The local insurance agent finally bothered to return our phone calls this morning so we were able to get insured for me to drive the car. The cost was better than I thought it would be considering that I am on a learners permit. 300 dollars for 6 months. This afternoon I drove the car back from the library and it feels weird to be in a ”learner” situation again.Hopefully I can get a lot of practise in over the weekend and take my test early next week
Kristen and I were sitting in the screened in porch when we could hear a tune sounding similar to a Nintendo- (or Ross playing his keyboard in Friends).After a few minutes it got louder and louder as the sound approached but the tune stayed the same. I thought it was a real shame that “It’s a small world after all” was true otherwise we wouldn’t have to listen to the annoying icecream van playing that tune! Now if anyone asks me if I miss anything from the UK, I’ll say “Yes,ice cream vans playing short tunes”
We purchased a new computer from shudder Compusa this morning. We got a very decently spec’ed HP Pavillion A1030N desktop with 512MB memory, 200GB hard disk, 3GHz Intel processor with HT (appears as 2 processors) technology,DVD writer (with lightscribe so I can pay a fortune and have my dvd labels laser engraved – ooooohhhh) and a dvdrom. We also purchased a Norwood Micro 17″ TFT screen to go with it, some speakers, blank dvd’s and a small UPS to power it all. I also got a USB2 wireless adapter so the pc can be set up in the basement (or anywhere we feel like) without being confined to the computer room. This is made by Hawking Technologies (who I’ve never heard of) so it was a bit of a risk buying it, but at $20 after rebates it was cheap enough and I could always return it – but it seems to be working fine.
The whole lot is way cheaper than buying it in the UK and the price gets better as the rebate checks come in (3 for this lot!)
After switching the machine on, going through the boot up procedure it was time to install the wireless adapter which went through without a hitch and connected to the wireless Lan a lot easier than other things I’ve connected. Then it was off to Windows Updates……
18 items and 19MB to download (and it then detects I have some GDI vulnerable programs). The machine also came bundled with some new antispyware software called SpySubtract which I must admit I’d never heard of. It had a 60 day trial so thats enough to let me see what its like.
The other bundled software includes Norton’s Internet protection suite (which will be uninstalled asap), Microsoft Works (useful for Word only), Microsoft Money (will be very handy for keeping track of our balances) and interestingly some WildTangent games. Now supposedly these games are not spyware, according to WildTangent’s support site but other spyware detection programs detect them as spyware as they report back pc specs and each user has a unique id. It will be interesting to see what spysubtract thinks of it. Personally I will remove it if SpySubtract doesn’t – I want to keep this machine as clean as possible.
Down points
- Spysubtract keeps bugging me that it needs a new download to update it, even though the download program then says that the patch has already been applied
- Adobe Reader 6 is installed not 7
- WildTangent
- HD has a recovery partition on it, but no instructions on how to use it (that I can see so far)
More updates as I carry on the installation of the machine.
We now have a new estate agent for our 3 bedroom semi-detached house for sale in Congleton. The old estate agent was useless and only came up with an (absurdly low) offer on the final day that he had the agreement. The new agent seems to be more proactive so we will see how it goes.
When people ask me what the difference is between american living and english living I can tell them a little story….
In england, when you go to a drivethru and ask for some ketchup, you end up with 
However if you go to an american drivethru you end up with 
Kristen woke up early the next morning and went downstairs to see the cats and found that Winston had found his way into the closed off area of the basement and Basil couldn’t be found anywhere. We subsequently found that he was hiding under the stairs, wedged in as far as he could go and it was a hard job pulling him out. Unfortunately he was not very happy with the move and was still pretty scared. Every sound had him running to the far corner of the room where he could hide. (However you’ll be pleased to know that he is now fine). By this time Frankie and Winston were back to normal and were playing like they’d lived here all their lives. Sometimes i’m sure Frankie has a memoryspan comparable to a goldfish.
Thursday morning we went to the Social Security and I filled in the form to get a number. It is very difficult to do anything in the states without ones of these and why they don’t give you one as you get your permanent resident visa I don’t know. I now have to wait a week for the number to arrive in the post (they don’t give numbers out immediately) which means I can’t apply for a driving licence, credit card or mobile phone under my own name yet. We then went to see the bank to enquire about our credit rating/mortgages and we both applied for a credit card to improve our scores. Kristen had a credit rating from when she lived in the states previously so that helped a great deal, but we are now waiting for my SSN before the card application can come through.
We’ve also got new mobile phones which are quite a bit different to those in the uk. In the States, Nokia phones are very much in the minority and the majority of phones are flip covers. There are about 3 or 4 major networks and we chose Verizon primarily because with two phones on the same network you can talk between them (and any other phone) at any time for free. (and for $5 a month you get unlimited text and picture messages too). Thankfully most of our friends and family are on verizon apart from Kristens Dad so we shouldn’t get any nasty suprises.
We got the phones from Radioshack which seemed to have the best deals that I could find locally and the guy that served us is the owner of the geocache behind the shop so we had a good chat about that too.
I also got a new wireless hub for the computers upstairs. I had brought mine with me but as its an adsl modem I had suspicions it wouldn’t work easily in the current network (cable modem) setup. Also I didn’t bring the uk power supply so I would need to get a US one, and that costs $20 yet I could buy a new wireless router for $29 from bestbuy (after rebates!) That was installed yesterday and works great and I get coverage in the basement too (which is where I am typing this from).
Later on today we get to go to the spring game at Ohio State’s football ground. (A Spring Game is where the offensive play against the defensive and is like a training match that anyone can come along to.) Really looking forward to that and I hope it doesn’t rain. Hopefully we have some decent seats so I can get some good pictures.
Now that we’ve actually moved to the States, new posts on the move and our new life will be under the “Settling in” category as opposed to “Moving to the States” category. This will probably only affect those of you who are looking at the category archives. Regular rss readers and website readers will not be affected.