Apartment Search Advice

It took what felt like forever to finally find an apartment and it was a struggle to do the search for the first time in my life. I thought that maybe someone else reading this may be in a similar situation.

A little advice;

First thing: Budget. Figure it out, be honest with yourself or you won't be happy in your new place. You will need to account for a security deposit, some places need first and last rent when you move in, any extra bills entailed with moving, any rent due for your old apartment.
(This section could go on for days, but the most helpful thing I did here was just go through my bank statements online to see what I was spending and what I could afford to pay monthly towards rent with all the initial costs I mentioned above)

Be Nice to Everyone: even if the apartment isn't a fit they may recommend somewhere that works better for you.

Your always interested, but BE HONEST: This is part of being nice to everyone, if you are taking the time to interact with the person at least seem interested and then if your not just politely and honestly explain why. (This led to another great lead for me)

Be meticulous with follow-up and note taking: after about the 15th apartment I couldn't tell up from down and my notes helped me remember what places we liked and which where just dumps. Also, your expectations for a place may change through the search and the housing you passed on before may need to be reevaluated so having these notes is great for that.
-I tend to need a little more organization than other people so next time I would probably start an excel spreadsheet with my notes: availability, price, address, contact info, status, etc.

Where to look:
-classically the classifieds are a good place, the print versions are great, but look online because most local newspapers have an online addition of the classifieds that is easier to search.
-property management companies have apartment rental listings that you can get from their website, by calling (some times prerecorded), or by calling and talking to reception. Personally I like talking to someone because if its a large company with a lot of properties you can usually explain what your looking for and they have recommendations for you which saves a lot of your time.
-Drive By: Depending on the neighborhood you want to live in there may be lots of apartment complexes you can just drive by and stop if you like. This is much more time consuming and best when done during business hours because sometimes they have offices and can show you a place right then. As you drive-by these complexes write down any information on rental signs and call while your there because they may have a lock box so you can view on the spot.
-Myspace, Facebook, Social Networks: I put up bulletins, postings on all the market places and general information dialogues provided by the social networks sites I belong to. This led to a few emails of friends who had info and also my friends' friends who are in my network that I may have connected with otherwise.
-Tell Everyone Your Looking: A lot of opportunities come up when you talk to people, and if they are close to you or care at all they will keep you top of mind if they come across something.

About.com has good articles on the subject

I hope this helps someone, please leave comments with any corrections, additions or anything else you want! Thanks!

Reflection on Veteran's Day

The swarm of news coverage and media buzz surrounding homeless veterans over the past week comes just in time for this Veteran’s Day. The majority of these articles cite the study by National Alliance to End Homelessness from November 8th.

While reading about the fourth or fifth news article, all sounding off the aforementioned study, I wondered if this buzz will stick. I hope this does not have the charity surplus factor that occurs during Thanksgiving and Christmas and is more or less forgot about the rest of year by the majority of America.

Close to 200,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. The study, by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, found that about half of homeless vets are Vietnam veterans and at least 1,500 are newly returned from Iraq or Afghanistan.

As an American and a Humanitarian I am disgraced by this; shelter is a basic human need, we are one of the richest countries in the world and if we can’t provide proper support for men and women willing to risk their lives for us we fail big time. I hope that this attention paid to these Veterans today has staying power that creates action. I expect the government to put forth effort in assimilation for these people when they get back from deployment and rehabilitation for those who need it. The study does offer specific, and I believe, viable solutions to this problem.

This is not an issue of military consciousness; this is an issue of humanity.

Refugee Game: Play Against All Odds

"Rather than chasing ghosts or fighting aliens, Against All Odds guides the gamer through the experience of being a refugee.

The game was designed by workers in the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)." -Gamers get taste of refugee life, BBC article

Its amazes me what people can come up with as technology is integrated into society, or as society catches up with tech. This game, as the article mentions, is aimed at a younger crowd that often has skewed views of refugees. While I am not sure if the generalities made within the game are the best, the essence of this objective is honorable. Any way that we can broaden our culture's acceptance and understanding of people and struggles outside of our direct experience is valuable in my eyes.

However, the game does have some objectionable content for this core audience. I would use this at a high school level, due to some violence but quality derivatives, as a constructive teaching tool.

Check out the game here: http://www.playagainstallodds.com/

God Goes Web 2.0

"GodTube.com, a video-sharing site with Christian content, drew more than 4 million unique visitors during October." -Monterey Herald article

It's like Youtube for God, with an astonishing amount of web content and traffic for a new site. Complete with advertising and social networking. I can't help but find irony in the name GodTube. This site, while a great platform for Christianity, makes me wonder if technology will hinder or help religion. Christmas has already been consumed with secular commercialism, is the religion as a whole a commercial commodity in present day society?

Back in the little town I grew up in our church changed pastors and with that came a new look and feel to the good ole word. Power point sermons, photo slide shows accompany worship and choir, and the church website has been revamped and updated. With a majority of our congregation applicable for senior discounts and up to 5 generations of families this was less than favorably received.

Change is hardly ever received well by a faith rooted in tradition and history, but is this for the better or worse? I can see it being used in great ways to target younger generations, but while it alienates their parents and grandparents?

Personally, I find comfort in the church service I grew up with, old hymns and dorky reenactments of Christmas and Easter put on by church members. But as a tech/web 2.0 junkie I find promise in a compromise of both, I hope that web 2.0 doesn’t cannibalize some of my favorite things about church.

Hlaska.com: Wallets and Bags, Just launched!!

A fabulous up and coming designer has signed on with Hlaska and designed the majority of the line they just launched November 1st. And as in the nature of siblings this is a shameless plug for my sister. She also designed most of the women's line that will be coming out early next year.

The designs, though I am biased, are different than a lot of your average high-end wallets and bags. One of my particular favorites is the Evergreen wallet with wood detail. Also the Astronomy wallet is modeled after the Big Dipper with 3-D cutouts. (Images embedded) The wallets have amazing detail and all have a great deal of practical design components.


Go check out her designs and share the site with your friends! https://www.hlaska.com/

Just another Manic Monday

I find myself singing that old Bangles song in the morning when I wake up and whirlwind through the house and as I race car drive to get to work.

It seemed to carry through as I was late, finally got some desperately needed coffee and spilled it all over my desk -nearly missing key components to my career including all my notes and laptop.

But I wouldn't expect less from a Monday, transitioning into the working version of myself is always met with resistance by the forces that be and, well, myself.

Just as Mondays can be difficult, Monday mornings can be worse than the dentist. Great thing is they pass by, I find myself looming closer to lunch still feeling optimistic about today. It always helps to get a positive email from an editor securing coverage for later this week that will thrill my client.

So if you are having one of "those" mondays, I hope you at least find some solace in the reasoning that it is only temporary and its almost lunch! :)

Email Blunders

I hope someone can learn from my mistake, I am pretty bummed about this one. I typed the wrong email for one person on an email going to the CFO, CEO, CMO and both my bosses. My initial reaction when I realized this mistake was to resend it to all so the email chain of responses would be corrected. It didn't work out well, and got a little messy.

Lesson: always double/triple check email addresses before sending out an email

On the same topic, beware of 'reply all' and remember anything you put on email or online is accessible to the worst person that you would want to know/have that information.

Quote of the Day: Ani Difranco

“Maybe you don't like your job, maybe you didn't get enough sleep, well nobody likes their job, nobody got enough sleep. Maybe you just had the worst day of your life, but you know, there's no escape, there's no excuse, so just suck up and be nice.”

Too Many Possibilities...twentysomething

I love where I am in life right now, but at times find myself overwhelmed with possibilities of where my life could go. I love my job, but often find myself daydreaming of other things completely unrelated to public relations and marketing that I could be doing.

As an example yesterday I seriously entertained the idea of being a cruise ship tour guide, where I would travel with the ship and take guests through the local tourism adventure. Its almost laughable to consider such an abrupt change in career and the origination of this idea is even sillier. I actually found a job listing that fit this description through Disney's cruise line based out of So Cal.

It is so exciting to think that next year this time I could be anywhere, and at the same time incredibly stifling to think that I will probably be in the same place. While theoretically that would not be a negative, but a positive, because I have a great job in a fabulous area and more experience with my firm would be very beneficial to my career overall. Its just that in my heart I know I crave change and adventure, but it really doesn't fit in with the corporate world and climbing the ladder. Stopping a career and putting it on hold sets you back, but I wish I could put this life on hold for just a year or two.

I seem to be whining about what my peers crave, a great job in a field I understand and exceed in using talents that come natural to me. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful, I realize what a blessing it is to succeed in work, but this is such a strong force that seems to be getting further away from a strong passion to travel and explore what the world has to offer. Naturally I do want to continue my education, most likely I am the kind of person that will forever be taking classes because I love learning. Graduate school and my masters degree excite me, but push me into this life and years away from exploring. It would be simple to say just do that later, but simple rarely solves the problem, as is here. I want to do this while I have no real commitments like a family or financial responsibility, and also I want to do this while I am still young. I hold this belief that people are transformed by new cultures and experiences and that without that we are lacking wholeness and perspective, this is what drives me in my continual curiosity and with this particular conundrum.

It would be amazing if I could do other things, explore other careers and the world and suffer no negative repercussions. I would get to go on the backpacking trip through Europe I had planned before I landed my "dream job." I need to travel, it truly is a need and no longer just a want, I can feel my soul lacking wholeness. Wouldn't it be dreadful to foster these regrets as realities later on?Any ideas would be helpful here, as clearly I feel stuck.

Imported blog to facebook

One of my many tech interests is the development of social media sites within the realm of the internet and society (the real world).

A pretty cool feature facebook has is importing blogs to coexist with it's "notes" feature, I took advantage of that and decided to breathe a little life into this blog.

Originally this blog was created for my free speech and responsibility class, but I hope to use it as a forum for more recent mentalities and adventures that come my way.

Hopefully this works, enjoy :)

Drew Barrymore Rocks My Socks!

You know how people are obsessed with celebrities or sports figures well mine is Drew Barrymore and I am proud to announce that Miss Barrymore made the top of People's most beautiful list. If you wanna check out the article I read about it that has some others on the list here is the link: Barrymore Is People's `most Beautiful'



On the topic of Drew Barrymore I would like to state that Ever After and Never Been Kissed are some of the best movies ever :-D

Participating in Porn by Choice?

Today we discussed how free speech and responsibility applies to pornography. My classmates came to the convenient conclusion that if the participants in the porn agreed to it that it should be considered free expression. I brought up the fact that many women in pornography are often coerced through manipulations or have past abuses that can cloud their judgment or reality. Therefore while they seem to agree and may tell you they are doing so freely the reality may be different and they might not even know it. The power of manipulation can be intense on a person and I have seen this in other women, often by men. This is a reference to the topic at hand, it is very clear that anyone can be manipulated. I was rather disturbed to be dismissed with my point by a counterpoint that this is just a stereotype. This is truly upsetting to me as I have witnessed an immediate example of this and also have read an autobiography to a similar effect.
I want to clarify I do not completely disagree with pornography. After much thought I find myself acknowledging the power porn can have on society in both positive and negative ways. I felt silenced in class today because this topic is so controversial and this is my space so I wanted to clarify.

What should we teach our children?

In class today we discussed the different sides of a debate on whether or not alternative sexual orientation should be taught in schools. We read two extreme sides of the debate. I came to the conclusion that these alternative (to heterosexuality) ways of life are just that a way of life: reality. I think its ridiculous to not include them in the educational setting. To me homosexuality is not an issue it is reality and its not something that should even be debated because its just how some people live. If we don't introduce, not necessarily advocate, alternative (to the majority) lifestyles then our children will grow up and fear the unknown. This fear translates to homophobia and hate. We are human, its silly to try to separate education from real life. Just allowing the concepts to be is all I ask for, don't worry it won't change all of the children's sexual orientation. We don't tell kids to have heterosexual intercourse at an inappropriate stage so that won't happen with other types of sexuality either. We just need to merely allow a tolerant education base that children can use to live in an equitable society. The textbooks can introduce couples like Jane and Dick or Jane and Sally.

CAUTION: MSG isn't just in cheap chinese food places

I was watching some news program this week when an informational venue came on and the host described a substance that is in a lot of our food, I mean from Campbell's soup to Doritos brand chips. This product is a flavor enhancer with catostrophic consequences. Its MSG or Monosodium Glutamate. This flavor additive has been found to promote swelling in brain tissue and migraines to Autism. I found an informative website, MSGTRUTH, about this if our interested, but I encourage you to go your cabinet like I did and look at some of the soups and see if you read Monosodium Glutamate on the ingredients list. The product manufacturers don't even have to spell it out they can label it as "artificial flavors."

Four good rules of thumb are:

	The more salty a processed food is, the more likely it is to contain MSG or free glutamate.
	The more processed a food is, the more likely it is to contain MSG or free glutamate: powdered stuff that used to be food is likely to have added MSG because the original flavor has been degraded.
	The more ingredients in a packaged food, the more likely MSG is present. Read labels carefully if a food has more than five ingredients.
	Do not trust something simply because it is in a health food store and the label states it is natural or even organic. FYI: These are from the website above, you can click them to be forwarded to the page I found them.

BLOG AND GO TO JAIL!

This week on the BBC website I woke up before class and read an article that really stuck me and is extremely relevant to our class and this blog. The article was about a man in Egypt, the same age as me, 22, a student, who spoke out against his university on his blog and was imprisoned!!! I was really shaken up by this article and how similar it is to my experience, but he was sentenced to four years in jail and meanwhile over here in the U.S. I am able to write what I please on this blog without consequence. Unless I write crazy stuff about the government and then I might evoke some sort of F.B.I. surveillance, but thats our society. What mostly arises in me is a sense of gratefulness for the rights we have and also a disgust for the unfairness of this story and the state of (more the lack of) free speech in Egypt. If you want more background on how speech is censored in Egypt I found an article in the Middle East Times about free speech infringement and the different forces that are strangling it.

deliberation needs ears to listen, to contemplate, to change

In our Free Speech and Responsibility class we reviewed abolitionist’s speeches, including Fredrick Douglass’ Plea for Free Speech. Our class discussion brought up some interesting ideas for me. First off I think Douglass had advanced ideas for his time. I think he was one of the early feminist of his time within the limits of his generation. You may argue that he didn’t blatantly include women, but he made it clear that the freedom of expression is an intrinsic part of humanity as a whole.

“No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech.” This was an interesting quote from Douglass because he included himself in the group he says the fathers deemed worthy of this right. It is interesting because in reality the fathers of the government where thinking of themselves and their kind of wealthy business owning ‘white’ Europeans.

Lastly I think that the most important part of our class discussion and the idea of free speech is that deliberation needs ears to listen, to contemplate, to change. Free Speech includes the freedom to hear and to be heard because this is the basis for the freedom expression.

check these sites out!

This weekend at work I was browsing websites to find a graduate school when I found a website called The Center for Social Media that stems from the School of Communication at American University. This site caught my interest and I browsed it for a while and it led me to the Free Expression Policy Project.

There are some very interesting and extremely relevant articles on The Free Expression site in relation to my class about Free Speech and Responsibility. I read one article in particular called "Bong Hits 4 Jesus". This article is about a high school student and how his freedom of expression was violated. I recommend this article, but I really think everyone interested in current events related should Free Speech to check out The Free Expression Policy Project!

Enjoy!

First Blog: Blog Ethics

I am excited to move into a new media front with my knowledge of communication. Blogging offers a fresh way to use communication. In our class today we discussed blogging ethics in relation to the article by Rebecca Blood called Weblog Ethics. We also reviewed A Bloggers' Code of Ethics and talked about how it related to our class topic of free speech and responsibility.