Gearing Up

We're on a pretty tight budget being unemployed and all.  Still, we did dig into our savings a bit to sign up for a cell phone, and make a few other minor upgrades.  Here's an overview of the gear we'll be bringing with:

Blackberry 8830 World Edition

I picked this baby up over a year ago, thinking that my cellular phone service in Israel would accept it.  How foolish I was, when the Pelephone technician told me "Don't worry, we will take all cell phones that work on the Verizon network on our Israeli network," what they really meant was, "We will not accept any cell phones that work on the Verizon network on our Israeli network."  Sadly, I had already forked over hundreds of dollars for the little thing, and could do nothing but gaze longingly at it sitting there, useless, on my shelf.  But no more!  I have now activated the Blackberry and am finally surfing the web from my phone!  So far, I'm quite happy with it's functionality, and I signed up for the unlimited data program.  Now I can plug it into my laptop and use it as a cellular modem, so I can keep blogging and sending out resumes from the road.

Samsung Rogue

Wifey will be using the Samsung rogue.  Good for texting, browsing and communicating, with a nice user interface, and much newer than mine.  HOWEVER, it doesn't have all the functionality of the Blackberry.  How sad.  But we got a good deal on it while signing up for a cell phone service.

Toshiba Satellite A-135

 

I got a great deal on this baby about 2 years ago, and used it consistantly for work, but the old girl was agonizingly, enragingly, tear-your-hear-out-and-throw-the-dog-across-the-room-while-you-watch-Vista-freeze-again slow. I thought about buying a new one for at least $400 but then I remembered I have no income.  Instead, I just doubled the RAM for $30 and it gave the whole thing a new lease on life.  Now it runs great!  It's perfect for showing people our wedding movies and doing work on graphics or photo editing as it has a large screen, quality sound.  Unfortunately, it's also quite bulky and the battery is quite short-lived, so it's not great for using from the passenger seat of our car.  Thanks to the upgrade, it should last us at least until we find jobs.

Asus EEE PC 1005 HA

This baby is the little netbook that could.  I bought myself this one as a wedding present since nobody else would, and had my parents bring it from the states to Israel.  It's about 1 lb, has like a 10" screen or something, and is the first laptop I've owned which actually fits on my lap.  It has no disc drive, and is meant mostly for email, surfing the web, and word processing.  The batteries last forever and it charges up in a few minutes.  I can tether my Blackberry and have a smooth internet connection miles from civilization.  This is the real McCoy.  Oh, and I also doubled the RAM on this one to 2 GB, so now it's schreamin' fast.

So, with all that, we're ready to rock and roll, and keep up with job leads, emails, fire off resumes, find hotel rooms, and basically have a fully functional office (except for printing) from the comfort of the passenger's seat of my car.  And it was mostly just stuff I had lying around!

Building the Blog

So, as you can see, we have the main "header" image on the blog set up.  Coming back from Israel, I have plenty of experience speaking and listening to people speak Hebrew, but I have much less actually writing in Hebrew.  Now that I'm out of the country, I figure doing a bit of blogging in Hebrew will help me improve my writing.  Not that any of the Hebrew speakers I know would need to be asked to correct me, but if any of the anonymous readers out there happen to see some mistakes in one of my Hebrew posts, please correct me.

I'm hoping to get some links added, and make some more updates to personalize our blog over the next few days.  Right now we're just idling here at the in-laws' waiting for Thanksgiving tomorrow, and gearing up for starting our excursion to Boston on Friday.

Life after Israel

I woke up one morning about a month ago and realized I had enlisted in the 30 million strong army of American unemployed.  How did I get here?

In the last ten months, I've gotten engaged, been laid off, planned and executed a totally rocking wedding, and switched countries.  During this frenzy, informing the rest of the world about my comings and goings has taken a back seat to actually coming and going.  I can say that wifey and I have "safely" landed in the United States, somewhere in the woods of the Allegheny mountains far from the hustle and bustle of the streets of Jerusalem.

We're gearing up for a cross-country road trip to search for work, and are planning on blogging about it here.  We'll see the metropoli and poke around in America's forgotten corners.  We want to see the oceans Atlantic and Pacific, the big sky of Kansas, and the depths of the Grand Canyon, to feel the winds of Chigago and the sun of New Mexico.  And to look everywhere for employment.  Of course, if we find employment, we'll cut straight to wherever that might be, but we'll keep writing from wherever we end up.  The United States is an open book, and we're ready to get started.