Looking Back at a Strange Year

It was one year ago today that Rachel and I packed the cats in the car and started a 3000 mile move across the country and, frankly, away from everything we've ever known. Rachel and I are both west coasters through and through. Rachel technically lived on the east coast for a the first couple of years of her life, but since then she has lived in Oregon and Washington. I lived the the Puget Sound region for 39 years. Even when I was in Eugene, OR while in graduate school (the first time), I still had a permanent address in a Seattle ZIP code. The move was a tough one for both of us, and we've spent the past year learning, adapting, and settling.

News Summary
For those who may have missed out on a few things, here's a brief summary of the past year:

We left the Puget Sound region on the evening of July 31 for a quick five day drive across the country. The first few entries in this blog are daily entries made during that drive.

Rachel started the Astronomy PhD program at Yale at the beginning of September. She has done quite well: students are required to earn two "high honors" ratings in the classes they take (no grades for grad students at Yale) in the first two years. She has earned those two ratings already in her first year. She even got to Arecibo, Puerto Rico with one of her classes last fall, ostensibly to visit the radio telescope there. (They did, in fact, spend a lot of time at the telescope, but they also enjoyed a beach, some touristy stuff, and even a hospital ER. Everyone was fine after the ER visit; one of her classmates had a nasty allergic reaction but made a full recovery.) She is now working on the first of two required "mini" projects and in less than a year, she will be taking her qualifying exams. After passing those, she begins to work on her PhD thesis.

I started the Computer Science master's program at the University of New Haven (the other UNH) about a week later. I have also done quite well in my program, finishing the three trimesters with a cumulative GPA of 4.0 (five A+ grades and five A grades--three of those could have easily been A+ grades, but I chose not to do extra credit in those classes). I am currently working on my master's project, which is a database for the CS department to keep track of alumni. My advisor specifically thought of me to do the job because, as he admitted in a Freudian moment, he didn't want an "average" student putting this together for the department.

Rachel's work in the past year has consisted of being a TA for several classes. I have been working in the UNH Department of Institutional Research, first analyzing data, filling in surveys, and generally being bored, then more recently with writing code to automate many of those boring, repetitive tasks. I briefly believed that I was going to get a full-time job at Sikorsky Aircraft, who would pay for my school, but the economy shot that down. I then thought I would be a programmer on a cutting-edge new social networking site, but they have decided to do more fundraising and planning before starting work. I am also currently taking a forced two-week vacation from my work at UNH due to lack of funding to pay me to work all summer.

I started playing hockey in the Connecticut Hockey League in September as well. The league is nowhere near as well-run as the GSHL, but it's hockey. My team is one of those that has different players every session, so you never know how good we'll be. We missed the playoffs during the winter session, but we are the second place seed into the playoffs for this spring-summer session (and have a real chance of winning it all since we beat the first place seed a few weeks ago). I also played in a tournament here just a week ago, notching my second career hat trick in the semi-final before losing in the final.

We did visit the Seattle area during Christmas, but between the extraordinary amount of snow there and the fact that it was Christmas, we were unable to see many people outside of immediate family.

My parents visited us in New Haven for my 40th birthday and gave me as a birthday present the highlight of the past year for me: a trip to Boston to see my first NHL game. The Bruins came from behind in a not-very-well-played game to defeat the Canadiens. It would have been nice if it had been a well-played and exciting game, but when it comes right down to it, it was the NHL. I was so excited to be there, I admit that I nearly started crying when the teams came out to start the game. Kovalev scored the first goal of the game, and I'd wanted to see him score, so that was nice. :-)

A couple of days later, my dad and I went to Bridgeport to see the Sound-Tigers (a NY Islanders farm team) take on the Lowel Devils (a NJ Devils farm team) in the AHL. The skill level may not have been quite as high as the NHL game, but it we sat right on the ice (No, not literally--in the first row on the crowd side of the boards. Sheesh!) and the game was considerably more fun. That was one of the best times I have ever spent with my father. We really connected and had a great time.

Things I Have Learned (other than school stuff)

Connecticut drivers are crazy. Okay, I already knew that from the visit last June, but it's definitely been confirmed. It might help if a few more people would hang up their cell phones and concentrate on driving. A far higher percentage of drivers here are on their cell phones even though here it is a primary offense. Maybe if the police actually enforced the law, it might make a difference.

I'm not much of a blogger. I think of great things to blog about, but I never seem to get around to writing the posts. You guys have missed some pretty deep insights because I never got around to writing them down. Just be impressed anyway. ;-)

Connecticut isn't a bad place to live--except in the summer. I don't mind the cold in the winter. I could even handle a couple of weeks of really hot, dry weather (such as western Washington and Oregon have been sweltering through recently), but hot and humid is the pits. Granted, I haven't experienced 100° and 100% humidity (never been to Georgia, in other words), but the current 81° and 87% humidity is pretty damn nasty. We have a small AC unit in our bedroom (that's all we can afford). It gets the bedroom down to about 75° and 55-60% humidity at night, which feels frighteningly cool and dry after the days here.

I need an umbrella. There's something I never thought I would say. Western Washington gets a lot of rain, but spaces it out over a lot of days. Except for one day in Tuscon, AZ, I have never seen it rain as hard as it does here. If we are expecting an inch of rain in one day, it will probably fall in about 2 hours here. In Seattle, it would take the whole day--which is still pretty soggy, but the streets don't become 6" deep rivers. The other issue is that when it rains in Seattle, you can wear a rain coat and be comfortable. When it's 80° and there's a waterfall pouring on your head, putting on a rain coat just makes you hot and sticky--it's much better to have an umbrella in that situation. (I still snicker at those who pull out an umbrella for a light mist or even a light rain, but I understand the need for it in a heavy rain when it's too warm for a coat.)

East coast people are not all rude. It is a common belief that people are ruder on the east coast than on the west coast. That may well be true in some places, but not really in greater New Haven. The people here are a lot like they are in the Puget Sound region. You may not get quite as many friendly nods from strangers while walking down the road, but people are not on the whole any ruder than I have experienced in the past. We've met some great people over here and at least one of them is even a Connecticut native. :-)

Okay, I'm sure I skipped details in the summary and that I learned more than I listed here, but this is getting long so I'm going to wrap it up. In short, we both miss the Seattle-Tacoma area, I miss my old hockey teams, and I (for one) would love to be able to move back to Seattle some day (though I don't think it will happen any time soon). On the other hand, New Haven is not a bad place to live. The weather isn't too bad outside of the mid-July to mid-August range (which is the same as for the Seattle area, for that matter), the people are good, and you can learn to survive despite the local drivers. We miss Azteca, strip-mall teriyaki joints, and convenient Red Robin's (the nearest is in Hartford), but we're coping.

Oh, and the cats are fine, too, though they don't understand why Rachel and I have made it so hot and muggy recently and they wish we would fix it.

Driving in Greater New Haven: Addendum

There are two "rules" which I forgot to list in my recent post, but of which I was definitely reminded in the last couple of days:

1. When the light turns green, the first left turner has the right of way over the oncoming traffic. This doesn't happen all the time, but pretty frequently you'll be sitting at a traffic light trying to ignore all the other drivers inching up every few seconds, probably hanging over into your lane and all (a police car did that to me this weekend). When the light changes, you begin to go straight through the intersection only to find that the first left turner going the other way is going first. These people often do not even make an attempt to get through quickly, but instead trust to the fact that they will be in your way, so you will let them go.
2. "No Standing Any Time" means "Free Parking!" This is especially bad at the "T" intersection between Crown St and Howe St, just one block up from our apartment. In the intersection (across from where Crown St ends), there are some of these signs. It is VERY rare not to find someone parked there. (To be fair, this is just outside the entrance to the YMCA day care and some of these people might be picking up or dropping off kids, so are really being nice since they didn't just stop in the driving lane to run inside.)

That's all for now. I just wanted to make sure that my list of "rules" was more-or-less complete.

Driving in Greater New Haven

It's been nearly a month since I posted anything, so it's about time for my first post dedicated entirely to observations on life in Connecticut. Seeing as my parents will be visiting me soon and driving a rental car while here, I decided to start with a primer for any Washington state driver who happens to find himself/herself driving in the Greater New Haven area. Much of this post is tongue-in-cheek, but there are some seeds of truth to it. There is some good safety information in here for anyone who is not used to Connecticut traffic.

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Navigation

The freeway exits here are numbered sequentially from south to north on the odd numbered interstates. I think it's west to east on the even numbered interstates, but I am not at all certain of that. The point is that the exit numbers often have absolutely nothing to do with the mileage posts. Don't assume that just because you're at mile 20 and you need to take exit 25, you have about 5 miles to go. You may have 1, 5, or 25. There's no predicting it that way. (For those of you who are not familiar with it, freeway exit numbers on the west coast (and many other places, of course) correspond to the nearest mile post on the freeway. If the exit is near the mile 22 marker, then it will be exit 22; it might be the first exit along the freeway, but it is still numbered 22. If you have two different exits near mile post 22, then the first will be exit 22A and the second will be exit 22B. It's a nice way to judge how far it is to the exit you want if all you know is the exit number.)

The "rules"

The following are the "rules" as some people seem to interpret them. (NOTE: You can find drivers who interpret the rules in the same way all over the place, but the percentage in Connecticut seems to be much larger than in western Washington state.)

1. Red means go. At least, it does when it has just turned red. At any intersection on almost any cycle of the light, you will find that 3-5 cars per lane will go through the red light right after it has changed. I have even been honked at for stopping at a red light! This behavior seems to be encouraged by the fact that at every traffic light, the light is red in all directions for several seconds before changing to green in a new direction. I'm sure the thought is increased safety because it gives people time to clear the intersection, but instead it means about the same amount of safety because new people will be entering the intersection during this red-all-ways phase.
2. When red does mean stop, it means come to a complete stop and then creep forward. You see creepers everywhere. It's common enough that there is a "Sniglet" for it: nurging. (A Sniglet is a word that doesn't exist, but should. To nurge is to creep forward at a traffic light seemingly in the hope that this will make the light change faster.) What's really interesting is the extremes to which some drivers take this creeping. Some, for example, will stop about 15 feet behind the car in front of them just so they have room to creep every few seconds. There are also quite a few drivers that stop at the stop line, then proceed to creep forward so much that their entire car is in the intersection before the get the green light; but of course they're not going to run the red light, so it must be okay.
3. The lines on the road are merely suggestions. You see this everywhere, too, but not so much in Washington as here in Connecticut. I've seen a couple of drivers stop approximately 10-12 feet beyond a stop line that is well back from the intersection for a very good and obvious reason. And this isn't limited to crossing stop lines and stopping in crosswalks, either. See, in Connecticut, the lines between the lanes are apparently completely optional, so it's okay to randomly ooze from one lane to another or even to drive for miles with the dashed white line between your wheels. Did I say "dashed"? Sorry, even the solid white fog line is optional and you can drive with 2 or more wheels on the shoulder, too. The people behind you for which you're kicking up dust and gravel will love you for making their drive less boring (or something). Wait, I'm focusing too much on the white lines. The yellow ones in the middle of the road are optional as well--especially if there are two solid ones. It doesn't matter that some idiot is trying to drive the other direction on the other side of the yellow line. Cross it whenever you like.
4. The term "driving" in "driving lane" is merely a suggestion. If you need to run in to the store for a moment (which can be up to half an hour or more), then it is apparently okay to simply stop your car in the driving lane and run your errands. Even if there is only one driving lane headed in that direction--remember, the lane lines are only suggestions anyway, so the other drivers can use the other side of the street. Unless someone has parked there, too. (Yes, I have seen that happen. Traffic both ways was completely blocked by empty cars.)
5. Speed limits are also just a suggestion. Probably the majority of people everywhere believe this to be the case, but few really live it the way they do around here. There is, for example, a stretch of freeway near the interchange of I-91 and I-95 where the speed limit is 40 miles per hour. NOBODY drives that slowly there. If you did, I can guarantee that someone would ram you from behind. In fact, if you want to go "merely" 60 miles per hour along that stretch, you had better be in the right lane. The other three lanes are reserved for cars traveling at least 70 miles per hour. (I have done 70 mph through this area and the cars were streaming by.) On other roads, the speed limit is commonly 25, but the minimum safe speed is 35. On the other hand, there are also roads where the speed limit is somewhere between 30 and 45, but there are a lot of drivers who won't get above 20 or 25 on those roads. (They are all two lane roads with one lane in each direction, of course.)
6. As long as we're talking about suggestions, blinking red lights are just a suggestion. And apparently that suggestion is that you glance quickly at any oncoming traffic and accelerate to make sure you get to the blinking red light before the other traffic gets to its blinking yellow light.
7. "Bus Stop; No Standing" means "park here if you need to". I have literally (and I do mean literally) been standing at the curb at a bus stop waiting for the bus to finish traveling the final half-block to pick me up when someone parked right in front of me. I have also had trouble getting a driver to see me because of all the parked cars in the bus stop. Bus drivers get even, though, by driving closely enough to scrape rear view mirrors and, in one case, pulling half in front of a parked car whose driver thought it was about to leave, then sitting there for several minutes for no reason other than to prevent the car from leaving. (It couldn't back out because of the other car parked in the bus stop right behind it.) I was sitting on the bus and in no particular hurry, so I found that situation particularly funny.
   

Don't get me wrong; everyone knows these "rules", so driving here is not so terrifying as it might seem. Well, once you've gotten used to it. I was pretty terrified when I first started driving here because I thought the other drivers' actions were unpredictable. Now I know better, so driving to the mall requires fewer changes of underwear than it once did.

Other potential hazards

A few other things to be aware of should you find yourself driving near New Haven:

• New Haven itself abounds with one way streets. This is true of many cities, but somehow it just seems to be more the case in New Haven. Maybe it's just me.
• Because of all of these one way streets, it may not be possible for you to figure out how to get to where you want to go by car. When Rachel and I first came here to look for an apartment, we tried to get to one promising site only to find that we needed to go the wrong way on a one way street to get there. Undaunted, we used our map and figured out how to get to the other end of the block only to find that at that end it was one way in the other direction. We gave up at that point. We still don't know how the cars get onto that street. (Admittedly, we haven't worked really hard on figuring it out; I can't even remember what street it was anymore.)
• Tow trucks in Connecticut do not put lights on the backs of the cars they are towing, so you often cannot see their brake lights and/or turn signals. They do have a bar of flashing yellow lights above the cab when towing a vehicle, so they are hard to miss (especially at night).
  
• Pedestrians will walk into the street at any time. This is largely because the city of New Haven and the surrounding communities have worked hard to make it difficult for pedestrians to know when to cross the street, but that's the subject of another post. Just be aware.
• Finally, be aware that the bicyclists in the area are playing a game: if they get you to hit them then they win, but if you manage to avoid them then you win. They play this game very seriously. I've managed to win so far when behind the wheel of my car, but it's been a close thing a few times. I think I've begun to figure out the rules, but that's again a subject for another post.

One last observation. In Connecticut, it is a primary offense to be driving while talking on a hand held cell phone. Despite this fact, I see a considerably higher percentage of drivers talking on their cell phones here than I did in Washington (where it is a secondary offense, for those of you who don't know). The police don't seem to be willing to pull people over for talking on the phone even though it's a primary offense. By my own observation, many (though not all) of those people who have the loose interpretations of the rules described above are on the phone. I'm sure these people believe that they are "fine" when talking on the phone, so anyone who thinks, "Sure, some people are bad drivers when on the phone but I'm fine," should re-think that. If you weren't fine, you wouldn't know that, so just assume that you are not fine. I have had several near-accidents in the short time I've lived here, and every single time the other driver was on the phone and never even noticed me! I could go on and on here, but this post is long enough. Just hang up the damn phone and concentrate on the road.

Driving is dangerous even when everyone is alert and following the rules. Keep that in mind, please.

Interesting followup on Sikorsky/Change to this blog

I had my class with Dennis last night. As usual, he drove me home after class. When we were in the car, he suddenly said, "You sure impressed Larry!" When I asked him why he said that, explained that he had been concerned about the quiz we took last night when leaving work and Larry had told him, "Cheat off of Scott. He's smart." :-)

I also found out in the course of that conversation that Larry had found out about my math background after the interview was scheduled already. I just thought that was interesting, so I decided to pass it on.

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As for the change to this blog mentioned above, I haven't really been using it for sharing most news. Most of the people I'm sharing news with are either in touch with me via email, facebook, phone, or some combination thereof. (For those of you reading this on facebook, "this blog" refers to my blog at http://twocatsinacar.blogspot.com/. The blog is automatically imported into facebook as notes.)

I have decided that while I will still occasionally post big news here, my emphasis is going to change. I would like to start posting some observations about the differences between life in the Puget Sound region and life in the New Haven area. (By the way, if you want to sound like a native when/if you visit, "New Haven" is pronounced as one word (newhaven), with the emphasis on the second to last syllable--new·HAV·en. I'm only just starting to pronounce it "right", and I have to consciously think about it every time.)

My Job Interview with Sikorsky

The interview itself was very informal. I met first with Dennis, my friend who got me the interview in the first place. He asked me a few basic questions about technical aspects and explained the job and structure of the databases I'd be working with. He started to draw a diagram on the back of my resume and, when I pointed out I had blank paper, suddenly realized what it was he was about to draw on.

It was a little strange having him do part of the interview not only because I know him, but also because he'd ask me a simple question, I'd answer it, and he'd say something along the lines of, "Perfect! You'd be surprised how many people can't answer that." In one case, he told me of interviewing some woman who was supposed to be an expert SQL user. (SQL, or Structured Query Language, is the language used to get information from a database.) He said he'd asked her the same really basic question and she'd been unable to answer it. The question was really basic, too. Anyone who's ever done anything with SQL should have been able to answer it.

After about 15 or 20 minutes, Dennis told me I'd passed his test and he went to find Larry (his boss) for the second part of the interview. After asking me if I knew anything about the database system used by the company and hearing that I didn't really, he turned my resume over and drew a diagram on the back of it. I guess it was a good thing that I'd had Dennis leave that spot blank for him earlier. :-)

In the course of talking to Larry, he told me that what had actually interested him in me in the first place was my background in math. They have a need for someone who can help predict when they should start making parts that take years to make but cost lots of money to store, so he was hoping I could do some basic data analysis and come up with a system for making such predictions. (They have had several software vendors claim that they had a solution for him, but the were all, in his word, "shit".)

He finished by telling me that he wasn't looking at anyone else for the job and that, in fact, until Dennis told him about my math background in a totally unrelated conversation, he hadn't been looking for anybody. He wants me to start working as a contractor with the company this spring; this would be part time work done whenever I could around my other work schedule and my class schedule. If everything works out, I could become full-time with the company as early as July. There are no benefits while doing the contract work, but upon transferring to full-time, I would get full benefits--including having Sikorsky pay for my tuition, fees, and required texts while I complete my degree!

There are details to iron out and all, but it looks like I'll be working for Sikorsky before long, doing both data analysis and some application development for them. :-)