Start spreading the news, I'm leaving today..

So I'm in a Courtyard by Marriott in upstate New York right now, blogging from my MacBook on the free wireless.

The college I work for sets a certain amount of money aside for training, and pretty much leaves it up to the employees to find something that interests them and is relevant, and if you can sell it to management, you get to go. Both bsom and I were interested in Apple hardware training, so we convinced our respective bosses to send us... and here I am. A week of hardware training, which will hopefully end in being Apple desktop hardware certified.

We drove up today. Neither of us wanted to take our respective cars, so we got a rental. It turned out to be a 2007 Chevy Impala. Pros: very roomy, huge trunk, good acceleration, nice stereo, smooth ride. Cons: The windshield wipers, high beams, and blinkers were all on the same stalk, so every time I went to use the windshield wipers to wipe the road salt off the windshield, I kept putting the high beams on.

Stopped a few times - at a NJ Turnpike rest stop for overpriced mediocre fast food, at a Lukoil off the Garden State Parkway for windshield wiper fluid (our rental ran out), and at Microcenter in Paterson because, well, I'd never been in a microscenter before. My entire purchases consisted of a giant plush cold and a can of Bawls, but it was a very cool store - they had tons of geeky stuff - bins full of case screws, a wall of motherboards, a huge rack of cases. I really wish there was one closer to me.

In some ways, I'm kind of wishing that this hadn't been this week - we're doing some major changes at work systemwise, and there are probably going to be some career moves associated with it. I'm kind of worried that being here instead of there is going to hurt me career-wise. But I'm going to try not to think about it and to enjoy it.