Crazy CO driver terrorizes Albany

Did I mention it's dark here? There's an inky blackness to the night that makes it nearly impossible to see where to turn sometimes when driving. It's partly because it's typically cloudy this time of year, but I think they don't have as many streetlights, either (that's both good and bad, I suppose). So, now that I've set up my excuse....

Tonight I was trying to get into what was ultimately the worst Thai restaurant I've ever been to, and I thought there was a driveway on both sides. Nope - the little alley on the other side was a cleverly disguised highway on-ramp! I whipped around so I was kind of blocking it to get back on the road (I only almost had to go up onto the sidewalk). Then, a quick illegal u-turn down the block, and it was off to massive Thai food disappointment. I must note - the worst Thai places I've ever been have been the most expensive, fancy places.

Random observation: they have more blue post boxes here than anywhere I've ever been. There's just about one on every corner, residential or commercial. They have a lot of smaller post offices, too, instead of a few really large ones. I've only found one that has an APC (automated postal center, I think it is). I guess they still want some people to have jobs here. :-)

Eating my words, instead of tacos

I have to admit, one of my main complaints about Albany isn't quite as bad as I first feared. Namely, there are three, if not four Taco Bells in town. There are two stand-alones (combined with something else like KFC and Long John Silver's) and I think there's one inside each of the two malls in town.

I've been told I don't need one on every corner for a city this size.

Now, if there were only some good hole-in-the-wall Mexican place with a decent smothered burrito. That's eluded me so far. I could eat 400 different kinds of pizza a week and never run out of pizza joints, though!

Goodbye, dear friend

Lost a good friend in an accident. I am at a loss for words, and my heart grieves for those left behind.

You lived your life more fully than anyone I've ever met, and you helped me immeasurably during a time of despair. You will be sorely missed.

It ain't all hard knocks

I've been pretty down the last couple of weeks. A good deal of it is home-sickness, but I forgot how depressing it can be when you're in physical pain. My back was really killing me from all the moving and such, and all the work I'd done on the house in CO before heading out here. Today I had a pretty vigorous massage at one of those mall kiosks. My mood improved markedly, as well as my ability to walk around the mall and downtown Saratoga. We went up there to check out some new apartments they're building.

I've always responded to different places in very subtle ways. Somehow I hate driving in Albany, and it seems to depress me somehow, even though it's got some very nice places - in fact, overall, it only has a few "bad" neighborhoods. Saratoga is all nice - it's in the richest county in the region. Horse racing and gambling (and tourism in general) seem to be the only way to save our old towns. Saratoga is a lot like Fort Collins, CO with the addition of a much larger lake, and a huge transient population that appears for the horse racing season.

I really, really miss Mexican food. At home, there area wonderful hole-in-the-wall Mexican places on every corner. Here, it's pizza joints. I haven't had a burrito in like 2 months! On the other hand, I don't miss feeling like I have to speak Spanish in Wal-Mart. And, the fast food places aren't just staffed with non-English speaking adults. The teenagers here actually get to/want to work. Don't want to be un-PC (ok, I don't care). Just an observation.

Don't sue me

So, here's a bit more fun from the sleazy lawyers at Lisa's company. First of all, they hired Lisa in the capacity of a "billing paralegal," which ended up meaning no paralegal work, all billing. And billing meant mostly collections. They wanted to make everyone in billing work until 7PM every week to call people who hadn't paid their bills in 5 days. 5 days! Most places don't get huffy for more like 30 days.

They actually wanted her to implicitly threaten one client that "they got them out of jail, they can put them back in!"

Also, bills would come back from the managing partner with corrections - which meant he added time to the partner's bills to increase the total billed time.

Legal Blondage

There's a woman at Lisa's work who's about to graduate law school. They've nicknamed her Legally Blond. She just found out about the state bar fees and said "you have to pay to be a lawyer?" At one point she had also said "I was hired to do paralegal work, and I don't have a paralegal certificate." Well, sweetheart - law school may just trump paralegal school.

Speaking of the job, she's about had it with lawyers. This place is more uptight than the military (the place is run by former and active-reserve military member - Army Airborne types). It has more corporate BS than a huge firm (like where I work) but it's really a medium sized company.

They actually banned microwave popcorn because someone burned it once. I kid you not, a partner actually said "Didn't you get the memo?!" And he was serious. And, one of the lawyers stopped by Lisa's office area today and someone said "hide the donuts." Too late - he had a fit because it was after noon and donuts were still out!

Dish Network VS Time Warner DVRs

This is a rant for my TV-loving friends.

Oh, how I miss my DISH. As soon as possible, I'm going back. Here's a quick run-down of features the Time Warner recorder is lacking, and things I just hate about it:

1) No jump-forward or back (sometimes known as Commercial Skip).
2) No date or episode number on show summaries or recorded events.
3) Inability to display info while watching a recorded event.
4) Clunky remote. The DISH remote was very intuitive and comfortable to use.
5) Can't change sort order on recorded events.
6) Our 2nd DVR doesn't even have dedicated buttons for bringing up the DVR features, just the usual stop, forward, rewind, etc. You have to scroll through about 5 menus to get to your shows.
7) Speaking of those buttons, they aren't very responsive. I often miss my target when pausing, rewinding, etc.
8) When you exit the recording menu, you're stuck on a splash screen until you change the channel. That's the only way out. It doesn't even drop you back to the channel you were on.


I'll think of more, but I think you get the picture.

Horsies

We went up to beautiful Saratoga Springs on Sunday to shake me out of my doldrums. It's off-season, but I think harness racing is still on. We just walked around downtown looking at lofts, rentals, etc. and contemplating our next possible move! ;-)

It's very hard to explain how different things are out East for a Colorado-raised boy. Even though traffic in Denver sucked, it was frustrating in a different way. I guess Anchorage was similar to here in the particular traffic problems of road size vs car density. There's rarely a two lane road, never mind the 3 lane boulevards that try to keep things moving in CO.

I've already covered the indifferent attitude about having street signs. I keep the GPS on all the time so I have some warning my turn is coming up. It's hard to look ahead too far due to the 10,000,000,000,000 trees and I don't think I've ever gone more than 3 blocks before waiting at another light.

But, if water is what you're after, there's no end of it. And you don't have to drain the entire region's underground aquifers trying to keep a carpet of grass underfoot.

Halloween

We didn't get any trick-or-treaters. We are temporarily in an apartment with security doors, so it makes it kind of difficult for the little beggars. It's also kind of isolated. The strange thing is that, except for one darling little princess I saw at McDonald's at lunch the day before Halloween, I didn't even see any kids out on the road. We went to dinner, so maybe they were done by then. I don't know if they go to the malls here, or what. Seems like a lot of good neighborhoods for going house to house. The mystery shall have to wait until next year.

Here VS. There, wherever they are

If you've never been to the City-Data forums it's an interesting place where people discuss places to live. Most people honestly point out the good and bad of it, but it's amazing how where you grow up affects your views.

It's impossible to explain the differences in East VS. West, how it feels, etc. to people from the opposite sides of the country. I'm including CO as West, BTW, not the middle - it's definitely western in culture. I'm also leaving the geographically mis-named Midwest out of it because, except for a few visits, and 6 mo of AF training in IL, I have no experience to comment on it.