A while back, between 1998 and 2001, I used to write and save notes referring to things I read in the newspaper and found interesting. Over time, I ended up with a small database of anecdotes. Nothing too deep or too long. It was mostly a copy and paste job really.
I didn’t have a real reason for doing this, other than to keep a record of stuff I thought would be fun and useful to remember one day. Well, today was the day. I’ve been re-organizing things in my computer, motivated by the move to Atlanta, and ran into my newspaper notes folder. Since I was at it, I took the time to read some of them.
Here’s one from 2001:
“A few companies are working on a glass window with the capability to clean itself whenever it rains or water is thrown at it. The glass windows are coated with titanium oxide which supposedly prevents the formation of stains when water with particles of dirt runs dows the glass.”
And another, dated March 23rd 2001:
“Mir came crashing down last night here in the US. A few fishing boats refused to leave the area in the South Pacific where the remaining pieces of Mir was supposed to fall because according to them, “the tuna is biting”.”
Finally a note from April 1st 2001, indicative of things to come:
“Afghanistan is in pieces, because of the extremely aggressive ideology of Taliban, a religious group that controls the country to a very large extent and also because of all the UN embargos, led by the US, which claims that Afghanistan is home of a guy who is the number one suspect in the bombing of several US embassies.”
Some guy is pretending to be Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and is imitating Michael’s linguistic style to talk about foods instead of new social networking and Web 2.0 sites. Today he posted about the “banana”.
“Fruits are nothing new. Over the last few years, countless varieties have been launched… strawberries, blueberries, oranges, cantaloupe, grapes—I could go on. But all of these fruits have been very Food 1.0, requiring washing, peeling, cutting, and other helper applications. I like fruit on my cereal, but, wow, does it have to be so difficult?
Well, my sources just moments ago filled me on a new fruit, the banana, that has all the killer features other fruits have been lacking, and which I’ve been calling for for some time now.
Bananas require no special gizmos to get down to business. Just peel back the conveniently hard nub at the top and get instant access to the tasty fruit inside.
This might get very popular very fast.”
That’s pretty good. I love it!
We’ve been in our new house in Atlanta for almost 2 weeks now and things are finally settling into place. We unpacked most of the boxes, got our utilities setup and are starting to feel like we have a new home. Photos will be posted soon!
Today I had the chance to utilize the transit system in Atlanta for the first time. Down here it’s called the MARTA, short for “Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority”. All buses and trains belong to MARTA, kind of like the MBTA in Boston.
I checked the bus schedule online and headed to the stop 10 minutes before the bus was supposed to come. It showed up right on time and was almost completely empty. Its AC was working very well and the ride to Midtown was as comfortable as one could have hoped. No complaints here.
The ride was a bit on the expensive side, $1.75, but with people driving their cars everywhere down here, I bet the MARTA can’t make enough money on volume to justify a lower fare. The funny thing is that right before we got here, I asked lots of people about the MARTA. Almost without exception, everyone would roll their eyes and start complaining about it. Well, my experience with it up to this point has been great and I hope it stays that way!
It’s been a while since our last update. That’s because it’s been harder to get connected since we moved out of the hotel and into our new house in Atlanta. We are now in Phase II of the plan!
After a busy week of apt hunting we settled on a nice little 2 bedroom house in a central neighborhood about 2 miles from Georgia Tech. The movers will bring all of our stuff over on Monday. So this weekend we’ve been camping out on the floor, and trying to spend as much time as possible outside the house, in places that have chairs.
It’s been fun to get to know the area a bit. Our neighborhood is referred to as Virginia Highlands (around the intersection of Virginia and Highland Ave). We can walk to several restaurants, shops, bars. Yesterday we explored the area, and for the first time all week didn’t have to get in the car at all!
Today we went to a couple open houses in the neighborhood and then have been hanging out at this coffee bar near GT with free wi-fi. So we’ll relax here and appreciate their chairs a bit longer.
Tomorrow, our new life in Atlanta begins for real. It’s Andrea’s first day at GT!
Here’s where we’re calling home for now. For the past few months, this is the question we’ve both been asked the most: “So, do you guys know where you’ll be living in Atlanta?” After a while we found out that when you say “Nah, we’ll figure it out when we get there…” people think you are crazy. So to sound like we know what we’re doing Thomaz came up with the three phase plan to describe our move. Phase I (now) is about a week in a hotel organizing Phase II, which is a short-term (3mo-1yr) apartment/condo/house for rent. Then Phase III is the big one, this year we’ll be on the market looking for a house to buy.
The first couple of days in Atlanta, we got a little distracted by homes for sale, and not focusing as much as we should on Phase II. Last Sunday we spent the afternoon running around to open houses in the neighborhoods of Oakhurst and Virginia Highlands. There is so much stuff for sale, we felt like every street we turned down had a house for sale….so seems like a good time to be looking.
We spent the rest of the week looking for an apartment, condo or house for rent. It’s been a bit harder to find apartments in the Midtown area, but there are options available in lots of other neighborhoods. If everything goes well, we should be moving into our new place this weekend. More on that soon.
We are very proud of the Honda (that we call Gramps). Still truckin’ since 1986! We figure that’s got to be like 103 in car-years. After three years of sitting in our parking lot and driving to the grocery store on the weekend, the car’s back to daily duty now in Atlanta.
We made it! After 1,000+ miles and 11 states, we pulled into Atlanta about 5PM last night – we are calling a Marriott Residence Inn our current home. We woke up early today and will be scoping out the city for areas where we might want to live. We hope to be in our permanent dwelling by the end of the week.
We got an early start yesterday and did some site-seeing along the Blue Ride Parkway. We ended up driving a little over 100 miles of the Parkway, from the beginning until Roanoke, VA. Then after a quick stop for lunch we got back on the interstate and back to the big trucks.
We HIGHLY recommend that if you’re driving in the area you check out this parkway. It was amazing. Beautiful views at every turn. Rolling mountains of dense forest. For some reason it wasn’t very crowded on a Thurs/Fri, we mostly had the road to ourselves. We were only on the road for about a mile before we saw our first deer!
Then we drove down to Charlotte, NC. A friend from the Media Lab, Kwan, is doing an internship here this summer, so we planned to visit him on the way down. He took us to a fun relaxing place for dinner right on Lake Norman.
Our plan for day 3 was to get down to the Blue Ridge Parkway, it’s a scenic route that runs parallel to I-81 through the George Washington National Forest. We brought all our gear and hoped to be able to camp somewhere! We found a super Wal-Mart, picked up some camping supplies (soup, oatmeal, marshmellows), and were off to find a campsite. It was getting late, so we didn’t have a lot of time to find a place and set up camp before the sun went down, and unfortunately the campground on the north side of the parkway had been full since about 3pm.
So, we ended up getting a cabin just down the road from the campsite. Not quite camping when you have a kitchen and a shower, but it’s great to spend a night in the middle of the woods.
What’s with all the caverns? We’re in Virginia, and we have 100s of miles of the Appalachian mountains to get through, heading south on I-81. Every few miles we see signs “Come see Such-And-Such Caverns!, exit X” We’re pretty sure this has got to be easy money. You find a cave, put up a sign on the highway, and charge tourists to come see it. …just a theory.
