4th and cold

What is up with this weather?! July 4th and I'm standing outside in a sweater and jacket still shivering from the wind.

It was a pretty good 4th. I went to a party hosted by someone I knew from a GDC past, and went with a friend of mine who lives here in San Francisco. He apparently didn't know I was here already, but it was great to meet up with people and have conversations about game audio with people who actually work in game audio.

Hope everyone back at home had a good 4th too!

--Russ

An Update

Hey there! Just wanted to let everyone know that things are going well out here in San Francisco. I know I haven't posted in a while, but honestly, there hasn't been a lot worth talking about. Most everyone already knows that I found a job, working as a Quality Assurance game tester for Sony. I start on July 20th. I'm pretty excited about that, since there had been some worry after the LucasArts option kinda fell apart. But this job came out of one of my contacts at LucasArts, so all ended up for the best anyway! It feels great to have a job in the game industry, finally, after all this time planning for it. Plus, I get to take a train to work. That's pretty cool.

Also, as some of you know, my grandfather passed away last week. I had the honor of being one of the pallbearers, and I am fortunate that I was able to be home for the funeral with all of my family. Thank you to everyone who expressed their sympathies, it certainly meant a lot to me.

Lindsey has started applying for jobs, and I feel confident that something will turn up for her. There are a fair amount of jobs that are in the same area as my job at Sony (south of the city) and if she ends up working there, we should be taking the same train to work, which would make dragging myself out of bed in the morning much easier.

Other than that, we're just hanging out at home, walking around the city, or hanging out with our friend Chao who happens to live out here. We miss everyone and hopefully I'll have something interesting to post next time!

--Russ

And Pictures From the City

Okay! The day after Lindsey and I got everything unpacked and felt like we actually were living someplace, we decided to go see some of the city. While I had been here three times before, I never had a chance to go see a lot of the city itself. We took some pictures (well, Lindsey took some pictures) so we could share it with all of you too.

Here's a picture of Alcatraz Island from one of the Piers. We haven't actually gone to see it yet because you need to get tickets in advance, and we just haven't gotten around to it.

The rest are random shots from the Farmer's Market area, which is right near the water. Pier 39 is also near here, and is an area with a lot of shopping and what not. Definitely a place to take anyone who comes to visit us! Check out the silver mimes in the last photo.






That's all for now!

--Russ

Pictures of the Apartment

We finally have internet! Now we can post up photos that we've taken since we arrived. First, pictures of the apartment, and then I'll post some of the city in a seperate post.

Here's the view from our bedroom window:

And the view from the living room window:

It's a pretty nice little place. We were both surprised at how spacious it was, we have plenty of room and are relatively close to everything we need. Next post: pictures of the city!

--Russ

We're here!

Lucky you, I'm stealing some internet from somewhere around here, so I can make a short post. All the pictures are still on Lindsey's camera though, and we haven't snapped any of our new apartment yet, so they'll have to come next post.

We've moved in, everything's unpacked (took two days), and we've seen a bit of the city so far. We did get out to the shopping center and buy a shower curtain at Macy's, and then the next day we went to the farmer's market, Pier 39, and the Fisherman's Wharf. It was pretty neat, lots of places to shop and a lovely climate to do it in. It has been nothing but sunny since we arrived.

We have run the dishwasher once, and it leaked water all over our floor and countertops, so we haven't run it again...only to discover that we have nothing else to wash dishes with! So on the list for tomorrow is getting some dishsoap and a sponge. I know, great story, right?

Well that's it for now, just wanted to post something short to let everyone know we haven't forgotten about the blog...we get real internet in our apartment on Thursday, and then we can make sure everyone sees pictures of our new place, and some of the stops we've made around town. Until then!

--Russ

Parts 2 and 3 of The Journey

Hi everyone!  Sorry I didn't get a post up yesterday, I tried posting today from my iPhone but it was giving me attitude and wouldn't work properly.  To make up for it, there's a ton of pictures from the last two days of our trip.

Tuesday morning started with us leaving the "Settle Inn" which was the hotel shaped like a castle that I mentioned in the last post.  Pictures of that below.  The entire day was spent driving through Nebraska and Wyoming.  Nebraska was boring.  Very boring.  Just a lot of fields and flat land, the exits were fairly far apart and there just wasn't much to look at.  This was a good six or seven hours, but finally things started to get interesting as we got into Wyoming.  

Wyoming takes the cake for the most beautiful state we've driven through so far.  Mountains and plateaus everywhere, just the most amazing scenery and landscapes.  We didn't get all the way through Wyoming on Tuesday, but today we finished it up.  A lot of the pictures below are of Wyoming, including a rest stop along the way that was in a particularly nice bit of land.  At the rest stop were tons of little prairie dogs, and they weren't even a little bit afraid of us.  Lindsey took a bit of my leftover cinnamon roll and fed the little guys.  It was just too cute.  This rest stop is where the really up close photos of the mountainside were taken, and we spent some time here just enjoying the scenery.  It was pretty spectacular.  I also bought Lindsey a little bear at a gift shop along the way, and there's a picture of him enjoying the ride as well.

An interesting item that dots the Wyoming countryside is the wind turbine, and boy did we see a lot of them, and relatively closely, too.  These things are gigantic.  I had read about them and seen pictures of them, but never actually seen on in front of me.  In case you don't know, the turbine spins in the wind (Wyoming is also the windiest place I've ever been) and generates electricity.  It's a clean, environmentally friendly way to generate power and is becoming a more popular choice for some areas.  One of those propeller blades is about the length of a 747, if not even a bit bigger.  Pictures of those below too.

Then we got into Utah, which looked a lot like Wyoming and was also very pretty.  Nothing of any real excitement happened in Utah, other than we drove on through it and got to Nevada.

Nevada was a lot of desert, but not the kind of desert I expected.  There was a fair amount of greenery and there were mountains on the horizon (and sometimes closer) the whole drive through the state.  I did get pictures of a couple patches of just sand though, including some pure white sand.  I had never seen white sand before.  But after that it just was a long drive through country that looked the same the whole way.  It was dark by the time we got to Reno, but we pressed on and ended up in California!

That's right, we started today in Wyoming and ended it inside California's borders.  We're only about 128 miles outside of San Francisco right now, and tomorrow is due to be a big, big day.  We're heading onward and will drive through Sacramento and then make a stop at IKEA to pick up a few furniture items.  I personally believe that IKEA is actually why Lindsey agreed to the trip in the first place ;-)  Then onward to our new apartment building and the rest of the day spent moving boxes.

But more on that tomorrow!  Hopefully, that is...I don't have internet set up in the new apartment yet, but I will do my best to make some sort of post.  Until you hear from us again, enjoy the onslaught of pictures to follow below.  Thanks for the comments everyone left on the last post, I read them to Lindsey in the car and we had some good laughs.  It's great to hear from everyone in any manner, and we look forward to talking to you all soon!

Episode IV: A New Trip

After 12 hours and nearly 700 miles, day one is complete!  We're safe and sound in a hotel shaped as a castle with a statue of a knight on a horse guarding the entrance.  Pictures of that later.  It was a pretty eventful day.  The interstate took us up close and personal with the St. Louis Arch, and Lindsey took some fantastic pictures of that.  We stopped at a Maid Rite, which I have never had before but Lindsey had some fantastic memories of from growing up, and it was indeed fantastic.  Great milkshakes.  We also saw a small rainbow, which I tried to get a good picture of.  Oh, and a bird collided with the truck in mid-flight.  Lindsey slept through that, but it caught me off guard, that's for sure.

Driving hasn't been a problem.  In fact, we probably could have kept going tonight, except that we're a few miles outside of Omaha and I didn't know how easy it would be to find a hotel once we were past the city.  We just got on I-80, which is the long stretch of our drive (1600 miles) and that's the only road we'll be on all day tomorrow, and the next day as well.

We miss all of you guys a lot.  It wasn't easy leaving this morning, and we're going to want to talk to everyone as much as possible!  Call us, email us, all that good stuff.  Leave comments on this blog.  I'll make sure to make another post tomorrow, maybe even two once we can get pictures up.  Until then, enjoy the pictures we took today!