Linda, Lia, and I are moved into the new place in West Hartford. We had more help moving in on Saturday than I'd expected, which was fantastic. It's so nice to have friends, and such a contrast to moving and loading the UHaul in Colorado where I'd done nearly everything solo. We started at 10am, and by the time 1:30 rolled around, we were all done. Of course, there's still an absolute ton to set up and unbox.
Our back hallway is nearly impasssable, packed as it is with cardboard boxes and paper packing material. I've been struggling to locate a place to recycle all this rather than throw it out, but West Hartford isn't making it easy. They have a recycling program where they'll pick up bins from your home, but since the place I'm living is technically a business (there's a pediatric dentist on the first floor) they won't pick up recycling there.
Living above a pediatric dentist is interesting. There seems to be on average at least once "screamer" per day - a kid who DOESN'T WANNA GO TO THE DENTIST!, and we can hear them all. Lia is very concerned for the kids.
But living as close as we are to West Hartford center is nice. Having cannibalized cables from Linda's PC to set up the television and media server, I needed to buy her a new power cable for her monitor. Looks like one disappeared during the move. So I put Lia in the stroller and walked right down through Blueback Square to Radio Shack. Lia got to learn about crosswalks. The walk was about 1.5 miles round trip, and we stopped at Whole Foods on the way back to pick up dinner.
Back at the house, I spent at least an hour on the phone with Comcast trying to get our internet connection activated. I spent a while researching what ISPs might be available in our area, but in the end Comcast has a monopoly and I don't have many options. I'd had an appointment scheduled for Saturday, but the Comcast guy never showed up. I called and rescheduled for Tuesday, but the guy just dropped off a kit, which I had to set up myself. And when I called to activate things, nothing worked. I got transferred to a technician and then escalated to a supervisor, but they have to send somebody else out tonight to figure out why it's not working. My suspicion is the screwy coax wiring in the house.
I'm also re-evaluating how to set up our home media center. In Colorado, I'd had the media server set up in another room, piping media to the Playstation 3 and the LCD TV through a very long wired connection, since wireless is slow. I've been considering a number of other things, including where to locate the router and the media server, whether to use a monitor on the media server or just use the TV, and whether I should use different software. I've been using TVersity, and it works great. And while part of me thinks that if it ain't broke, I shouldn't try to fix it, another part of me wonders if there's something better out there. I've also got a TV tuner card in my other PC that I've never used, and I'm not even sure of its capabilities. I'd like to make use of it.
I know that it will be a while before we're truly settled in our new place, but I think we'll all be happy here.