My Internet is finally up and running after a few hitches with comcast. I didn't think service can get any worse then what I had back in NYC. I've been here for 8 days now I'm pretty much settled in.

For furniture ikea was a life saver. A mattress and desk was all I bought, the mattress is on the floor and the desk is already messy. My roommates showed up one at a time and for the time being they seem alright. Although one of them really fits the stereotypical geeky gamer type. I've been cooking a bit here and there and I'm surprised I haven't burned the place down already. Things were rather uneventful as things were unpacked and set up. Although one of my roommates brought a big screen TV in which was rather shocking.

Orientation was yesterday and was quick and painless. Just a run down of the rules and photos for ID's. My computer also came via UPS and they busted it up bad. I took photos and filed a claim. Not only was it damaged, it was late. Talk about adding insult to injury. Although if it ever starts working again, my roommate had spare ram so I'm at 1.5 gigs now.

Today, early in the morning I took the placement exam. Going in, I had no clue what it was going to be on. They didn't say and I didn't ask. If anyone reads this, a word of advice, ask. Good news is that the professor said "Alright, your good, yup all good." Does that mean I passed? Failed? I'll have to find out.

Regardless, the test was tough, much tougher then I had thought and I thought it was going to be pretty hard. The staff have been trying to spook the freshmen with the workload for a while and I've been immune until now. That was my first taste of college and it looks like I have a lot of work to do in the next four, hopefully three, years.

At the airport, today's my flight. Not much time, must make all arrangement's for arrival. If all goes well everything should be waiting for me when I get there. Almost a month of planning all comes down to the next 10 minutes.

Airport check-in was standard enough sans the need to open the cardboard boxes I used to substitute for actually suit cases. Other then that, it was rather nice. Also great that JetBlue has Wi-Fi in the waiting area. Last post for a long time now. At least 3 days while I get net over in Redmond.

Time flies when you are wasting away in front of your PC. My flight leaves in the morning of August 23, 2006. So tomorrow is my final day in the city that raised me. As me and my high school buddies part ways, we gather for one last time to eat and play Monopoly. Yes, Monopoly. It was fun talking about our futures and plans for college and making stupid jokes as always. This may be the last time I see them for a long time. Till thy reunion.

My flight's in the morning so I spent the last two days packing. The majority of stuff was packed and ready on Sunday and my miscellaneous doodads was packed today after I got home. So tomorrow I only need to UPS my primary computer and I'm all set. So this will be my last entry in this chapter of my journey. After today, I will only be able to access the net at the airport where I will make one quick blog. When I arrive at Redmond, there will be no Internet service for at least a week while I set up.

4 Days. Plane tickets are purchased and I'm going to start packing tomorrow. My friends gave me a bobble head. I'm not exactly sure why but it's cool, I love it. I'm beginning to get a bit nervous but it'll pass.

There's a whole forum set up so that everyone from the group in high school can keep in touch through college. I have doubt's about it's success, but that's just me. I'm slowly weening myself off video games and computers so I get bored and hopefully will spend the time studying. That's the theory anyways.

Can't believe there's only 4 days left for me in New York, time flies.

9 days from my last entry. 10 days left to go. I haven't started packing because I just signed the lease last Friday. That was 2 days ago. Oh the count down continues and I am growing more nervous everyday. I have a swirl of miscellaneous thoughts going through my head, what I need to do when I get there, what I need to get done before I leave and what if I can't do this.

Ok, 10 days.

Ok so here's what I've been up to. The apartment has been set, as you may know from my last post. My last day in NYC is August 22, 2006. A bit of a delay from my original plan of August 10th, 2006. But I'm just as excited to go as I am eager to stay another day. August 22, 2006. I have to wake up that morning, that's going to be my biggest complaint.

I'm setting up my computer for the move, I need to clear some space so I did a fresh format. And since I'd had the Vista Beta 2 ISO's sitting around forever I might as well install and give it a go. It didn't detect my HDD's, great. So I figured lets do an upgrade to Vista out of XP. No go either. I gave up and installed XP. All is well until my disk array fails to detect in POST. Ok, re-configure the raid. All is well through the install (again) then windows fails to load. What the fuck is going on here? Not a problem, reload raid drivers.

Is it the heat? My case temp's are through the roof, I think my molex covers (those cheap rubber things that you can salvage off old Dell's) are melting. Maybe today wasn't a good day to be doing this.

While setting up my laptop, I had a better plan to prevent heat problems. I have 2 laptops, an old HP from 2005 and a new Dell from last month. Now, the HP doesn't generate a lot of heat and draws less power. So I'm using it as a terminal of sorts to install what I need on the Dell, via ad hoc mode Wi-Fi while my Dell sits in the fridge. The wonders of wireless networking infrastructures. I have yet to buy a Wi-Fi router/switch so ad hoc is my only option short of running a Ethernet cable into my fridge. I love that word, ad hoc.

My main PC has yet to boot. I have no clue what's up with it, it's been all snafu lately. I'm afraid of taking it to someplace like BestBuy or Compusa to get it looked at by someone else. Do they even know what they're doing or do they just format virii off cheap $500 PC's? Will they reset my FSB? Will they flash my BIOS and reset the voltages? My worst fear is they reset the voltage settings without resetting my FSB which will cause the system to stop booting completely. Then they will tell me my precious AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ is dead.

Back to work.

Finally some happenings. All the forms have been completed, received, reviewed and approved. The last part I am particularly proud of. I believe there were 7 pages worth of forms, that is a lot of paper work; more than many of my college applications. College applications are not as hard as they seem, sure it's intimidating when you first see then, but in the larger scheme of things they are rather short and easy.

I have the apartment, all the fees are paid, everything is set. I just need to sign the lease, me and my roommates. Oh god. 2 people on the opposite sides of the country are supposed to both sign the lease before we are given the keys to the apartment. Not only that, we may have 2 more roommates for a total of 4 people. All in different states from around the U.S and we all have to sign the lease before we can move in. I don't know about them but I don't have the money to fly to Washington to sign a document then fly back to get my stuff. So it's an interesting situation. Not a big one, just interesting. Time to start communicating.