Apartment Hunting

I'm going to diverge a bit from trying to figure out health care and talk about my life.  It's time for me to find my own place.  A real place where I'm going to live by myself for an extended period of time.  YIKES!  I've never lived by myself before but I'm actually really excited about the prospect.  Scared but excited.  

There are a lot of things for me to consider.  1) traveling for work 2) safety 3) price 4) location and 5) longevity.

What I know for certain is that I need a new place by August of 2013 and that I don't know where I'll be working full time until after December 2013. 4 months in a temporary location sounds really exhausting. I've done it before...but do I really want to do it again?

So after some thought, I decided it wouldn't be a bad idea to start looking for my dream apartment and of course I turned to the internet for help.

I came across this great article on lifehacker!

Five Best Apartment Search Tools  

I'm going to try out the search tools and see if I can find my next home!

The top rated on the blog is MyApartmentMap (don't mind the inaccurate bar chart in the article, just look at the numbers) so I'll start there.

*** Edit***
Just saw another great article on life hacker!

Hack Attack: Apartment Hunting 101

Set up RSS feed on craig's list!!  Great tip!!

double double toil and trouble

good & bad...how these labels interact and can easily be clouded over by other variables like lust, greed, and gluttony...

Going to in'n'out is a scenario that can illustrate how this phenomena affects my life:

When I go to In'n'out I walk up to the cashier and order a "Double double, no cheese, whole grilled onions, chopped chilies, no sauce, ketchup & mustard instead, protein style."  Done!  Easy.  I wanted a burger, I got a great quality burger that falls in line with my optimal fueling guidelines, at a good price point, the way I wanted it.  This scenario is simple, it is a good situation.  

Life is good.  Then the damn teenager goes and asks me if I would like to add an order of fries.  My eyes see the fries, my soul wants the fries, (cue slo mo of salt being rained down on a mountain of crisp goldens), BUT my rational side that protects me from danger says I shouldn't order fries every time someone offers me fries (those polite and evil geniuses!)  

Now my simple scenario is complicated because I'm faced with a more difficult choice to make, immediate pleasure (YES PLEASE) or long term health (eh...ok).  With the introduction of fries, a new variable has confounded my good situation.  Now what do I choose to label as good or bad?  How much value do I put into immediate pleasure and how much value do I place on my long term health?  Being healthy is good.  Fries are good, wait no, fries are bad, good, bad, good bad...ahhhh!!!   Mind is blown.  Now good and bad become irrelevant and it comes down to what I want?  Do I want the fries or don't I want the fries? "Slap them on young grasshopper, Meesus Miyage is going home with fries, animal style."  

 Everyone has a set of foundational values which allows them to filter the world accordingly.  I have my own set of principles, motivations, and desires that let me navigate my life according to how I see fit. Now what becomes of great interest to me is when people in power positions make HUGE & IMPORTANT decisions when their good, bad labels become blurred and skewed by other variables.  

For example, the military needed to improve screening of traumatic brain injury due to the multitude of exposure to IED blasts experienced in the ongoing war efforts in the Middle East.  They had a good idea, to get a baseline for every soldier.  GOOD!  But once the process of implementing this good idea began to unfold, other confounding variables started to affect the straightforwardness of the process.  The goal was to improve care provided for soldiers that are risking their lives to carry out missions of national importance. (real goal: cover up the asinine treatment of traumatic brain injury in the military in the first place).  But then one ineffectual decision was made one after another based on political ties/power structures and profit incentives. Read/listen to how this story unfolded at the following links:   

Frontline Report on Military's Brain Injury Test

ProRepublica's report on NPR's All Things Considered.

Square 1: LA County

 POPULATION (1)

World 7,044,872,282

U.S. 314,553,796

California 37,691,912

Los Angeles County 9,889,056 (.1% of world population)
retrieved: 00:31 UTC (EST+5) Oct 11, 2012 

Los Angeles County QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau

COUNTY VIEW

Major Cities View (google map LA COUNTY)

interesting tidbits from wikipedia

~over a quarter of Californians live in LACounty
~Most # of millionaires as well as the most # of people who are homeless

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Resources:
1) http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_County,_California