Blog - /Personal

It has now been three weeks since I relocated to LA. The process of moving in lends itself to the analogy of bootstrapping a system. The goal of not sleeping on the floor (an important one for me) has the following dependency chain:

1. Block until movers arrive with computer and other items
2. Install Internet service (for getting directions and evaluating furniture options ahead of time)
3. Block until arrival of car from a different mover
4. Obtain driver's license and temporary permit for car from the DMV, which involved a very long metro trip
5. Clean driver's side window and front window to make it safe to drive more than a block
6. Take car to car wash place to make it safer to drive for longer distances
7. Make trip to furniture place
8. Receive couch and bed from delivery people
9. Install couch
10. Reboot the system (sleep)
11. Install bed

I decided to use the metro instead of renting a car, based on some decent experiences in West Lafayette with their transportation system. That has been a somewhat dismal choice, mostly due to needing to learn several lessons about life in a big city. Such as: don't sit on a bench for more than a half hour if an angry panhandler is known to be in the area. And also: the LA Dash tends to zigzag across different roads, rather than staying on its current road, leaving me an uphill walk of perhaps a mile and a half to get back on track. I got my car a few days ago, and I have never been more happy to have one.

It's interesting to go to a place like Starbucks at different times of the day and note how the atmosphere changes. I had never seen anything like that until I came here.

I went to IKEA yesterday to get a couch and a bed, as I did not bring any furniture here with me. The couch looked easy to set up, so I did that yesterday. Even though the couch was a tad narrow, it beat sleeping on the floor. My goal for the end of the weekend is to set up the bed and buy a microwave.