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robotech_masterSo, here I am! Time for another one of those infrequent "state of the Robotech_Master" reports.
First of all, important enough to mention before the jump, I'm a 9-times-uncle as of last night! My brother Alex and sister-in-law Rachael just had their second kid last night, whom they've named Maxwell Meadows. My other brother's expecting his 8th kid sometime soon, too. Crazy, huh?
In more personally important news, I'm going to be interviewing Frank Catalano, the voice behind "Rand" from Robotech, on my Space Station Liberty podcast this Saturday, at 10 a.m. Pacific/1 p.m. Eastern. You can listen live, or call in (via phone or SIP VOIP app such as MicroSIP) to ask questions yourself! More info on how to do that at http://www.talkshoe.com. Don't miss it!
First off, I should mention that since the last couple of weeks, I have had a new job working as a contractor at the Eli Lilly technical center just southwest of downtown Indianapolis. (Go to Google Maps, search on "Old Kentucky Ave, Indianapolis," and you'll find the exact spot.) I'm a technical writer, but "technical copy and paster" might be more accurate. My job entails copying data from older pharmaceutical documentation forms into a new template, in order to be compatible with a new computer system Lilly's switching to for running pharmaceutical trials. (Like the ones I took part in myself at BioKinetic, I suppose.) It seems easy enough so far, and I certainly can't complain about being employed again. I had to go through about four days of training, most of which has little or no relevance to the actual job, but on the other hand, at least I now have an excellent working knowledge of how medical studies are conducted.
Of course, the fact that paychecks trail behind start of job has led to a little bit of a tricky dance as I come to the end of the month. My parents already paid the rent for me my last two months, and I'm going to have to pay them back for it, on top of the money I still owe my brother Alex for my air conditioner; I can't ask them to shell out for it again. My paycheck comes out tomorrow; it's being mailed to me (the first check is always mailed; direct deposit doesn't kick in 'til later) so I should get it on Saturday. My rent is due by the end of the month. The last day I can pay it by check is tomorrow.
So I'm in the awkward situation of having to write a check and hope they don't try to deposit it for a day or two. Of course, given that I'll be able to deposit the check as soon as I get it via my smartphone, it shouldn't be a problem if it arrives on time. But if for some reason it doesn't, the next day it could come would be Tuesday. It wouldn't be a problem, except that for whatever reason I've been having a little trouble receiving mailed checks here lately. My TeleRead check from three months ago was returned for some reason, and last month's check still hasn't arrived, despite having been mailed two weeks ago. I finally got them to PayPal me the money…which is good since I'm down to about $20 in my bank account and my credit card maxed out. I sure hope nothing goes wrong with getting this one!
The job is about 3 3/4 miles away from me, which makes about a 25 minute bike ride if I don't slow down to do other things along the way, like play Ingress. It's a nice, scenic ride through the downtown area and across the White River, along very bike-friendly trails and streets. It's about the same distance as my commute to work back in Springfield, but the difference in getting there is like night and day. Instead of having to bike along a busy city street with no provision for bicycles, I can go by sidewalks and the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. (I took this photo today, on the way across a bridge...) It takes the same amount of time to bike as to take the bus, and it's a really simple ride (unless it's pouring rain) which saves me money. It even has actual lockers where you can lock your bike up with a padlock (you provide the padlock).
The job should be good through at least the end of the year. Which leads me to a bit of a conundrum. Biking is one thing when the weather's nice as it is. But on the other hand, it's going to start getting cooler here in a month or two, and downright frigid in three or four. It's shaping up to be another really harsh Indiana winter, and bicycling any distance in frigid temperatures is really rough. So how am I going to get to work without a car?
But then opportunity presents itself. A company called Currie Technologies has a pair of inexpensive electric bikes (one $500, the other $700) with a 15 mile range—not just enough for round trips to work, but also sufficient for one-way commutes all the way to my brother's house in Greenwood. The bikes use SLA (sealed lead-acid) batteries, which means they're rather heavy and prone to wearing out—but the battery packs can be upgraded to the lighter (but more expensive) lithium batteries down the line, which means I could buy now and upgrade later. A review I found suggests they're a rather good value for the price—which is good, because what with having to pay back my brother, my parents, my credit cards, and my other debts, I think that price is about all I can afford. When I get my first real paycheck in a couple of weeks, I'm considering getting me one.
I'd really rather have a motor scooter like I used to—I even still have some credit at a Springfield, Missouri scooter dealership that I could use—but leaving aside the question of whether my parents would want me risking my fool neck on one again, there's no way I could get it into and out of my apartment, up two shallow flights of stairs, and locking it up outside would just be asking for it to be stolen like my first scooter was in Springfield. But this e-bike, weighing only 70 lbs, should be possible to move that way. And I'll bet I could even load it onto the bike racks on the city bus to extend my range even further.
There's an e-bike dealership that carries that brand out north of town, in Carmel. I'll see about getting out there to take a look at what they've got sometime between now and then, I guess.
What else is worth saying? I was going to write up something about GenCon, but now that I think about it, I'm not really sure what's to be said. It lasted four days, I didn't actually play many games but I had a lot of fun looking around. Didn't make as many purchases as I would have liked given the money situation, but did make some (possibly too many, which is why I'm now scraping the bottom of the barrel on my bank account as I wait for the paychecks to start coming!). Hoped to meet Wil Wheaton, who was in attendance, but unfortunately I never was in the right place at the right time. Oh well, maybe next year. I did attend panels for both Ingress and Storium, and got to meet the founder of Storium, so that's something. And I met a bunch of Baen folks, too.
Speaking of Ingress, I participated in an Ingress "Anomaly" last weekend. Wrote up my experience on TeleRead—and was lucky enough to get it picked up by the official Ingress Facebook account, so it's been shared about a zillion times.
I guess that's about all I have to say from here.
First of all, important enough to mention before the jump, I'm a 9-times-uncle as of last night! My brother Alex and sister-in-law Rachael just had their second kid last night, whom they've named Maxwell Meadows. My other brother's expecting his 8th kid sometime soon, too. Crazy, huh?
In more personally important news, I'm going to be interviewing Frank Catalano, the voice behind "Rand" from Robotech, on my Space Station Liberty podcast this Saturday, at 10 a.m. Pacific/1 p.m. Eastern. You can listen live, or call in (via phone or SIP VOIP app such as MicroSIP) to ask questions yourself! More info on how to do that at http://www.talkshoe.com. Don't miss it!
First off, I should mention that since the last couple of weeks, I have had a new job working as a contractor at the Eli Lilly technical center just southwest of downtown Indianapolis. (Go to Google Maps, search on "Old Kentucky Ave, Indianapolis," and you'll find the exact spot.) I'm a technical writer, but "technical copy and paster" might be more accurate. My job entails copying data from older pharmaceutical documentation forms into a new template, in order to be compatible with a new computer system Lilly's switching to for running pharmaceutical trials. (Like the ones I took part in myself at BioKinetic, I suppose.) It seems easy enough so far, and I certainly can't complain about being employed again. I had to go through about four days of training, most of which has little or no relevance to the actual job, but on the other hand, at least I now have an excellent working knowledge of how medical studies are conducted.
Of course, the fact that paychecks trail behind start of job has led to a little bit of a tricky dance as I come to the end of the month. My parents already paid the rent for me my last two months, and I'm going to have to pay them back for it, on top of the money I still owe my brother Alex for my air conditioner; I can't ask them to shell out for it again. My paycheck comes out tomorrow; it's being mailed to me (the first check is always mailed; direct deposit doesn't kick in 'til later) so I should get it on Saturday. My rent is due by the end of the month. The last day I can pay it by check is tomorrow.
So I'm in the awkward situation of having to write a check and hope they don't try to deposit it for a day or two. Of course, given that I'll be able to deposit the check as soon as I get it via my smartphone, it shouldn't be a problem if it arrives on time. But if for some reason it doesn't, the next day it could come would be Tuesday. It wouldn't be a problem, except that for whatever reason I've been having a little trouble receiving mailed checks here lately. My TeleRead check from three months ago was returned for some reason, and last month's check still hasn't arrived, despite having been mailed two weeks ago. I finally got them to PayPal me the money…which is good since I'm down to about $20 in my bank account and my credit card maxed out. I sure hope nothing goes wrong with getting this one!
The job is about 3 3/4 miles away from me, which makes about a 25 minute bike ride if I don't slow down to do other things along the way, like play Ingress. It's a nice, scenic ride through the downtown area and across the White River, along very bike-friendly trails and streets. It's about the same distance as my commute to work back in Springfield, but the difference in getting there is like night and day. Instead of having to bike along a busy city street with no provision for bicycles, I can go by sidewalks and the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. (I took this photo today, on the way across a bridge...) It takes the same amount of time to bike as to take the bus, and it's a really simple ride (unless it's pouring rain) which saves me money. It even has actual lockers where you can lock your bike up with a padlock (you provide the padlock).
The job should be good through at least the end of the year. Which leads me to a bit of a conundrum. Biking is one thing when the weather's nice as it is. But on the other hand, it's going to start getting cooler here in a month or two, and downright frigid in three or four. It's shaping up to be another really harsh Indiana winter, and bicycling any distance in frigid temperatures is really rough. So how am I going to get to work without a car?
But then opportunity presents itself. A company called Currie Technologies has a pair of inexpensive electric bikes (one $500, the other $700) with a 15 mile range—not just enough for round trips to work, but also sufficient for one-way commutes all the way to my brother's house in Greenwood. The bikes use SLA (sealed lead-acid) batteries, which means they're rather heavy and prone to wearing out—but the battery packs can be upgraded to the lighter (but more expensive) lithium batteries down the line, which means I could buy now and upgrade later. A review I found suggests they're a rather good value for the price—which is good, because what with having to pay back my brother, my parents, my credit cards, and my other debts, I think that price is about all I can afford. When I get my first real paycheck in a couple of weeks, I'm considering getting me one.
I'd really rather have a motor scooter like I used to—I even still have some credit at a Springfield, Missouri scooter dealership that I could use—but leaving aside the question of whether my parents would want me risking my fool neck on one again, there's no way I could get it into and out of my apartment, up two shallow flights of stairs, and locking it up outside would just be asking for it to be stolen like my first scooter was in Springfield. But this e-bike, weighing only 70 lbs, should be possible to move that way. And I'll bet I could even load it onto the bike racks on the city bus to extend my range even further.
There's an e-bike dealership that carries that brand out north of town, in Carmel. I'll see about getting out there to take a look at what they've got sometime between now and then, I guess.
What else is worth saying? I was going to write up something about GenCon, but now that I think about it, I'm not really sure what's to be said. It lasted four days, I didn't actually play many games but I had a lot of fun looking around. Didn't make as many purchases as I would have liked given the money situation, but did make some (possibly too many, which is why I'm now scraping the bottom of the barrel on my bank account as I wait for the paychecks to start coming!). Hoped to meet Wil Wheaton, who was in attendance, but unfortunately I never was in the right place at the right time. Oh well, maybe next year. I did attend panels for both Ingress and Storium, and got to meet the founder of Storium, so that's something. And I met a bunch of Baen folks, too.
Speaking of Ingress, I participated in an Ingress "Anomaly" last weekend. Wrote up my experience on TeleRead—and was lucky enough to get it picked up by the official Ingress Facebook account, so it's been shared about a zillion times.
I guess that's about all I have to say from here.
