combat the swine flu. Anyone have any idea what he plans to do with it? Is he planning on inoculating the world?

Have you seen this before? That’s the White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, explaining how crises provide an opportunity to get things done that normally could not be done.

Lastly I’ll point out this list of quotes, mentioned above.

I usually stay clear of politics, but I found there to be some interesting connections here. What interesting times we live in.

Updated and new Germany Albums

I’ve added several new albums onto Picasa, as well as updating the Misc album and the Around Freiburg album.

The new albums are: Austria, Wanderung (chronicling a hike we made around Freiburg), Fahrradtour (a bike tour we made around Freiburg), Die Letzte Abschiedsparty (a party to say goodbye), Bestanden! (pictures from class), and No Really, Die Letzte Abschiedsparty.

These are all of the Germany photos I have from this most recent trip to Freiburg. I had a blast and will definitely miss the people in my program, and I’m looking forward to hanging out with them again someday soon. I know I’ll be back to Germany again someday. It’s just a matter of time.

Still Alive

This was a trial…. I’m making a note here….HUGE SUCCESS!

If you don’t understand that reference I highly recommend you play the game Portal for the PC or Xbox 360. If you’d rather not and just skip to the point, here’s a YouTube video with the end credits that have the song. For those of you that did understand, +10 points for you! :p

I’m still alive, I’ve just been traveling a lot lately. After coming back from Germany on the 26th of March, I stayed around the Seattle area for about a week before heading off on another adventure to the east, this time to North Carolina. Laura got accepted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to get her PhD in History. It’s a six year program: two to get a masters, then four more for the PhD. We went to check out the school, and afterwards we went and visited my sisters. One is living in North Carolina and going to school there and the other is working in Washington DC now. We went and visited them both and had a great time!

I’m going to get some pictures posted here sometime soon, but for now I’ll just say that Chapel Hill looks to be a very nice town of about 50,000 and I think it will be a good place to be for a while.

Laura was one of 400 applicants and only about I think 18 people to get accepted into the program, and  she’s the only new student that her advisor is taking. It probably helps that our history professor from PLU and the new professor are such good friends that Laura was able to get paired up with him, and of course the fact that her topic interested him quite a bit. She’s a smart one, that Laura…

For me, there seem to be a pretty good number of tech jobs in the area. I’ve been looking online and there appear to be no shortage of jobs. The biggest difficulty is that a lot of them are wanting people with experience, and since I’ve just graduated a year ago and haven’t had a job in that area yet, it will be a bit of a challenge. I’m not too worried about it though and I’m sure something will come up.

But anyway that is the plan for now. Camp this summer (summe r #7 for me, I think) and then off to North Carolina. Exciting times are ahead!