Seth Nickell

Lesson: Do not leave soda cans in the car. It might seem obvious to those of you accustomed to cold climates, but I finally realized I have to think of my car as a freezer. So I left 12 cans of mountain dew in my car right behind the driver’s seat. What happened? Of course about half the cans exploded when they froze. So that’s not good… unfortunately I didn’t notice this for three weeks. Well, turns out one of these days must have gotten above freezing, because the mountain dew in the exploded cans melted. Of course by now its all frozen into my carpet. I hate this place.

Lesson: Microfiber pants really help. Thanks to a suggestion from Carl-Christian Salvesen in Norway I’ve swapped out jeans for microfiber slacks if I’m walking around in the cold. They’re much lighter so I sort of assumed they wouldn’t work as well as jeans. Not so, they appear to trap a lot more heat. When its really windy I have windbreaker-pant things I can pull over them.

Lesson: If you want to buy gloves and scarves you have to do it before winter. People in this place exhibit extraordinary wishful thinking during the winter, it seems. The stores have already had their “get rid of everything” winter clearance sales. Sears had not a single scarf or pair of gloves left. The stores are filled with people bundled up to the rafters in coats, gloves, scarves, etc buying… swim suits and light skirts. Its ridiculous. I mean, I know you start selling before the season starts, but its not even February yet! What are you supposed to do if you lose your gloves? (anyway, I finally found some nice black leather gloves, but I tried a bunch of stores that used to have them but don’nomo’)

Today is a bad day for banking.

So this morning (not 20 minutes ago) I pulled up to a bank’s drive-up ATM with the intent of withdrawing $40. I ended up with $400. I also managed to lose my bank card.

Despite the fact that most ATMs only handle money in multiples of $20, they still require you to enter the “cents”. So asking for $40 entails the button sequence 4-0-0-0. I almost always withdraw $40, so I perform this series of presses without a lot of higher brain involvement. Unfortunately, this ATM fixed a “bug” in the way 95% ATMs work: they only let you enter whole dollar values.

So I pressed 4-0-0…. and caught myself before pressing the final 0 based on the feedback on screen (actually, if I’d pressed the final 0 things would have turned out better because ATMs won’t give you $4000 in a single transaction).

Most ATMs have on screen commands and buttons along the sides of the screen that are supposed to line up with the commands (press the button and it executes the command “next” to it). The problem is they often have the buttons far enough away from the edge of the screen, and the buttons are raised. The net effect is that at different heights the buttons line up differently. Additionally, even when there are only two options, they tend to put them on buttons that are right next to each other. Even given the flawed physical design, the chance of error could be dramatically reduced if the options were always kept as far from each other as possible.

Well, I was flustered, because its disturbing to know that one button press will dump $400 in cash on you: I wanted that $400 off the screen pronto! In my haste I did not account for the button line up (my car is really small and hence low… buttons must have been designed for an SUV), and pressed the accept option instead of cancel. 30 seconds later I’m flush with benjamins.

So my first reaction is “put this cash somewhere safe”, so I find a place to stow it temporarily. Then I glance over and see the receipt and grab it, because I sure want a record of this transaction until I count the loot. Then I realize that because I’m getting an apt soon, I really want the money in the bank ASAP, so I back up and grab a deposit envelop.What did I forget? Oh yes, I forgot to take my card.

So I pull away from the ATM into the bank’s parking lot to fill out the deposit envelop, stuff the cash into it, and head back to the machine. I fumble around my wallet for my card. Can’t find it. Then I realize that I might have put the card loose on the seat next to me (which I sometimes do if I’ve already stowed my wallet in my pocket). So I drive back to the parking lot and dismantle my car looking for the card. Then it hits me

So I head into the bank, and the nice man at the desk gets the manager and they go to check the ATM. Oh sorry, your card was with another bank, so we can’t give it back to you. Unfortunately my credit union has no branches within thousand miles of here, so its going to take time to get a new card.

$(#*&(&*(*&!!! On the upside, I got $400 out of the account before losing my card, and I guess I can still write checks from that account to get an apt, so its not the end of the world.

I can’t believe I did this because I’ve always been grumpy and conscious of the button-line-up usability problem present in many ATMs. Good ATMs have the buttons close to the screen and at the same height as the screen so it all lines up no matter what angle you look at it from…or they’re touch screens (which has other downsides at times, but overall I think is an improvement).

Well…. I have learned some valuable lessons. This is my first experience with True Cold[TM]. So last night I decided to walk 2 miles from my friend’s place back to the bed & breakfast… at 1 am. At -30F (with windchill). It was… very cold. Lesson one was that jeans cannot, in fact, be worn in any weather. By the time I got home my legs were very, very cold. Lesson two is that a scarf is a worthwhile thing to have (at least, I’m guessing it would be) because by the time I got home sans scarf I could no longer feel my nose. Lesson three is that you look funny the next day after exposing yourself to cold. My skin is all red and is flaking.

On the upside, my jacket held up well, and I learned that socks can actually work better than gloves because they keep all your fingers together (thanks Josh!).

Still trying to develop a rhythm for what I’ll be doing. Its weird, but where I know how to change whatever in GNOME (who to talk to, who to avoid, etc)…. when it comes to messing with things outside in GNOME in Red Hat I really have no clue where to go. So slowly figuring that sort of stuff out.

In other news, been looking for an apartment. I made the mistake of agreeing to stay a month at the Bed and Breakfast. The downside is that they really don’t have enough parking and I’m double parked in their driveway, which means I have to get up early to make sure that my car doesn’t hem somebody else’s in. Oh well.

Currently I’m planning to live somewhere “close to Red Hat”. Have looked at a number of apartments… currently leaning toward living in Nashua, NH though that is notably farther from Boston than, say, Kennsington apartments (which is absolutely stellar… except its $300/mo more than I want to pay).

Yes, my weblog has grown silent. Yes, important messages clamour for my attention amidst the congestion that is my inbox. What has been going on you ask?

Last week I spent on the road driving ~12 hours a day. My brother foolishly agreed to go along and had to put up with a week of me whinging about his speeding and swerving (sorry about that Drew!). I think I would have gone nuts without the company. Along the way I stayed with a good HS friend (Kenny Martens) who I hadn’t seen in 4 years, a close stanford friend who I’d never gotten a chance to say goodbye to (Jamie Fitz), and another good stanford friend who graduated early and went east (Brian Shieh).

We spent two nights sleeping in rest areas… in AZ the temperature dropped to -15C. Drew was wise enough to sleep in the car…. I on the other hand was huddled on the cement next to a picnic table in my sleeping bag (can’t stand sleeping in cars). Arrived at my destination on Friday. In a fit of compunctions I flew my brother home instead of selling him to a passing ship as I had originally intended.

Where was I driving to you ask? San Fransisco to Boston by way of Dallas. “Boston? Boston?!?” you exclaim, “Shan’t you perish in a blizzard of ice and bad driving?” Yes! But sacrifices must be made. “But why Boston???”

Funny you should ask. That brings me to the next tidbit of news. As of today I’m now working at Red Hat in Westford, MA (”Boston”, MA for some definitions of Boston) as an interaction designer.

The original plan was to arrive in Boston on the 1st, stay with my friend Maisy before she disappeared back to stanford, and find a place to live by the 5th when RH threw me on a plane to Raleigh for employee ortientation (which is overall incovenient and disorienting, but c’est la vie). This plan failed. Its been considerably harder to find a place to live in Boston area than it was in either minnesota or bay area. Most people apparently use a realtor who charges first month’s rent in fees (!!!). I’m way to Scotch to throw my money at somebody who I consider to be the ultimate middeman. Anyway, current plan is to stay at a bed and breakfast when I get back from Raleigh while I figure out where I want to live. It’ll also be good to get a taste of the ~40 minute commute from Cambridge area to Westford before I sign a 12 mo. lease locking me into either the boonies or into a ridiculously long commute.