Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is the big day. We are moving to Newark. It has been a long time since we were so excited about moving. Maybe never this much. The apartment in North Brunswick was so icky and the new place is so nice that the contrast might be the most extreme ever for us.

I was up a bit before Dominica this morning but because we had loaded the big two person stuff into the truck last night I was able to get busy loading the bins and other items into the truck and had a lot of the apartment done before she even got up. We were almost done loading before we would even have gotten the truck home had we picked it up this morning because the rental place only opened at nine in the morning. We were done loading by ten. We figure we might have been able to have gotten the truck home by a quarter to ten at the latest.

We left to head to Newark at a little before eleven. Dominica drove Oreo in the fully loaded PR5 ahead of me in the hopes of warning me to any traffic issues and hopefully to be able to coordinate where to put the truck once we arrived in Newark. Unfortunately she didn’t manage to stay much in front of me and was only three blocks or so in front of me as we drove through the city. I hate driving trucks and doing it in the city is really tough.

We got to the apartment and Dominica parked out front by the valets and I parked in the back by the service entrance. The port staff came out and two porters and the doorman worked like crazy helping us move. It took only fourty five minutes to move us from the truck to having everything into the apartment on the sixteenth floor! I can’t believe how easy that was and how helpful everyone was. Our first impression of really living here is that this is going to be awesome. It isn’t just a great apartment but the people involved are great too and everyone really seems to love working here and being a part of this place.

It was almost one in the afternoon when we got everything moved in and then we quickly took the truck out west to the Penske rental place in Newark to drop it off. We wanted to get that done as quickly as possible since there was no good place to put the truck at the new apartment. I got directions from an employee that I had blocked in and who was stuck waiting in his car for me to come out. He was really great and actually drove in front of me and waved me in the right direction so that I easily made it to the rental place. That was a huge help. I am not sure how I would have found it otherwise.

The people at the Penske drop off were really nice and polite. I was worried that Dominica was going to be lost because she left after me and the trip was very confusing and they even let me make a long distance call on their phone (because I didn’t have my cell on me because I hadn’t been planning on moving the truck when I did but the guy was blocked in). But Min arrived just minutes later. I was very proud that she was able to navigate the city on her own so well.

We went back to the apartment and the evening was spent getting the apartment together. Boy is there a lot to do. CableVision was schedule in the window of two until four. We made it back from dropping off the truck before they came out so we didn’t have to worry about missing them. That worked out perfectly.

We did unpacking and tried to get stuff together as much as possible while we were waiting for Cablevision. The tech came by around half past three and worked for about two hours and realized that the wiring in the building was so complex and he had so little information about the way that it was set up that he needed someone who had worked in the building before to come help him. So he left to get dinner while he waited for someone to come to help him. We got another hour to work on getting the apartment together.

Dominica went crazy doing laundry to get everything caught up. She is really happy to have a washer and dryer in the apartment now. We really missed that since having left Geneseo. Doing laundry in North Brunswick has been brutal.

We needed a few basic supplies so I ran out to the corner store to get some chips and soda, a shower curtain, etc. Dominica couldn’t believe that I was able to go out to the store and back in just five minutes. Living in downtown is so incredibly handy. I have only ever lived in the city proper in Flint and Pittsburgh. In Flint I lived in a slum so nothing was handy except the scary corner store. And in Pittsburgh we lived so far from the city center in a heavily residental area that the closest real things to us were a half hour walk away and even there there wasn’t all that much. So this convenience is really something for me and Dominica has never seen anything like it. Not only is it convenient but everything is really inexpensive too.

We discovered that the dryer was not working properly. We called the concierge and they had maintenance looking at it in minutes. They spent probably twenty minutes determining that the dryer was actually defective (they have three hundred new ones in the building, some will be bad) and they quickly swapped it out for a brand new one. At six o’clock on a Saturday evening we had a new dryer installed in our apartment. Now how is that for service? Let me tell you, we are ever so impressed with this place. Everyone has been giving one hundred and twenty percent to make this whole experience just awesome.

Cablevision came back and got us up and running around eight tonight. I was really impressed that they stuck with it and got us running this evening. We are very relieved to have Internet access again. I plugged in my laptop and checked email but didn’t bother to set up the real computers tonight. I need something to keep me busy tomorrow.

We ordered take out from a local pizza and sub shop. The food was quick and was pretty tasty. Dominica and I split a cheese sub and each got an order of French Fries with cheese on them. It was all very good.

We did a little more organizing and unpacking and then headed off to bed. Tomorrow we have to go back down to North Brunswick to wrap everything up, clean the place and turn in the keys.

This is it, packing day. We move first thing in the morning. Boy are we excited. We might be more excited if we knew that the Internet access would be turned on and if Dominica didn’t have to start work so early this morning but we are still pretty excited. Dominica had to be at work at half past seven this morning. She was actually up early enough that she had decided to go to Dunkin Donuts on her way into the office to get bagels for everyone.

Today was, as you can imagine, quite a busy day. Thankfully it is Friday and a lot of people who normally put really high demands on my time don’t work nearly as long on Fridays so my load is lighter.

One last large centipede today. Found him in the kitchen at noon. It was like an old Western showdown. In the end, it is Dominica, Oreo and I that are retreating but I had to show that it was not that we didn’t put up a fight. We might have lost the war but we won one last battle.

We got a very good report on Oreo yesterday from Doggie Paradise. They said that he tried to play with an aging dog, sixteen years old, who never ever plays and at first Oreo was too tough and actually knocked the older dog over. But then Oreo realized that the dog was old and Oreo played very gently and carefully with the older dog all day. They said that the older dog never, ever played and that they were really proud of Oreo for being so gentle and taking the time to include the old timer in a whole day of fun. Oreo is so sweet. He really seems to pick out the dogs that need someone to play with and keeps them company. He is the best dog ever.

Tonight was an all out packing night. I called the Penske local truck pick up which was actually a Thrifty Car Rental that had a deal with Penske to let them lease the trucks too. They said that i could add an extra day to the lease and come pick up the truck tonight since it was ready to go and just waiting for me in the morning. We had decided that if at all possible that would be the thing to do since we really needed the extra time to get it loaded and ready since the rental place didn’t open until nine tomorrow morning which meant that we would be unlikely to have the truck to the apartment until ten and really we should be leaving the apartment but a quarter after ten to give ourselves our full window to unload the truck in Newark. Fifteen minutes seems a bit short for loading the whole truck. Especially when you realize Dominica can’t really lift anything because of her back so I am pretty much loading the truck alone.

It was half past three when I called and got the truck scheduled for tonight. The guy working said that they were open until six but that he wanted to get the last truck out no later than a quarter to six because he had a busy weekend and had to take care of some things. I said that that was fine and that I could be there a bit before then. He said just to let him know if I wasn’t going to make it by five thirty. I said that that would be no problem. He did let me know that the dolly that we had ordered had not arrived so we would have a little less moving help than we had planned on.

I left North Brunswick at four thirty to head over to get the truck in East Brunswick which isn’t too far away but traffic was awful. It took half an hour to get over to the shop. It was five when I walked in to Thrift – with half an hour before I even needed to let the guy know that I would be late – and the manager of Thrifty said that the guy had left some time before. Okay, so this is a problem. I left Thrifty and called Dominica from the parking lot and she said to go in and to make sure that they either gave me a way to call the guy or to have them call the guy but one way or another we were not giving up an hour of driving after having made an appointment to pick up the truck just to have lost that time and not have had the truck early which would set us even farther behind.

So I went back in to Thrifty and they said that they couldn’t give out the guy’s cell phone number, which seemed reasonable, but they also said that they were completely unwilling to call him and that since he had left for the day there was nothing that they could (actually “would”) do and the fact that they were still open, the fact that the truck rental portion was still open for another hour yet and the fact that I had called ahead and moved the rental time up a day didn’t matter and they didn’t even act as if it bothered them at all that they were providing the worst customer service that they possibly could unless they outright laughed at me. At this point I realized that the guy didn’t leave early on accident but that this was actually a malicious act of someone leaving early knowing full-well that a customer was going to be there and screwed and the whole Thrifty shop was in on it. I let them know that we would be calling Penske national customer service in case they were actually so inane that they hadn’t all ready figured that out.

Dominica actually called Penske, I tried but she got through first and had our customer record pulled so they couldn’t help me, so I just talked to the guy and he gave me the probably scenarios and then I went on to Walmart to do some moving shopping while Dominica sorted out the issue. I no sooner got to the Walmart parking lot than she called and turned me around to go back. Penske customer service didn’t understand how this could occurred because the manager was scheduled to have been at the Thrifty location at the time when I was there. (I should mention that Thrifty is not a division of Penske but is just a franchisee of the Penske truck rental service.) Dominica explained that I had spoken to the Thrifty manager and that it was he who had treated me so badly. The guy leaving early was obviously at fault for leaving but anyone can make a mistake and leave. But knowing that a customer was getting screwed and not being willing to even discuss it was completely unreasonable and actually downright mean. To make matters worse it isn’t like that guy couldn’t have done the rental himself since he was the manager. He just didn’t feel like it and was being lazy.

Once Penske learned that the manager was there and didn’t fix the situation post haste they were outraged and called the manager directly and had a little chat with the Thrifty location (I am sure a short discussion as to the meaning of “customer service” or “rental contract” or “oral agreement” or perhaps “franchise revocation” ensued.) Moments after that the manager had contacted the guy who had left early and had him heading right back there (funny how suddenly he WAS able to get a hold of him after he had left.)

I drove back and the truck rental guy but me taken care of quite quickly. He was very friendly and apologized for having left early. He said that the manager had sent him home early and he had forgotten that I was coming because he was able to leave so early. I can only assume that this is true since the guy was so nice and the manager wouldn’t speak to me or even look directly at me (I think he was pissed that he had gotten caught with his pants down and decided to sulk rather than apologize and try to salvage the situation as much as possible – probably figuring that he has all ready done such a bad job that he is just riding the thing out until they fire him.) Penske told us that the East Brunswick Thrifty location was a regular spot for complaints of this nature. I bet once they start letting customers know that they are probably preparing to make an example of them. Or, to some degree, they were just by saying it.

“So how did it all turn out in the end?” you ask. Well, I will most definitely rent from Penske again. I have before and everything was fine. But anyone can have a good day. I truly believe that you never know how good a company is until you see how they deal with a crisis and today could have been a real embarassement for Penske but instead they did exactly what they should have and fixed the sitation as much as it could be fixed. We were totally satisfied with the situation when they were done. Penske earned my trust today and that isn’t easy. (Dell could have fixed their battery situation similarly by recalling their defective and dangerous batteries as soon as they knew about the situation instead of waiting until an explosion happened on live television before being forced to admit that they knew this was a danger and that putting children’s lives in danger wasn’t an important enough reason to have done an expensive recall.)

Now conversly, Thrifty Car Rental came out on the bad side of this situation. I wasn’t even renting from Thrifty directly and never have in the past but now I have a really clear picture of what Thrifty considers to be customer service. They couldn’t care less about what people think of them and that is a dangerous situation since there is nothing short of a lawsuit protecting you against any number of inconvenient or potentially hazardous situations. Now I have not yet contact Thrifty’s national customer service to let them know about the actions of this particular location but apparently they are aware of the situation from Penske and have failed to take any action to protect their company’s image which results in them condoning this manager’s behaviour. So, as you can imagine, I will not be doing business with Thrifty. And what did they have to do? All they had to do was call the guy who left early and have him come back. No harm, no foul. Or the lazy, worthless manager could have just done a rental himself. Maybe he isn’t qualified to do so but he should have apologized for being incompetent and at least honesty would have been there to protect him. Either way he could easily have done something under his own volition to make things right. Accidents happen, mistakes are made. Whatever. But being a jerk and just plain mean to customers who are in the right doesn’t cut it and Penske agreed. Go Penske. Woot!

The truck was quite nice too. I am very pleased with the vehicle. Often truck rentals (from other, nameless truck rental entities) are very spartan and in rough condition and not pleasent at all to drive but Penske had a very well maintained, clean truck and the whole experience from the Penske side was great.

I got the truck out to the North Brunswick parking lot and Dominica showed up just minutes behind me. She drove me right out to East Brunswick and we picked up the Mazda and we got back as quickly as we could to get packing. We got just about everything staged tonight and loaded the big items like the futon into the truck so that we wouldn’t have to worry about them in the morning. We didn’t load anything valuable but just bulky furniture items or bins or inexpensive stuff like food.

We were tired when we went to bed at ten but were very happy that we had the truck and a lot of the packing done before we turned in. That relieved a lot of the stress that we were going to be under. Tomorrow is going to be a very exciting day.

Today is our final “normal” day in the North Brunswick apartment. Everything appears to be in place for the move. More or less. The CableVision rep didn’t get back to me with all of the things that she needed and I don’t have access to a fax tomorrow so we might have a problem there. Going all weekend without Internet access will be crappy.

Work was busy but not out of control. There was breathing room. But still it kept me busy.

After work Dominica and I spent the evening mostly packing. There isn’t a lot but it needs to be done and the window to do it in is pretty small. We got about half of everything that was going to go into plastic bins into them tonight. All of the books, DVDs, electronics and most of the miscellaneous papers have been packed up.

Dominica really wanted some pizza so we ordered from Domino’s and watched Frequency which I haven’t seen since it first went to DVD.

I ended up working quite late and not getting a chance to go to bed until one in the morning. But, once again, overtime. Dominica went to bed early because she is working an hour earlier tomorrow than usual. We are hoping that she can get out of work an hour early but that might not be the case but if not then at least she will be getting overtime on her first full week which is kind of cool.

I slept in until Dominica and Oreo left this morning. Some days I just can’t get myself up early. It is especially tempting to stay in bed when I am not expected to be in to work until much later.

Okay, now I know that I slip in some pretty serious jabs at some manufacturers and other companies in here from time to time (hey, someone from Dell registered with the site today – maybe they are prepared to get into a cool discussion about how I have the wrong impression of them! Now that could be cool) but absolutely never have I been able to tear a company or product apart like Joel did today to the Sprint Power Vision Network. I want everyone everywhere to link to this story. Hopefully Joel’s review will be the top hit on Google instead of Sprint’s own. Now this is seriously what I want to see from a product review. Cell phones realy are like this. Nothing works, all the touted features are things that I can’t even imagine who would want, they look silly and everything is confusing. Go Joel. You are my hero. (Speaking of Joel, Dominica was reading some “Joel on Software” earlier this week!)

Today is a day of errands. I stayed at home for a little while so that I could go to the post office on my way into the office this morning. I ended up getting stuck at the house for a while because of phone conferences at the office so I couldn’t commute during that time.

Once I was able to leave the apartment (aka Centipedeland) I went up to the office to talk to them in person about moving out and about the pesticides on the lawn without any serious notification. They said that they would do something about that right away. Then it was off to the post office to get some money orders to pay for the apartment.

It was at the post office that my day’s adventures really began. The post office was totally able to get me the money orders – except for the fact that my bank kept declining my debit card. Ok, I just moved the money into the account twenty minutes ago and I am sure it is just a hold to make sure nothing funny is going on. So I drove to the office and decided to deal with it over lunch.

At the office I managed to deal with the apartment complex, to some degree, to get them to allow us to leave as they attempted feabily to convince us that we had another six month lease because they didn’t know we were leaving. But once I explained that this was my fifth attempt to contact them as a reminder that we were leaving as they should have known since they were informed six months ago that we were not renewing and that this was really just a courtesy on our part and not anything formal and that we received no notice from them for renewal and that we weren’t sent a bill for next month they decided that we could go.

Then I spoke to my bank (the bank formally known as “my bank”) and they informed me that the reason that I couldn’t get money orders was that the bank restricts me, and all of its other customers, to only being able to take out $600 per day. Enough for the basics in Rochester life but completely useless when you need an apartment downpayment in New Jersey – even in inexpensive Newark. So the bank wasn’t going to help us. They said there were no exceptions ever to this rule. This is the second time in a month that we were so disappointed with that bank that we decided to close an account. Last time was Dominica’s (which we haven’t gotten a chance to close out yet) and now mine (which I intend to do next week once we have banks on our block in Newark.) So, now what to do?

I called everyone trying to figure out a strategy moving forward as we really need to get the money to the apartment company by like, you know, TOMORROW!! Okay, don’t panic, we can deal with this.

I took lunch sooner than I had planned on and headed out to find a bank to convince to do a wire transfer for me. Not likely but worth a shot, I suppose. The apartment place called and said to try the post office again and see if they would take a credit card. I didn’t think that that seemed very likely but better than nothing which is what I had at the moment. I went to the post office in Watchung and… no luck. Just what I thought. Cash or debit only. Oh boy.

I got to the bank office in North Plainsfield just in time to talk on the phone for twenty minutes and then realized, after consulting with tons of people, that dad could get a cashier’s check issued in Perry and overnight it directly to the apartment people and that that would take care of everything. So dad set about to get that in motion and I headed to McDonald’s for a quick bite and then to the office to get mailing instructions off to dad. What a day that made for. Sheer panic up until about three in the afternoon.

After that the day went decently smoothly. We have just about everything lined up for the move. The electric and gas company has been contacted. We only have to worry about electric in the new place as the water and gas are included. Gas is generally included in apartments but it is a nice touch. We have gas hot water and gas heat in the building so winter will be cheap. I also got the CableVision Internet access scheduled to be turned on in the afternoon on Saturday so we shouldn’t be without Internet at all, if all goes to plan. I even managed to get the Road Runner service shut off back in Geneseo today which turned out to be fast and completely painless. Tomorrow Dominica is going to double check with Penske about the truck rental but everything should be set there as well. Saturday is going to be nuts but it will all be over in a single day. Ahhh. Feel the relief in the air.

I worked until half six and then it was time to head for home. I decided to post early. So, that is what I am doing now. Have a good night everyone. See you tomorrow.

Dominica woke me up this morning to kill two more centipedes that she found in the hallway. That is six in two nights. We thought that it would be getting better but it is getting far worse. It is like they know that we are leaving in a few days and they all want to come after us before we go.

Only four days left though. Only four more nights of sleeping with centipedes crawling over us and biting us while we sleep.

Now that Dell’s exploding laptops have gotten completely out of hand and could possibly have killed children (flaming missiles in the living room, set the living room furniture on fire) Dell and Apple have been banned from a number of airlines! Just in case people think that my complaints about Dell, Apple and Sony’s product quality is all hot air it is a pretty big move for airlines to prohibit their use while happily allowing HP, Lenovo and Acer products. Now Toshiba is beginning a recall as well for the same issue. I used to like Toshiba but I have come to realize that I have never actually seen a Toshiba that I was actually happy with. So I have stopped including them in the list of machines that I recommend to people. After all of my happy experiences with HP it is hard to recommend anything else. I sure wouldn’t spend my money anywhere else. Especially not on a laptop. Desktops offer more lattitude so there are occassions when other options may present themselves but in laptops – HP is the only way to go these days. (Especially now with dual core AMD Turion 64bit processors!)

I like this picture. This is David Hahn’s radioactive shed being encased in barrels before being shipped to the desert to be buried. Young David, a teenager at the time, built a nuclear reactor in his parents’ Detroit suburb backyard and managed to get awfully exposed before he was discovered. David now works for the US Navy. It is just nice to know that a fifteen year old with an atomic energy badge from the Boy Scouts can power his entire town. Or maybe blow it up. This story is only funny, of course, because David didn’t get in “that” much trouble, didn’t kill himself, got a cool job because of it and everyone was okay. In reality, building a backyard nuclear reactor is probably no more dangerous than if he had used a Dell laptop while listening to his American iPod with the volume up too high (American iPods go higher in volume than iPods in other countries because Americans are more demanding of being able to hurt themselves.) At least his nuclear reactor project did not turn into “flaming projectiles” like a Dell laptop can!

I finally managed to make it to Jiffy Lube today. That really needed to be done with all of the miles going onto the PR5 now. I grabbed a quick bite at Taco Bell next to the oil change place. My days are so short. There is hardly any time to get anything done.

It is official, we found out this afternoon that we are definitely moving to Newark on Saturday. Yay!

I was reading Wil Wheaton today (well, his blog at least) and he was talking about how great the Apple iTunes store was that they would let you download your music again if you had a catastrophic loss of data (which is a pretty common occurrence for the Apple hardware crowd – isn’t that right Sara, Jeremy, Phil, etc.?) Ok, that is cool. But I was surprised to learn that to do so required you to call Apple and explain what happened and get them to unlock your downloads for a period of time so that you could get them again. I was under the impression that the reason that people were so willing to spend such high amounts of money on such low quality music files from the iTunes store and suffer so many use limitations was because Apple provided an online repository of your music protecting you from the dangers of data loss. Since Apple locks you from making backups of your music. And since they make you use it with their software and since the whole system is designed around locking you into their highly unreliable iPod hardware. When I do downloads from the Audible store (not music but what’s the difference?) they provide an online library for me so that I never have to worry about maintaining my own backups of the stuff that I buy there. That was a huge selling point that it was SAFER than CD’s, not less safe or at least less convenient. Audible stores everything that I have ever purchased from them and lets me download it when I need it or listen to it directly from their website if that is convenient. I, of course, make my own backups but it that fails they take care of me – built it. No special calls. No “favours”. Just the way they do business. It is sad when Apple’s customers get excited about Apple’s service when they surprise you with the service level that you would just expect from any competent company. It really shows what massively low expectations people have of Apple.

I left work just after six thirty. Another long day but not too long. I am getting into the stride of being really busy and it eventually just becomes normal. I got home just fifteen minutes or so after Dominica. She took longer than usual because of an accident in Nutley.

We ate dinner at home tonight. We are attempting to clean out the pantry and the fridge so that there is as little to move to Newark as possible. We finished watching Out to Sea that we started last night (was it last night?) There was only a tiny bit left. Then we watched The Sweetest Thing which Dominica had never seen. Then it was time for bed. I took Oreo out for his evening walk and we had managed to go all of the way around the building in the lawn before we came across the first “pesticides” sign carefully placed so that no one would ever know. So we rushed back to the house via the driveway and got Oreo right into the bathtub and washed his feet and legs. Poor little boy. I can’t believe in a neighbourhood full of tiny children who play in their yard (and the driveways) unsupervised with parents who can barely read English if at all that they would spray pesticides and put only one tiny sign in the courtyard entrance at the back of the building so that only someone like me taking a walk all the way around would ever stumble across it and even then I ended up approaching it from behind. And the yard is totally unlit at night so even if there were signs we wouldn’t be able to see them. Only four more days. We can make it.