The end of StudentPwned.com

If you’re one of the dozen or so people that would occasionally stumble upon my Student Pwned website, I have some bad news: I’ve retired it. I only have myself to blame. I think the last blog post I wrote on the site was in April 2009.

When I first started the site it seemed like a great idea and a good way to help other people out there in the same financial situation as me, but I just don’t have the time to work on it anymore. So rather than keep the site up collecting dust I decided the best thing to do was to just shut it down.

Well, not completely. You can still follow my up to date loan balance and I’ve also added a graph of my balance history, updated monthly (thanks Google Chart Tools). It was also a good opportunity to mess around with Google’s new Font API, which is incredibly simple to use.

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NYC house hunting trip failure… sort of.

This past weekend I took a trip to NYC with the ambitious goal of locking down a place to live for when I move out there in October. I knew that finding a place to live in just three days wouldn’t be an easy task, but I’ve done it before, so why couldn’t I do it again?

Unfortunately, Craigslist and I weren’t in sync this past weekend.

In short, I didn’t find a place to live. However, I’m pretty sure I decided on a neighborhood. Before taking the trip, I was pretty much set on Brooklyn, but wasn’t sure between Williamsburg and Park Slope. After wandering aimlessly in both for several hours, I’m almost certain that Park Slope is where I want to end up, if I can afford it. Williamsburg definitely had a cool vibe, but Park Slope just felt like the better fit for me.

So I wouldn’t consider my house hunting trip a complete failure; I now know where to focus my search.

Random pictures, go!

I also managed to beat the lines at the Shake Shack in Manhattan on Sunday. In-n-out has got nothin’ on Shake Shack.

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Shifting focus.

All of this thinking about getting out of California lately has been consuming my life, and the Red Sox in the playoffs again isn’t helping.

I need to shift my focus elsewhere, especially since I don’t think I’ll be able to make the move anytime soon.

So what should I focus on now? What to be for Halloween? How to pay off my massive pile of student loans? The upcoming election? The forgotten honey bee crisis? The new Knight Rider series?

All viable options, but it’s October and that can mean only one thing — it’s time to focus on the Red Sox in the playoffs.

Which means I’ll be seeing a lot of coverage of Fenway Park and the city of Boston — a glorious city located on the east coast.

sigh….it’s an endless cycle.

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Also heading east

I’ve been planning on writing this blog post for a few weeks now, Wysz just beat me to it.

Pretty much everything he said is true for me as well…everything except the living alone part, but I still don’t have any ties here except my job. I’ll just elaborate on a few things specific to me:

Location

My entire family (with the exception of one of my brothers) is on the east coast. Traveling back east for holidays, weddings, graduations, etc is just a pain in the ass — usually a pain involving two full days of traveling, several vacation days, multiple flight connections, and $tupid ticket prices. All of that in conjunction with my current financial situation means I can’t make it back for everything. I missed my brother’s graduation. That was lame. I miss my grandfather’s birthday every year, also lame.

Perhaps, if I lived in particularly cool east coast city, I wouldn’t be too far my family, yet far enough away to have some much needed space. Plus, I could watch a lot more baseball games from a certain team. To be honest, my recent trip to Boston was a personal test to see if I could picture myself living there. It passed the test after the first Dunkin’ Donuts breakfast sandwich.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome here in California. I’ve had an amazing time and met a lot of incredible people. But I’ve determined it’s just not of me. Coming out here, my plan was to stay out here as long as I had a reason to do so. Almost two years now and I haven’t found a reason (although an endless supply of avocados was the closest I got).

But at least I tried it. No regrets.

Weather

Can you find my parents house in this picture? Look closely, it’s there somewhere.

I grew up one of the snowiest places in the US (Fulton, NY) and spent my entire life complaining about snow. But now that I live somewhere where the weather is pretty much constant all year long, I kinda miss the stupid cold stuff. Maybe it was just 4 feet of snow overnight that I didn’t like…and that only happens in Upstate NY.

Nonetheless, I like the changing seasons. Autumn is just something that cannot easily be described in words — and never really should be. Winter certainly has it’s “I can’t feel my face, is my nose still attached?” moments, but it can be quite beautiful the rest of the time. Spring just smells alive. Summer is humid, but rolling thunderstorms sure make it worth it.

Timing

The sooner the better. My goal is to make the move in less than one year, two years absolute max. Google NYC wouldn’t be my first choice, but that could be a possibility with my current job, and I really want to stay at Google.

As Wysz said, it’s been fun, California. But I like making big changes, and I think I’m due for another one.

I think the Pontiac has another cross-country voyage in her.

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I miss rainy days…

And snowy days.

And cloudy days.

Sometimes I wonder how much longer I’m going to last in California.

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