Blog is all caught up

Hey!!! This is the first entry that isn't back dated.

I made it through my first week of work. I am totally and utterly overwhelmed. I love it! I haven't found anything bad about work. Ok, I suppose there is one thing, but it's probably best not to say and every other company has similar problems. Google seems to be doing a very good job from what I've seen so far. I have no doubt I will find things I don't like or could be improved. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to make changes. Being an employee hasn't been as weird as I thought it would be. After over 10 years of kinda being my own boss, I thought it might be a bit uncomfortable. So far, it's been the opposite. I've been more comfortable doing things when they tell you to. Since there are always customers, you're never really the boss of yourself anyways.

Damn Comcast. They are making me drive into work Tuesday. How? It took less than two weeks for them to screw up my internet connection. Bad signal levels. Sometimes it works, like right now. I only lost one post due to the bad connection. I need to get back home quick when they come out to fix the problem, so it's best if I use the car. They also made me turn on the TV for the second time I was here. The first time was to verify they installed cable properly. Since I wasn't planning on watching anything, I unplugged the TV. When the internet went out, I figured it best to verify at least the TV was working. Of course it was, just internet was out.

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The rest of these notes are my feelings towards my new home. I walk too fast for a Californian, but I ride my bike too slow. They should balance each other out. I'm in no hurry when I ride my bike (ok, I'm pretty lazy), so there's no need to go faster. OTOH, I jaywalk all the time. I'm guessing it will take less than a year to get a ticket. What a useless law to enforce. Which brings up something I've found to be quite odd here. California is known as being this liberal haven. I find it peculiar that they seem to be so into Law and Order. Not the television show (maybe that too, I don't know), but everything. There are so many signs, it's dizzying. Do this, don't do that. This is how much it will cost if you do this.

So many people water their lawns. I realize I'm in NorCal (Northern California) where there aren't as severe water shortages. However, they complain about not having enough water, then they waste it. I know at least some of the water is reclaimed which doesn't seem as bad, but I'm sure a lot of it is also clean drinking water. I have to say it is kinda funny to see a sign that the sprinklers use reclaimed drinking water, don't drink it. There are a lot of homeless people around. I was surprised at how many are here. There seem to be as many as in DC.

One other annoying thing is that as much as California is tolerant, there seems to be a huge gap between Latinos and everyone else. It's worse than the gap between black and white in the east. I was talking to a guy from Peru about it. His opinion was that it was primarily a workforce issue. The Latinos have a particular set of jobs they typically perform and so there isn't much intermixing. That does seem to be true. I don't know if that's the cause or effect.

It's still a very nice place, just some observations I've noticed so far.

I like that there is a fair amount of ethnic diversity. Lots of Asians from all over. The restaurants reflect that, which is good for me since I love Asian food. I've seen mostly Indian, Thai, Chinese, and Japanese.