General

I’ve been thinking a lot about moving to Vancouver. I even got a book about relocating to Vancouver, but now I’m pretty discouraged. Home prices in Vancouver are very expensive and I don’t want to go back to renting again after owning a condo for almost 5 years. I also found out that mortgage interest isn’t deductable in Canada like it is in the US.

Home prices are very low here and it’s very difficult to sell, so I’ll probably rent out my condo. Unfortunately that would eliminate my homestead exemption so my property tax will go up a lot. With the high prices in Vancouver, I doubt if I’d be able to find anything as nice as where I live now.

However, my employer offered to help pay my moving expenses and help me get a visa. It will still be a huge project, with all of my furniture, clutter, and two cats. I really love Vancouver but I dread actually moving, so this is a tough decision for me.

Blogged with Flock

It looks like I’m not the only one having trouble with DHL.

Today was the last day of WWDC. As always, the sessions on the last day end at 12:30. Unfortunately my flight home isn’t until tomorrow morning. With the delays, my trip home will be hell. I’ve been told to get to the airport 3 hours in advance, which means I have to leave the hotel at 5AM.

I spent the afternoon exploring downtown San Francisco by foot. I spent a lot of time at Rasputin Music, which is my favorite place here & I had a nice dinner at an Indian/Pakistani restaurant where the music was as good as the food. Aside from that, I really hate San Francisco. It has everything I hate about NYC but much worse. Downtown San Francisco is filthy, crowded and full of obnoxious tourists and homeless people who beg very aggressively.

I finally got my new Prius!

I spent most of yesterday travelling and most of today recovering from my trip. Yesterday’s flight from Vancouver to Houston was uneventful, but our flight out of Houston was stuck more than an hour due to bad weather before we could take off. When I turned my cell phone on after I got out of the plane, I found that I had a voicemail from my Toyota dealer telling me my Prius arrived. I’m going to pick it up tomorrow.

Today is my last day in Vancouver. Instead of going to the office, we had an all-hands meeting in the hotel and went to Jericho Park for a picnic & bocce tournament. I had a great time.

It was very hot today, even by Florida standards. The temperature was in the high 80s and there was no shade in the park.

Today I worked late to finish everything that needed to be done while I’m here, since tomorrow we’ll be going to a company picnic instead of the office.

Since the Mac version of LoJack for Laptops got a lot of press yesterday we’ve had a lot of activity. A few people ran into an installation problem when they tried to install as a non-administrative user (which isn’t possible, since we need to install some files in system directories). We’re going to make sure the user can’t miss the note that it must be installed when logged in as an administrator in the instructions to avoid those problems in the future.

After work I walked down to Davie street and had dinner at Gigi’s. It stays bright pretty late here. When I got back to my hotel after 9PM it was still light.

I did a bit of googling and figured out that this is the CD I picked up yesterday. I really like it a lot.

Today after work I just walked around the Granville & Robson area.

I went to Charlie’s Music World once again and I really enjoyed the music they were playing, a sort of instrumental Arabic electronica/dance music that was a bit reminiscent of Rachid Taha’s style. I asked to buy it and the guy sold me a hand-made CD with the title “Thousand and One Nights” written on it. I have no idea who the artists are, but I’ve been enjoying it.

Vancouver is the most diverse city I’ve been to, even more so than NYC or San Francisco. I’ve heard more languages spoken than anywhere else. One short stretch of Robson street has Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern, and French restaurants. as well as several Asian groceries.

After work I walked to Davie Village for dinner and found a few more used CD stores to browse.

I was in the office, which is about a block from my hotel, most of the day. The last time I was there was January of last year.

I got a bit lost trying to find someplace to get lunch, so I ended up getting the worst pizza ever. I won’t mention the name of the place, but it’s by the library. After work I walked around downtown and spent a lot of time in Chapters and Charlie’s Music Place, two of my favorite places in Vancouver.