- Phil “Mr. Perfect” Schwan has berated me twice now about not updating my activity log.
- Today is affectionately called “Move-in Day” here in Boston, and I can definitely see why. I have never in my life seen so many U-Hauls per square mile as I have today. Yeesh. Crazy college kids.
- That said, I got the key to my apartment today and checked it out. It seems that the contractors didn’t finish by the 15th of August like they said they were. What a surprise. But, it is a lot more finished than it was when we were there last. Mostly it’s just taking away their trash and small things, although they also didn’t sand and refinish the wood floors. I haven’t gotten the approval of Vlad and Ian, but I think I want them to do it anyway. I mean, why not? The downside is that it needs to air out for something like 3 days, but I’ve still got my old place, and Vlad and/or Ian can crash there if they need to. Or, they could keep staying at the office like they were before.
- I got the key, and since the hardware store was two doors down from the realtor, I had several sets of keys made. Then I went to my apartment.
In retrospect, that may have been a bad idea.
Because, when I got there, I couldn’t get in.
With the help of my realtor, we figured out the lock and that the door sticks very, very badly. I had to throw my whole weight against it to get it open. Anyway, she told me to make a list of absolutely everything that needs to be fixed, even really small things, because my landlord feels really bad about the fact that the contractors haven’t finished.
- Jacob: acrophobia.
- Nat and Jacob were kind enough to help me move today after a stop at Pamplona. We got all of the small stuff moved over. The only stuff that remains are my bed, chairs, a lamp or two, and a couple of tables. I am going to hold off until Vlad and Ian are in town to move that using their U-Haul, because the BMW 328i isn’t up to the job (the back seats don’t go down! doh!)
- Nat has had better days.
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- Met with one of our new employees today. His name is Greg. He’ll be doing distro stuff. I told him about my new apartment and then we chatted about the different kinds of services we could get at my place (phone, DSL, cable, etc.) Unfortunately, for whatever reason, my location seems to be devoid of 21st century technology. The cable service there is CableVision, which is also what Nat has. It has two lines (A and B) running into the box, and you cannot view channels without switching that on the box. It’s completely retarded. It’s like when I was 5 and we had cable out in the country because we coudln’t get a decent TV reception. There’s nothing quite so satisfying as a flashback to 80’s technology.
- Called Dell to get them to send out a guy to fix my laptop. An entire column of keys was totally hosed. The 8, i, k, and comma keys were intermittant at best.
Dell’s technical support system is pretty confusing. First, when you call in, you have to go through a series of automated menus. Fine. It’s kind of annoying how slow those people talk, but I can handle pushing some buttons. When you finally get to the point where you want to talk to someone, they ask that you to punch in an “Express Service Code” to direct your call at someone who would be good at answering your question. Okay. Beep Boop Boop Beep Beep Boop. I get a guy, who then asks me for my “Service Tag”. I give it to him, some other info, and then before I can even describe my problem tells me to call this other 800 number.
Uh, okay.
I dial the new number, and I get the exact same menus as I did the first time. Fine. Whatever. I follow the menus and get a human. This guy’s name was Brooks. Brooks was cool. He mentioned how he was glad to get someone who wasn’t screaming and cursing at him. I asked him if that was common. He said it wasn’t too bad, but that in training they have a procedure for dealing with people like that.
They transfer the frothing customer to the “irate customer queue” where specialists take the call, berate the customer, and then hang up on the customer. I like Dell.
Then, while we were waiting for him to dispatch someone and such, he told me some stories. We had good times. We laughed. Today’s Gold Star goes to Brooks at Dell in Texas for his help and friendly conversation.
- Went to Newbury Street to buy fidoras. Unfortunately, it’s still summer, so all they had were summer hats. Nat “Columbian Drug Lord” Friedman bought a white straw one. I’ll come back a little later and get one that goes with my coat. Nat owes me one, afterall.
- Pamplona with Nat “Coffee Bean” Friedman. He jamed his phone into the table and got it stuck. It took him 20 minutes to get it out.
You’re doing just fine, senor.
- Picked Jacob up at the airport. His flight was 30 minutes late so Nat bought some stuff off of the Sprint PCS Wireless Web. Pretty neat, that. A lot of the services still suck but it has a lot of potential.
- Went to the Cave to watch Friends, since the phone line got fixed. There were three seperate breaks in the line. Go Verizon! Anyway, TiVo’s modem seems dead, because we couldn’t get it to connect. BAD TIVO!
- Destination: Toppers. Speed limit: INFINITY!
- I got reprimanded today for not updating my activity log. Twice.
- I don’t remember what happened today. Neither could Peter. Some help he is.
- We got posted to bugtraq again today, so I spent a lot of my day writing and verifying security advisories. Drag. I was a little disappointed that we were given 2 working days notice of the problem, and that we had already had it fixed and in testing when it got posted. If anything, though, this is really forcing us to reevaluate some of our procedures.
- Coffee with Nat, Ian, and Lisa at Pamplona. Afterwards we went to the Harvard Book Store and I blew some dough on reading material
- Went home pretty early to try to get on a better schedule. After watching Friends I retired to my chamber for some reading action, but I couldn’t fall asleep until some time after 3 am. I also kept waking up during the night.
- Hacked some more on Red Carpet, particularly in making it more pretty.
- Nothing else funny, amusing, enraging, or otherwise worth noting occurred.
- Worked most of the day.
- Had dinner with Michael, Federico, and Jeff at an Indian place in Central Square. It was very spicy and very good. About halfway through dinner I got a voicemail that Nat had left 4 hours prior telling me that dinner at the Cave was at 8. I love Sprint PCS.
- Headed to the cave after dinner to see what was going on. There were a bunch of people there, having just finished dinner, about to play some party games. We ended up playing a couple rounds of “Mafia” until about 2 am or so.
- I don’t really remember what happened today.
- Jacob left for Cleveland for a few days very early.
- I had coffee with Nat at Pamplona.
- We had a little cake party thingy for the people who were leaving and Federico, whose birthday was about a month ago. Good times. Then we watched The Big Lebowski, which is one of my favorites and one I’ve seen about a billion times. I left a little before the end because I wanted to catch the last T home.
- Forgot my keys at work, and since I took the last T home, I had to walk back to work, get my keys, and walk home. That sucked.
- I decided not to go to Montreal this weekend because I’ve got too much stuff to do in anticipation of my move.
- Nat, Jacob and I went to Cafe Pamplona for coffee. There we met a man who was once in the Marines but was now wandering around drunk. We had a rather entertaining conversation with him. He doesn’t understand women, so we tried to help him out by getting him to consider the daffodil.
He did not consider the daffodil.
- Nat had to pee so we moved to Cafe Algiers where we met up with Taylor. Had some yummy hummus and cheesecake.
- So LWE in “beautiful” San Jose has come and gone. It was pretty fun, although completely exhausting. I always find it really amusing how one of two things always happens at a conference. Either, everything stops and no one gets anything done (see OLS) or a flood of things happen, like they did at LWE. Things are looking good.
- Kara has come and gone. She visited for a few days here. I feel kind of bad, because I had to work every day she was here and so we didn’t get a chance to hang out as much as we probably would have liked. On the other hand, though, it was probably a good thing, because there wasn’t enough time for her to really get sick of me. I did, however, help her set up an activity log of her own. I’ll put it up shortly, assuming she keeps writing me with new entries.
- Might go to Montreal this weekend. I haven’t decided yet. At this point all I really want to do is sleep.
- TiVo is contiually fucking us over when it comes to Friends. Stupid TiVo. After I move in next week, I’m going to make sure we get a Sony TiVo instead of that pile of dung Phillips at Nat’s place. I have had precious few medicinal doses of the wacky antics of the Friends crew since returning from the Angst Coast.
- I woke up a little before my alarm at 6:30 am this morning.
Why? Jackhammers. Yes. Jackhammers. The city of Boston in its infinite wisdom decided it would be a wonderful fucking idea to start dismantling my street shortly after dawn. Kara claims she heard them milling about at 4:30. What are these fucking people thinking? Isn’t this why we have labor unions? Whatever happened to collective bargining? If you put me at that god damned table, there is no way in hell you are getting me up at 3:30 in the pissing morning to tear up a street and lay asphalt. God. Damn. It.
Breathe.
Okay. I am better now.
- They were filming the movie on my street again yesterday. I got to see Danny DeVito in his actor’s chair. Those chairs are pretty high up, and I wonder how he got into the chair. I bet he has some lackeys who lift him up and put him in chairs.
Anyway. While I was walking to work, after briefly pausing to take in the magic of Hollywood, I noticed another film crew on the Longfellow bridge filming some woman standing still in tight orange spandex.
Not that I’m complaining.
But Boston is weird; you’d never see that stuff in Ohio.
- At the cave, we watched the three episodes of Friends and Friday. Nat ended up freezing eggs and burning bacon. The smoke detector went off. He ate pickles instead.
- Greetings from somewhere over New York or Pennsylvania! We are on our way to Pittsburgh where we’ll connect to San Francisco. Whee. There was a ton of unstable air for the first hour or so of the flight, which made it very bumpy and difficult to do work. Now, though, everything seems clear and fairly smooth again. I am sleepy.
As you would no doubt expect, the drive from Boston to Providence was uneventful and very boring. Our driver drove 80 MPH in the rain, so I slept.
My new landlady/rental person called today to say that I had received an excellent referral from my current landlord. Apparently, though, he now knows that I plan to move out, which kind of sucks. Anyway, I don’t really know why he gave me a glowing review, as a couple of times I was pretty late with my rent, but largely I didn’t complain and I did send him a card when his wife died.