In case you’re wondering, I did successfully make the drive from Chicago to Seattle, with some brief stops in Omaha and Denver (thanks to both my friends there for putting me up…or putting up with me…for the night).  The last day was the best, being a 20-hour haul from Denver to Seattle.  It was tough, but I did surprisingly well and the only tough part was the second to last hour.  Other than that, a good mix of wonderful scenery through Montana, stand-up comedy, my cb radio, and recordings of This American Life kept me awake and alert.  I’ve got some pictures to post, but it’ll be a while until I unpack my camera cable.  I should mention I’m already on the road for work (yeayea, so much for less travel…not to mention I’m not even home to receive my belongings from the movers), but it’s an awesome client and job in Beverly Hills and the movers situation has been taken care of.  For now, I need to crash.  On the “Damon is angry at you” list after tonight - the TSA and Alamo Rent-a-Car.  Another round of thanks goes to Hertz.

Well Chicago, the time has come.  The boxes are packed, the truck is loaded and all that’s left is a sleeping bag, a laptop, and an open wireless access point.  We’ve had some good times, that’s for sure.  And I’ll miss you.  But it’s time to move on.  Tomorrow morning, I leave for Omaha, NE to visit with a friend there, then on to Denver for another visit.  And then finally…Seattle, WA - Portal to the Pacific.  Thanks again to all my friends that have made Chicago such an awesome place - I’ll be back from time to time, there is no doubt about that  For now, though…peace out! (p.s.) I was surprised with how long the movers took to pack everything up in the truck (~6 hours), but very, very impressed with their attention to detail and careful nature - to which I will post a longer blog about in the future.

Packers are here today - it’s kind of fun watching everything get packed up for me knowing I don’t have to do it.  Only a couple more days to go!

I made a photo set on Flickr the other day of the past year.  If you’re bored at work and have a little while, check it out - Year in Pictures - 2006.  I even made a cool little slideshow with some accompanying music (thanks, Apple iPhoto…that was really easy!), but it’s something only my mother would probably care about.  Don’t worry, ma, I’m sending you a DVD. ;-)

Look at this awesome photo from my flight out of Seattle this weekend.  In the foreground, you can see Mt. Rainier with Mt. Hood (left) and Mt. St. Helens (right) in the background.  What a beautiful part of the country.  You know you want to come visit…

As I mentioned, I’m making a road trip out of moving to Seattle.  It won’t be too bad, except for the last day which I’m planning to be a little bit of a long haul.  To prepare for this, I have several methods:

1. Caffeinated beverages and the like…but these usually don’t do much for me.
2. Sunflower seeds - Munching on these keeps me very alert for some reason.
3. A CB Radio for chatting with 18-wheelers. ;)
4. A DC to AC power inverter so I can call long-lost friends in the middle of the night.
5. Hours and hours of podcasts for my listening pleasure and mental stimulation.

To go along with #4, I’ve been exploring the iTunes Podcast directory and came across these awesome UC Berkley lecture podcasts, such as Human Emotion, Social and General Psychology, and more.  How cool is that?  I can sit there in my car and listen to instructors talk about anything from psychology, to early European history, to statistics and physics (although the latter two might be a little boring for me).  I’m sure the psych ones won’t keep my attention for hours straight, so I’ve also got a good mix of comedy and NPR.

I put up some pics of my new place I found this weekend in Seattle. Obviously it will look different when I get there, but it felt pretty good to me. And, like I said…there’s room for a pool table! ;o)

For the second time in my life, I’m pulling up my roots and moving halfway across the country. This is never very easy, and one of the most difficult tasks is finding somewhere to live. Through both of those moves as well as one from the Chicago ‘burbs into downtown, which is almost as daunting, I’ve come up with a pretty good method that works for me. Seeing as how my todo list isn’t getting any shorter today, I figured I’d share that method now.

First - know what you want in both a neighborhood and a living space. This may seem obvious, but it’s the most important thing. No matter what the city, every neighborhood has something different to offer. Downtown, suburbs, bars, theaters, live music, etc. Figure out what’s important to you. Most cities also have some website where you can find more information about neighborhoods. Also determine what you want in your living space - what’s important to you? Stainless appliances? Doorman? A “not” boxy design? An apartment building or a house? A view? Write down these things and evaluate properties you see based on what’s important to you.

Now that you’ve determined where and in what type of place you would like to live. Talk to somebody. Find somebody that’s lived in that area and get some input on the different neighborhoods. There are things they might know (2 blocks from this street is a bad neighborhood) that the online descriptions won’t reveal. Some cities even have rental agencies that owners list their property with and they will take you around for free and help you find a place. These services tend to be hit or miss depending on who your agent is and your specific situation. I’ve used them twice - once unsuccessfully (but it was three guys all with different requirements, so it was a tough sell) and once successfully (by myself with very specific requirements).

Next - Spend a day or two or three searching for places on Craigslist. If you’re not going through some sort of rental agency, this is generally the best place to find rentals. It can be tough to weed out the good ones from the junk, though. An apartment that’s listed as wonderful and cute and cozy, could really be a shack in the woods while some place modestly listed could be exactly what you’re looking for. That’s where the next part of the process helps out. But for now - take a look through, print them all out, see which ones have your requirements and try to rank them. I usually use a scale of “This sounds good”, “This could be ok”, and “This will probably suck, but I’m going to look just in case”. Very scientific, I know.

Now - take a break, you’ve been working hard. Relax, put your pile off to the side, and get a drink because the next part will be a lot of fun. ;o)

Ok - so you’ve determined your requirements, found a bunch of places and rated them all. What’s next? Well the weekend trip to your new city to try to find just the right place. But you need to prepare for when you get there. With the advent of Hertz Neverlost and similar navigation systems, I would recommend a rental with one of those if you don’t know the area. Next, go through your properties and use mapping software such as Microsoft’s Streets and Trips and enter each one of your properties. Now, you can either organize them in the route planner as you see fit or Streets and Trips actually has a feature where it can “optimize” the route - while it works pretty sweet, I prefer to do it myself. I also then organize my printouts from Craigslist in the order of the route. This allows me to recall the specific property that I’m going to very easily and write comments on the paper as I visit each place. You can see the results of that mapping in the following couple of pictures - one from Chicago and the other from Seattle (click on them to get bigger views):

This is probably the most helpful part of all, as it allows me to drop into a city that I’m not familiar with and have a very well-defined plan of action. It also allows me to visit several (~15) properties in one day as they are all optimized by where they are in relation to each other. I also don’t have to worry about where I’m going as it’s already layed out for me. While some may call this anal-retentive (people’s eyebrows tend to raise when I tell them all that I do to try to find a place), this has proven to be a very successful method for me. It’s also helpful to try to set up appointments for tours, but I can very often tell whether or not I like a place simply by driving by. For example, this past weekend I used the first day to do mostly drive-bys and evaluate whether the property was worthy of an actual tour inside. I then used Sunday for those tours as well as other open houses scheduled by the landlord.

I think that’s it for now - and for those of you that actually read through this entire post…congratulations and get back to work!

My new best friend…

I made a brief trip to Seattle this weekend to try to find a place to live.  The first place I looked was in a neighborhood called Wallingford, but the place I was going to look at had moved its open house to Sunday.  The place looked pretty nice from the little bit I was able to peek inside and see, and I fell in love with the neighborhood.  I spent the rest of the day visiting places that mostly just depressed me and was starting to feel a little hopeless.  One weekend, end of October, move-in in one week…not an easy time to find a place.

So there I was - a place I hadn’t even been inside of yet was at the top of my list.  And there were a couple lingering questions as well…showstoppers.  But I woke up Sunday morning with a few other places to check out.  For a little bit of good luck, I stopped at the Fremont Troll and said a few words in his honor and asked him to help me out.  We shook hands and I headed out to the next property.  And help me out he did - I went to the open house of my top choice and put my name on the list as it was (nearly) everything I’d hoped for.  Then a grueling three hours of waiting ensued with me saying a few prayers to the troll gods every now and then.  And finally I received a call that I was in.  Awesome!  Unfortunately, the 2nd bedroom worked better for the pool table than a guest room…so sorry, any guests that visit will not have their own guest room…but you will have to pay your respects to the Troll.

Unfortunately, I will miss Troll-a-ween to pay my proper dues to the Fremont Troll, but perhaps next year!

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.

William Dement, in Newsweek, 1959

 via The Quotations Page