Sunnyvale...First Impressions

Busy Busy Busy. Did I mention it's busy out here? The view is nice because there are mountains on both sides of the city but it seems like every inch of real state is used and there's not a lot of parks and open area until you get to the Mountains. Live close to work that's my suggestion, unless you want to spend a lot of time in traffic. The roads around here have got to be the worst signed roads of anywhere I've ever been. Although the roads aren't as bad as New Jersey, the home of the jug handles, they come in a close second. Painted lines marking the lanes of traffic suddenly end and when you go around a curve you have no clue if you're in the same lane. If you can get around that part of it things will most likely be fine. So far I like Clearwater a lot better then this area. I think mainly cuz I liked being so close to the Gulf and roller blading on the causeways. Although I can't complain about the weather here, it's been in the 70's both days and seeing the sun is nice.

I spent most of Tuesday looking at apartments and I looked at one today. I think I'm going to take the one I saw today. It's a 720 unit complex which is huge, but it comes with a lot of conveniences like an onsite store that will deliver to your door, dry cleaning service, a fitness facility that would rival any major fitness center like Bally's and a spa with a massage parlor. It comes at a pretty stiff price tag though, $1840 a month. I budgeted $1800 so it's not too bad. It's also only 3 miles from work so not having to drive will help with the extra cost. I just may break out the roller blades again and roller blade to work everyday or buy a bike. Most of the roads around here have bike lanes.

The Lockheed campus here is huge. Lockheed in Eagan has just under a 1000 employees, there are well over 7000 here. I'd say the campus has more buildings and is definitely bigger then the St Cloud State campus. It's a city within itself. I saw my cube and I'll be over looking a huge atrium on the forth floor. It's by far the best cube I've had at Lockheed. So I'm looking forward to that. It's kind of weird cuz there are umbrellas on the ledges of the atrium over the place and nobody seems to know why. It adds the feel of being on the beach. I found out that the task I've been assigned to way behind. Nothing like finding out you're behind schedule before you even start. So my team is going to be challenged to get back on schedule.

The Yahoo campus is across the street from Lockheed, I counted 4 buildings that I think are part of Yahoo. We made a trek up to Google as well. Not that it’s anything special but it’s kind of cool to see the major tech company’s head quarters. There’s also a ton of empty office space left over from the dot com bust.

Well that's enough babble for one day.