Connecticut Winter

Admittedly my review of the X800 Mac Edition wasn't supposed to be Mac article number 2, but between getting sick and the ATI NDA, it just worked out that way. But now, over 10,000 words later, I'm about a page away from finishing up my second look at the Mac platform. I'd expect publication within a week, I'll have an exact date after our weekly staff meeting tomorrow.

Yes it's 6AM, tomorrow I'm going to pull an all-nighter so I can make sure that I'm back on a normal sleep schedule. I do end up getting a lot of quality work done in this strange nocturnal state of mine, but it's one that will have to come to an end for the sake of overall productivity.

After living through the first part of my first Connecticut winter I can say that it is definitely cold up here. I don't head out into the cold much, but the house we're renting isn't the best insulated (despite how expensive the place is) so I do feel some of the cold on the inside. It's at the point now where I can't start up enough test beds to increase the ambient temperature to a North Carolina-like level. CT - 1, Anand - 0.

The house we're renting up here is apparently a nice place by CT standards, but it's beyond overpriced by NC standards. I'd say it's about 6x the price of an equivalent house (in size/build quality) from NC, and if you sprinkle a little bit of reality on that statement you'd still end up with about 3x the price of a similar home in Raleigh. It's absolutely nuts, and it's not even that great of a house. Thankfully we're only renting the place but still.

What's weird is that whenever someone comes over or whenever we get a delivery of (furniture, food, AT packages, etc...) everyone always comments on how nice the place is. Vinney and I usually look at each other in bewilderment and make up something along the lines of "thanks we like it too." It really puts things in perspective, and it makes us appreciate the low cost of real estate in other parts of the country.

At this point we've been married for just over five months and they've been tremendous. I honestly don't even remember what life before marriage was like, because it's just so damn great right now. It's weird, everyone warned me about how it'd be different, and I always thought they were wrong. But it is indeed very different, but extremely wonderful. I don't think the wonderful part is what people were warning me about, and I can see how it could be a very different situation but I'm happy beyond belief. For the first time ever there's actually more to life than my work for AnandTech...a very strange feeling indeed. But don't worry guys 'n gals, I'm still as dedicated to this place as ever.

We had a bit of a meeting in Vegas about some future directives for AT. We're at the stage right now where we need some more writers, mainly in covering the Consumer Electronics (HTPC/convergence), mobile and a handful of other fields. I'm not big on posting job listings online simply because I don't want the type of person that's looking for a job, I'm looking for the type of person that would be doing this type of thing even if it didn't pay as a job. I haven't yet finalized how I'm going to conduct the search for the writers but it'll definitely be something involving asking the AT community directly for interested parties.

I've got a little more writing to do but then I'm going to head to bed for a bit. I'll have more updates later.

Take care.