History in Motion

Moving is always a headache, whether you are moving across the country or overseas or just across town, whether you are moving a lot or just a little bit of stuff.

There is a vast amount of moving information out there and it is not so easy to sift through. An argument can be made that the Web has made the moving process more difficult in that it has greatly enlarged the information haystack; moreover, the Web is not a substitute for speaking with a 'relocation consultant' on the phone. I nevertheless began my own process for moving my belongings from New Orleans to Vista with a long distance movers new orleans (or something like that) Google search.

The moving business has diversified: in addition to the
(A) moving companies that do it all and
(B) doing it all yourself with a U-Haul truck
standard options, there are now
(C) container services that will drive your stuff from Point A to Point B but expect you to load and unload it (e.g., U-Pack) and complementarily
(D) companies that only un/load but don't do any actual moving.
Being a non-motorist and not having anyone to help me on the New Orleans side, I wanted an (A) company.

My quote quest began with Thumbtack, an all-purpose service broker. After I filled out a brief form for my move, Thumbtack initially promised to deliver multiple quotes from pre-screened pros but subsequently put me in touch with a single, not-NOLA-based mover - Turnaround Moving Service in Geismar, LA - that offered me a wildly uncompetitive quote* of $6500, which was a good thing in the sense that it spurred me to get up off my duff and go get a better quote.

*I indicated on the form that my move was for a studio apartment (the smallest choice) but the form did not contain a comment box for providing more detail; Turnaround probably assumed that my move included several large appliances (a refrigerator, an oven, a dishwasher), which was not the case.

CORRECTION: I rechecked with Thumbtack and its long-distance moving form does in fact include an Anything else the mover should know? comment box, in which I didn't enter anything, so evidently I'm to blame for what happened. The moral of the story: The more details you provide to the mover, the more accurate your moving quote is going to be.

BTW, Yelp did not prove that helpful in my long distance movers new orleans search, which is not so surprising given that Yelp's focus is local businesses vis-à-vis interstate ones; however, Yelp did at least enable me to weed out various we-don't-go-outside-of-Louisiana businesses that were not suitable for my move.

On the right side(s) of the Google search pages were a series of ads for discount 'movers' that, like Thumbtack, don't do any moving themselves but instead serve as intermediaries between movees and actual moving companies. I submitted move information to at least two** of these outfits: Budget Van Lines and OrbitzMoving.com (**I seem to recall also doing so at either GetMove.com or GotMovers.com but I just can't remember). Budget Van Lines responded directly to me with a $1333.50 quote. Meanwhile, I received emails or phone calls from five companies (presumably) contracting for OrbitzMoving.com:

(1-2) Allied Van Lines and North American Van Lines wanted to actually come to my apartment and look over my stuff, and would not give me a quote without doing that.

(3-4) Cross Country Movers and Global Transportation offered me quotes in the neighborhood of $1100.

(5) World Wide Van Lines sent me a not to exceed moving quote of $5,599.95.

At the time that I had to make a decision, I had a Global Transportation 'email trail' - an introductory letter and a binding estimate contract of sorts - whereas Cross Country Movers hadn't sent me any emails at all, so I went with Global Transportation for my move.

Departure

Global Transportation itself did not move my belongings but rather subcontracted the job to Chico and the Men, a Slidell-based moving company.

A three-person Chico team - two dedicated movers and a paperwork guy who helped the movers a bit - showed up slightly late on the day of the move. The two movers put me at ease; as I watched them it was clear to me that they knew what they were doing. In contrast, the paperwork guy seemed to be going by the seat of his pants:
(1) He asked me to input address and/or credit card data - data that I had given to my Global Transportation contact and that he should have had on hand - into a number of forms.
(2) He asked me for a photo ID and seemed confused when I handed him my passport; he called up a superior to ensure that a passport was an acceptable form of ID (it was). He then told me that I would have to send photocopies of (a) my passport photo and (b-c) the front and back of my credit card to Chico's headquarters before Chico would ship my goods.
(3) He finally told me that it would take at least three weeks to deliver my shipment whereas Global Transportation's binding estimate email had said I would get it in 5-14 business days.

I felt a sense of great relief as the moving truck drove away. "At long last I am getting out of New Orleans," I thought.

Connecting timeline

• My belongings were carted away on 10 December.

• I left New Orleans by train on 11 December and arrived in California on 13 December.

• The aforediscussed photo/credit card photocopies were obtained and then faxed back to Slidell on 14 December.

• On 29 December I got a call from a Chico employee: "Your shipment will arrive in 5-7 days; a day before the delivery the movers will call you to give you a heads-up."

Arrival

On 4 January a mover called me with the news that
(a) my belongings would be delivered the next day but
(b) they were sitting in a massive truck that could not be driven to my precise location and
(c) they would have to be transferred to a smaller U-Haul truck for delivery, which would require an additional $300 cash payment.
It crossed my mind that he was lying about the truck business, but at that point I was eager to get the whole thing over with so I said, "OK, let's do it." Had I known this would happen I would have chosen Cross Country Movers for my move.

(In retrospect there were two Global Transportation minor red flags that might also have steered me to Cross Country Movers:
(1) Global Transportation was difficult to get through to on the phone.
(2) Global Transportation's introductory letter email concluded with a www.globaltn.net Web site URL that points to a "This Web page is parked for FREE, courtesy of GoDaddy.com" page.
Maybe these were relevant considerations, maybe not.)

At about 10:15 the following morning the mover - one guy - arrived with the U-Haul truck, in which my belongings were commingled with someone else's belongings; he would have given me the whole lot had I not said, "Hold it, this other stuff isn't mine." After my items were unloaded, I handed the mover the $300 and signed off on an inventory sheet, and that was that.

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I'll write more about my 'new life' in California as time permits.

Choo-Choo

The task at hand: Get myself from New Orleans to Vista, California in North San Diego County. Toward this end I ordinarily would take a plane from New Orleans to San Diego, but my father said to me, I can't pick you up at the San Diego airport; he is 87 and does what he can to keep his freeway driving to a minimum.

Just southwest of Vista is Carlsbad, California, which has an airport. However, a one-way flight from New Orleans to Carlsbad runs about $350 - about $100 more than a corresponding flight to San Diego - and I was hoping for something cheaper.

What about non-airplane possibilities? I wasn't in any sort of rush, so why not take a train - I hadn't ridden any kind of train in almost twenty years - or even a bus*? Both Amtrak and Greyhound could take me to Oceanside, California, just northwest of Vista and at which my father said he would be willing to meet me. Figuring that train travel would be more comfortable (or at least less uncomfortable) than bus travel, I booked a NOLA-to-Oceanside Amtrak trip for $191.

(*Bus fans, did you catch the AP's recent "New breed of buses draws Thanksgiving travelers" article? Unfortunately, neither Megabus, BoltBus, nor Wanderu could be used for the trip I wanted to make.)

Getting to New Orleans' Amtrak/Greyhound station was no more difficult than taking the St. Charles Streetcar to Lee Circle and then walking a few blocks downtown - no $35 cab ride to the airport required. Gratifyingly, at the station I wasn't subjected to any TSA-type degradation: I wasn't groped or irradiated but merely had to show a photo ID to an agent in order to print out my ticket, and I can deal with that.

Trip specifics

My trip had two legs:
(1) I traveled from New Orleans to Los Angeles on a Sunset Limited train and
(2) from Los Angeles to Oceanside on a Pacific Surfliner train.
This is the most direct Amtrak route from New Orleans to Southern California - the total trip time is just over two days - and also the cheapest, and its only departure days are Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday (wildly circuitous and much more expensive alternative routes are available on other days of the week).

Scenery

In Louisiana and East Texas we saw mile after mile of bare tree 'forest', and in West Texas and New Mexico we saw mile after mile of tumbleweed country - not exactly postcard photo material, shall we say. I did get a nice view of the Pacific Ocean toward the end of the Pacific Surfliner leg, however.

Food

The Sunset Limited train features a dining car and a lounge car. Price-wise you would expect train food to be marked up in a major way as train passengers are a captive audience of sorts, and it is: you, too, can pay $2.25 for a 12-oz can of Coke. It was my original intention to not eat anything during my trip, but I gave in:
(1) On the first day I bought a $1.25 apple and a reasonably good $2 cup of coffee from the lounge car.
(2) On the second day in the dining car I had a $7.50 scrambled eggs breakfast comprising two scrambled eggs, a portion of roasted potatoes, a small whole-wheat biscuit, and two cups of weak coffee.

A welcome respite from food captivity occurred at the El Paso station, at which the conductor exhorted us to get off the train and avail ourselves of the homemade burritos sold by Juanita the Burrito Lady. I duly snagged two of Juanita's green chili/potato/ground beef burritos - muy bien! - this was definitely the highlight of the trip.

Overall comfort level

Not bad; still, two days is a long time to spend in transit for a somewhat fidgety person such as myself. I don't regret traveling by rail but I'm not so sure I wouldn't fly if I could do it all over again.

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Getting my person to Vista was relatively easy. Getting my belongings to Vista was another kettle of fish - I'll tell you about it in the next post.

Escape from New Orleans

My long 'tour of duty' in New Orleans has come to an end. Financial hardship has compelled me to leave the Big Easy and travel to the West Coast to temporarily live with my father in Southern California. If I recall correctly, however, this sort of thing happened to Syd Barrett and also to Lou Reed at one point, so I don't feel so bad and would seem to be in pretty good company, eh?

During my 18+ years in the Crescent City I lived in two different apartments, each of which was highly problematic in its own way. The latter of these apartments was situated in New Orleans' Touro neighborhood, a good location in many respects; however, it was plagued by a noisy environment that made getting a good night's sleep a hit-or-miss affair. Obstacles to that good night's sleep included
(a) the tenant directly above me who frantically tramped back and forth on Hurricane Katrina-weakened floorboards at all hours of the night,
(b) the Touro Infirmary's delivery trucks, which made loud beeping noises at 5 AM several days a week, and
(c) the tenant to my right who would come in at 12-2 AM and turn on his TV cranked to a loud volume (maybe you can sleep through TV audio, I can't).
As an ultralight sleeper, I'm really glad to be out of there.

Is there anything about New Orleans that I'll miss? I won't miss the long, numbing summers. I won't miss having to deal with the hurricane thing every year. And I definitely won't miss Mardi Gras.

"C'mon, anything?" OK, I'll miss the Latter Library and its CD collection. I'll miss the local cuisine to an extent; interestingly, some of the stores at my new location carry Zatarain's products. I'll miss drinking coffee at the CC's at Loyola University. Above all, I as a non-motorist will miss the mobility that living in a relatively large city afforded me. ("Isn't it time you got a driver's license?" Yeah, I really should put that on my to-do list, shouldn't I?)

Now then: How did I get from New Orleans to Southern California? We'll get into that next time.

Have It Our Way

It's been over a month since I announced to the world that I need to get a job and asked for help toward this end, and to date I haven't gotten a single response. I haven't even attracted any 'hate mail' ("You shlub, do you really think anyone cares about you and your blog?"), employment spam, or scammers - man, I must creep people out or something. Maybe I should have just begged for money; that's what everyone else would have done.

What next? Using the Web as an employment resource is a bit overwhelming, and it is easy for a person in my position to succumb to 'Internet Information Overload'. I figured the next most basic thing to do would be to post my résumé at some job board sites. Accordingly, I gave my résumé a thorough overhaul as I hadn't touched it since 2003:
(1) I subtracted several sections (e.g., Graduate School Teaching Experience, Publications) that struck me as either outdated or irrelevant to the work I am hoping to find;
(2) I reordered the remaining content and
(3) prepended to that content a Current Work section that briefly discusses my blogging work; and
(4) I inserted a position-specifying "headline" (but not a "branding statement" nor a "professional profile") between my contact information and the Current Work section.

Using this type="text/plain" résumé at QuintCareers.com as a stylistic model, my updated résumé looks approximately like:

ANDREW PEAK

Here's how you contact me, here's where I live…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TECHNICAL WRITER * WEB CODER
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CURRENT WORK
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Blogger, reptile7's JavaScript blog: http://reptile7.blogspot.com/
More stuff relating to my technical blog…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PREVIOUS PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Visiting Professor of (Organic) Chemistry, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
1995-1999, Spring and Summer 2000, Summer 2001 (B6 Session), 2003-2004

...

~~~~~~~~~~
EDUCATION
~~~~~~~~~~
Here's where I went to college and what I specialized in…

Between you and me, I view my résumé as a cold, sterile document that does a poor job of representing who I am (if you do want a good representation of who I am, then you should read my (other) blog, of course). Moreover, I am acutely aware that only a tiny minority (as in < 5%) of job placements occur via Web job boards. But onward we forge. "If nothing else, we can see what happens - think of it as an anthropology experiment of sorts," I said to myself.

The Resources sector of Mojo40.com recommends the Indeed.com job board - This aggregates all the other jobs boards so no need to go anywhere else - so I went there first. Using a password generated by the code discussed in this post, I set up an Indeed.com account and attempted to upload my résumé as a .txt file via the file select (<input type="file">) control provided on Indeed.com's "Post your resume" page. Annoyingly, Indeed.com did not upload my résumé as is: it subtracted the headline and the Current Work section and outputted an "Indeed Resume" stating that I was still a Visiting Professor at Tulane University, with which I parted ways almost ten years ago (vide supra). I deleted the file-upload résumé and then built a new résumé using Indeed.com's "from scratch" option.

The Indeed Resume section of Indeed.com's FAQs page(s) sports a Why is your resume parsing not completely accurate? question. Indeed.com responds:

We're currently looking into ways in which we can improve the resume conversion process. In the meantime, try uploading a Word Document instead of a PDF. We find that Word Documents are converted much better.

Why are you converting résumés at all, Indeed.com? Why, indeed?

In sum, be prepared for some 'transmogrification' if you upload your résumé at Indeed.com. Moving on, I'll tell you about the free résumé critique that the aforementioned QuintCareers.com did for me in our next episode.

Does She Make You Happy?

It's about time I got around to writing a quick post on Norah Jones and her most recent record, ...Little Broken Hearts.

"Solo artist" is not a particularly meaningful term these days. If you look at the credits for a Christina Aguilera record, it will be immediately clear to you that you are not just getting "Christina Aguilera" on that record: you are also getting a team of professionals that in various ways has created the record's music. Moreover, Aguilera may have a very impressive set of pipes but she doesn't play any musical instruments. In contrast, from Not Too Late onward Norah Jones has written or co-written - with no more than one collaborator in all cases but one - all of the songs on her records, and she also plays a simple keyboard and/or guitar part on the overwhelming majority of those songs. Jones may not be the musical polymath that, say, Todd Rundgren or Brian Eno is, but she definitely counts as a bona fide solo artist.

The only Norah Jones song that I can recall ever hearing on the radio is "Don't Know Why" from Come Away with Me, Jones' 2002 debut - here's hoping that the commercial radio situation where you live is not as dreadful as it is here in New Orleans. On the basis of "Don't Know Why", and also because she records for Blue Note Records, Jones is sometimes labeled a "jazz artist"; if this is your conception of Jones, then ...Little Broken Hearts will throw you for a loop.

Much has been written about ...Little Broken Hearts' foray into indie rock and how different it is from Jones' other records, and several of its songs do in fact brim with indie artsiness, namely, "Good Morning", "After the Fall", "Travelin' On", and "Miriam". However, if you've heard The Fall, Jones' previous record, then you know that there is a sparse Johnny Cash-ish country side to what she does, and there is some of that on ...Little Broken Hearts - indeed, my two favorite tracks on the record, "She's 22" and "4 Broken Hearts", are in this vein.

The aforementioned "Miriam" was chosen for the record's second single, a very interesting choice in that lyrically its narrator confronts 'the other woman' and ultimately decides to kill her - I'm gonna smile when I take your life - who knew that our Norah was a locked-and-loaded kind of gal?

In sum, if you like Jones' traditionalist side - if you are looking for songs like "My Dear Country" and "Back to Manhattan" - then you will probably be disappointed by ...Little Broken Hearts, but if you like her country side and are willing to let her push the musical envelope somewhat, then ...Little Broken Hearts is the record for you.

Jeffrey Scott Beck, 1962-2012

I was horrified to learn from the July/August 2013 issue of the University of Pennsylvania's Gazette alumni magazine that Jeffrey Scott Beck, one of my graduate school contemporaries, died last year. I tracked down an obit for Jeff here; the obit writer doesn't say what Jeff died from, but given his age (49) and that he passed away ... with his wife, his sister, his mother-in-law and close friends at his side, I suspect that the Big C was to blame.

Jeff and I both arrived at Penn in the Fall of 1984. Although we didn't take any first-year classes together, we were co-TAs for Chemistry 4 and Chemistry 54 during the Spring 1985 semester and during the afternoon lab sessions we chatted from time to time - I still have my copy of the Chem 4 textbook for that semester, the fourth edition of Chemical Principles. (The third Chem 4/54 TA, Deanna Johnson, left Penn shortly after her first year and I have no idea what happened to her.)

I can't claim to have known Jeff well, but I do have a few random remembrances of him that are worth jotting down.

• Jeff and I were both semi-regular patrons of the sadly long-gone Audrey's Pit Barbecue on 40^th Street.

• Jeff was a fan of female singer-songwriters - I remember him being pleasantly surprised that I had even heard of Joan Armatrading, Kate Bush, and Lene Lovich, let alone that I had heard any of their songs.

• Jeff was also a big Pink Floyd fan. He paid $400 to a scalper for two tickets to see Pink Floyd when it was touring for The Wall in 1980 or so - "During 'Mother' you could hear a pin drop," he informed me.

• Perhaps the strangest thing I knew about Jeff was that he loved the Meow Mix Theme: "I like chicken, I like liver, ..."

• I was never shy about telling everyone how much I disliked graduate school, and Jeff assumed that my dislike of graduate school extended to Philadelphia more generally. I corrected him. Actually, Jeff, there are some aspects of Philadelphia that I really like. His eyes lit up slightly. It's just that Penn isn't one of them. He smiled broadly.

Rest in peace, Jeff. If there's a heaven, I hope that they're piling the beef brisket, collard greens, and baked beans high for you up there.

Boys and Heroes, Lovers and Men

It was in June my intention to write up a mini-report on The Age of Consent, Bronski Beat's 1984 debut record, but I got sidetracked by the Bluebird template thing - although I haven't had the CD in my possession for a couple of months, let me take a stab at it.

For better or for worse, Bronski Beat is more well-known for whom it comprised - gay men who wrote about their gay lives some of the time - than for the music it made. Thirty years down the line, of course, one wonders what the fuss was all about - you almost feel sorry for someone who would be shocked, shocked at hearing frontman Jimmy Somerville sing, And the sweetest thing of all is men loving men loving men loving men.

As you would infer from the preceding paragraph, I myself couldn't care less about Bronski Beat's sexuality, any more than I care that Bob Mould and Grant Hart are gay, any more than I care that Amy Ray and Emily Saliers are gay (Saliers prefers "gay" to "lesbian", so I'll use her word choice), any more than I care that Tegan and Sara Quin are gay - it simply isn't an issue to me. What I care about is the music, what's the music like, lads? So I'll focus on the music in the discussion below. Maybe Bronski Beat itself wouldn't want me to separate its gayness from its music, but that's what I'm going to do.

The Age of Consent CD that I checked out from the library held sixteen tracks: ten songs from the original Age of Consent release plus six bonus tracks, three of which were remixes culled from Bronski Beat's second record, Hundreds & Thousands. Musically, about half of the CD was synth-pop and about half of it I would describe as 'soul' for lack of a better term.

The reviews of Bronski Beat that I've seen alternately describe it as a synth-pop or dance band; this characterization as regards The Age of Consent is at best half correct, as noted above. Admittedly, it is possible that Bronski Beat ditched its soul side on its post-Hundreds & Thousands output, I don't know.

I did not like The Age of Consent at first listen for the following reasons:

(1) I did not care for Somerville's high register, approaching-falsetto vocals; if they're an acquired taste I didn't acquire it.

(2) The record's absence of guitar rubbed me the wrong way. (OK, there's some rhythm guitar on "Screaming" and I'm pretty sure that I can hear a faint guitar part on "Love and Money", but there needs to be more.)

"But there's no guitar on the Human League's Dare." Touché. And I would take those guys to task for it as well.

(3) Regarding the original Age of Consent synth-pop songs, I felt that the production could have been punchier. Hi-NRG? My standard of comparison for this sort of thing is Pete Shelley's XL1, to which The Age of Consent doesn't measure up. The Hundreds & Thousands tracks did have the punch I was looking for, however.

(4) I found some of the songs to be dreary ("Wasn't that the whole point, re the gay thing?"), but I suppose you could say that about a lot of early-1980s post-punk music.

Having said all this, I very much liked the textural elements that adorn the soul songs, namely, the clarinet, piano, and choir on "Ain't Necessarily So", the unusual percussion on "Screaming" and "No More War", the sensuous sax solo on "Love and Money", even the tap dancing on "Heatwave". Moreover, one of the synth-pop songs, "Why?", boasts a prominent brass part.

The Age of Consent did grow on me, and I even became accustomed to Somerville's vocals somewhat, with repeated listens. The record's highlights IMO are "Love and Money", "Need a Man Blues", and "Run From Love" (the last track is one of the Hundreds & Thousands add-ons).

Accompanying the CD was a booklet containing neither lyrics nor any credits but rather a fan-written essay that
(a) outlined the history of Bronski Beat during Somerville's time in the band (Somerville appears on Hundreds & Thousands but left prior to its release) and
(b) complained about a scornful New Musical Express review of The Age of Consent.
Actually, I doubt that Bronski Beat's press at the time was as vicious as what was doled out to Queen, Yes, and Styx in the 1970s, but I digress.

Bronski Beat did not make it past the mid-1990s. Somerville today enjoys a solo career but I have no idea what the two 'permanent' members of Bronski Beat - Steve Bronski and Larry Steinbachek - are currently doing.

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Overall impression:
All in all, I would say that The Age of Consent is a good but not great record; it's definitely worth a listen, and as for most records, you would want to listen to it before deciding to buy it.

Our musical conversation will (not necessarily in the following entry, but at some point) next take up Norah Jones' Little Broken Hearts...