One Man's Alaska

Trying to find a good rental unit in Wasilla, Alaska is one of the more difficult things I've ever attempted. I suppose if you're willing to pay $1,500 or more per month things are a little easier, but the under-$1,000/month rental market is an extremely competitive battle.

I've had my car at a local repair shop for the last few days (see my RAV4 recall article) to see if they can find out what's wrong with it. It has an intermittent "power lag" problem, but with it being intermittent, and only being worse on cold and wet days, they haven't been able to find it. (Amazingly it has been sunny and warm for the last two days, but much cooler today.)

Not wanting to scrape ice and snow off my car for 150 days in a row, I just told one of my neighbors that I'm looking for a new place to live that has a garage, and she basically said, "Suck it up, you live in Alaska." Ouch.

(For the record, I'm also trying to find a place to live that has a washer/dryer, as I'm not looking forward to carrying my laundry back and forth across the parking lot to our shared laundry facilities from October through March.)

Just a quick note that the Alaska State Fair is now under way. It's running from August 26th to September 6th. You might even see me there, as (a) I want to go there and check it out, and (b) I'm driving into Palmer, Alaska on a daily basis, trying to find a new place to live, and the Alaska State Fair is right there in Palmer.

Once upon a time there was a dog named Zeus. Before we met him, Zeus had a very difficult life, having been abused by two different owners. When my wife saw Zeus on a local tv station, and they said the Animal Care Society was going to be extremely careful about who adopted him next, she seemed to know that she had to take care of him.

As you can see from the following pictures, when we first adopted Zeus, he was very sick, with a horrible case of mange.

One of the great things about living in Alaska that isn't immediately obvious from my previous blog posts is that the windows in my apartment have been since I moved back here in April. In Kentucky, Illinois, and many other places I've lived in my life, the windows are normally closed in the summer once it gets too warm, but here in Alaska they're opened in April, and will stay open until some time in September.

While I'm posting information about businesses, I might as well include a link to my "Anchorage, Alaska Programmer/Analyst resume" on my devdaily.com website. While I have plenty of work for the time being, it never hurts to have information like this out there, especially when a particularly interesting new project comes along that I just can't resist.

Just a quick note about one of my very nice neighbors ... if you happen to live in the Mat-Su Valley in Alaska, and are in need of a "dog pooper scooper" service, my neighbor owns her own company, and I can personally vouch that she is a very nice person. Here's a link to her Mat Su Valley dog poop cleanup service.

Sorry I haven't taken the time to post anything lately. I have a work project with a deadline that is keeping me very, very busy, and also a problem with my car. Here are a few notes I've been meaning to put out here lately, but never took the time to do so:

Weather

It still keeps raining like crazy. I've never been in a place that has rained this consistently for so long. Just glad there's no lightning, and this morning is just mostly cloudy.

Former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was killed in an airplane crash in Alaska last night, according to the Anchorage Daily News and other media outlets. Even closer to my heart as an ex-aerospace engineer, former NASA chief Sean O'Keefe was also aboard the plane that crashed in southwest Alaska. At this time there are believed to be three survivors of the plane crash.