A carnival of technology

I am moving.  I work way out in a different suburb now, and Gwinnett lacks the public transportation I depended upon to avoid driving a similar distance to Alpharetta.  Also, my current apartment is awful and I am sick of it.  I am tired of stepping in dog shit in the mornings, of hearing each nuance of my neighbors’ getting crunk, of ignoring the burnt out husk of one of the buildings, the occasional gunshot, the broken alarm in that Georgia Power truck that starts beeping whenever the temperature drops, the ham-handed attempts at gentrification that are clogging the streets with the accoutrements of construction and killing any character that decrepit shopping center on the corner may have once had, and I am tired of ignoring the general atmosphere of apathy and futility.  I need a change.

I’m doing things a little differently this time around.  Instead of renting a U-Haul and bribing some friends with lunch and a case of PBR, I’m hiring people that do this sort of thing for a living.  Moving is awful, and I never again want to drag that washer and dryer up or down any flights of stairs.  I can just do the American thing and throw money at the problem to make it go away, but, unfortunately, there’s more to my bright idea.  Starting with the premises that a) acquiring boxes is a major hassle, and the easy route of buying boxes from the movers that will be used once is wasteful; b) I’m already traveling every morning in the general direction of the new apartment; c) I have a week between getting the keys to the new place and the date reserved with the movers, and d) car can hold things and move them between points, I came to the conclusion that I could just use whatever containers I had on hand—a handful of boxes saved from the last move, recycling bins, stolen milk crates, a bucket—to move everything that isn’t furniture in the week leading up the big move.  I could drop everything off in the morning, empty the boxes and containers into a corner somewhere and bring the empties back at night.  I neglected a couple of things: a) I own several heavy things that are not furniture and b) I drive a compact car.

I’m moving to Suwanee, more or less at the point where Gwinnett, Fulton and Forsyth counties all meet.  It’s farther north than Discover Mills but not as far as you have to drive to see an Imax move that isn’t about birds.  I haven’t yet come to terms with living this far out in exburbia, but it seems to have a lot going for it.   I’ll be close enough to work that I can bike again, there are little pockets of places to go and things to do even if not a whole city’s worth, and most surprising, there’s a lot bikers in the area.  This part of Gwinnett county has bike trails and bike lanes and yuppies fearlessly riding carbon fiber down busy streets.  Maybe it’s be an ok place to be.  I got the keys on Monday.

I won’t be able to move everything I originally wanted by this Saturday, but it’s been going a lot better than the revised, somewhat panicked estimate I made once I figured out how many boxes of stuff I could move at a time.  All of the heavy books are moved, and I’ll at least have all of the furniture cleared off before the weekend, along with most everything else except for a closet or two and probably the bathroom.  I’m waiting for the shelves and tables and cetera before I try to figure out where to place anything in the new apartment, and so far it looks like the kitchen is going to the biggest problem.  The new kitchen, though a little smaller, is also more open and has more usable counter space, so it’s really an upgrade in that I’ll be able to cook without struggling to find room for a cutting board and maybe I won’t break as many things when not rushing around in a claustrophobic alcove.  But I lost some cabinet space.  I’ll have to be more creative about storage.

My first neighborly encounter was with a lady who wears too much perfume and owns a little yappy dog that peed on my car.  She lives in the apartment next to mine, and while I was bumping and clumping around dragging the first wave of heavy boxes up the stairs, Mr. Yappy spent much of time barking at the door, challenging my presence and all the noises of moving stuff.  Once I stepped inside and closed the door, I couldn’t hear a thing.  Maybe this new place won’t be so bad.

I think the excitement of moving has mostly ended now. The boxes are unpacked, addresses have been changed, utilities have been transferred, and everything seems to be settling in nicely. I never did get a response back from contracts@MosheLink, but I did receive a bill for some bizarre partial payment for service through December 17th. I know that I entered some sort of contract, since anything DSL requires some sort of contract, so hopefully that weird bill was just the required end of it. If I get another one, I might have to drive out to their office in the ass-end of nowhere and knock some heads, or something.

I’d just like to take a moment to reiterate that Speedfactory sucks. I only used their service due to a lack of alternatives. They were one of the few providers in the area able to service locations like the Smyrna apartment isolated in the distant reaches of the phone loops, since they resell Bellsouth service, and they are one of the few such services that provide static IP addresses. I knew that I wasn’t going to have a fun time as I printed and faxed their online order form, but I didn’t have much choice. They require PPPoE, their customer service is some guy in an office in North Cobb, the modems they provide are consistently poor quality (I got to see and experience several examples of these while living with Moshe as he attempted to find the next useless piece of junk that Speedfactory would be buying), and the DSL link had a habit of going down right around billing time. But still, they’re better than going with Bellsouth or Comcast.

Other changes of address I still need to make are for insurance (I’ll be doing the same thing I did last time and visiting the one AllFarmStateCo agent in the area who’s open on Saturday) and my vehicle registration. The Georgia DDS should be mailing me a new license soon, so I figure I’ll wait on that before asking for a new plate sticker. I also still haven’t gotten the final gas bill from the old apartment. I guess that I ought to check on that.

In other news, Sandy Springs went and officially citied up the wild expanse of unincorporated Fulton county between Atlanta and Roswell. They kicked things off by adopting every Fulton county ordinance (since after midnight on the 1st they no longer counted (home rule!)), except for the ones allowing strip clubs. They also passed a moratorium on new strip club licenses. Boobies are in danger! Maybe I need to start going to city council meetings.

Sometime in late 2004, I was pulled over on Cobb Parkway just inside I-285 for failing to turn on my headlights at night. I received a citation from the City of Smyrna and had to appear in the Smyrna Municipal Court. Before hearing any cases, the judge went through a Powerpoint presentation explaining the process of the courts and the rights afforded defendants by Georgia law and the US Constitution. He emphasized how the Georgia courts had impressed upon “the inferior courts,” seeming to pause on the adjective, how everyone needs to be clearly informed of their rights. The presentation was translated into Spanish as the judge went along. While informing everyone of their right to representation by a lawyer, the judge emphasized the importance of having a lawyer for those who planned to enter a not guilty plea, choosing his words in such a way that the entire point could have been expressed as, “We will destroy you.” This is my impression of the suburbs.

Well, I done went and got myself moved. Many thanks to Mike, Joe and Sean: without your help, I’d still be working on it. The final cleaning and carload of things took place yesterday, and I turned in all the keys today during lunch. After they incorporate in another two days, the City of Sandy Springs is my new home. For those of you not in the loop, I moved out of the Atlanta suburb of Smyrna into a one-bedroom apartment in the slightly nicer suburb of Sandy Springs. I’m ITP this time, so at least this place is closer to stuff. Covad came out and turned on the Internet on Monday, and I currently have fiona set up in my bedroom closet. The bedroom jack was the best choice for hooking up the DSL, and I’d like to keep computers away from where I sleep this time. For now it’s at least behind a door. I have pictures of the apartment and the stuff bomb explosions which I will post as soon as the computer with all my picture posting scripts is unpacked. I have to reassemble a desk first.

In other news, I think I’ve finally heard of a more ridiculous idea than grocery gift cards. First, though, I’ll share some background on my radio habits. Atlanta radio is an oft-depressing landscape of about three genres: pop, rap, and country. There is some crossover among these, but for the most part a choice of any set covering these three categories will bring you every song you’re going to hear above 92MHz. When I bought my car, I saw the six radio set buttons (with two settings each) not as a luxurious feature, but rather as a terrible challenge. To combat the monotony I listen to stations like WREK—not because I hate my ears, but because I seek variety. The current six stations I’ve settled on are WRAS, WRFG, WABE, WREK, WWWQ and WBZY. WBZY, 105.3 MHz, I keep set mostly because the frequent format changes of that frequency have become a source of entertainment in themselves. My earliest memories of it are as WMAX, the 80’s channel, which I loved and wish they would bring back. At some point around 2003, I think, it switched to a talk-radio format with inconsistent and indecisive amounts of music. It then switched to Latino (not Mexican) music for a while, and it now houses “The Buzz”, formerly of 96.7 MHz, a station which plays alternative rock or whatever the hell it’s called now, competing with WNNX. As for WWWQ, I mostly listen to them for the crappy dance music that they play at noon and some nights. I’ve been known to listen to their morning show from time to time as well, and it has an advantage over other Atlanta morning shows in being the one where I’m most likely to hear the basis for an FCC complaint.

Back to the story, I was listening to WWWQ while returning the apartment keys, and I heard an ad from the Georgia Lottery Corporation. They suggested that I buy lottery tickets for Christmas. I’d like you take a moment to think about how you would feel either giving or receiving lottery tickets. How would you react if they lost? How would you react if they won? It seems to me like holiday-themed gambling can only end in anger and pain. To top things off, this commercial was followed by one from Kroger selling gift cards. “Well, I hear that you eat sometimes, so…” Maybe these particular industries should just stand a little back from the gift-giving apparatus. Maybe that’s just me.

Moving update! Mike moved his stuff to Midtown yesterday, excepting some things that he probably just forgot (dish rack, baking sheets, tie-downs, &c). I plan to do my big move on the 27th, though I’ll probably need a bigger U-haul. Mike filled a 10′ truck without an excess of furniture, and I need to be able to fit a similar volume of crap plus furniture (two bookshelves, two end tables, kitchen table, desk, bed, sofa, nightstand) into something. I’m eyeing the 17′, since it’s bigger than 10′ and costs the same as 14′. I would have reserved it today, but I left my phone at home, and it apparently costs $5 to reserve a truck online. Screw that.

DSL update! Speakeasy, Covad and Bellsouth have all been moving crazy-quick on the DSL thing, which means that my starting the process a couple of weeks before moving in made a big mess of things. Not to fear, though: Travis, install coordinator extraordinaire, has solved my woes. First, I couldn’t reschedule the final hookup appointment through the web interface, so Travis scheduled that for the 28th, and second, I found out that they had already shipped the install kit to the address I don’t live at yet. UPS is currently in a delivery attempt loop, but they have now been notified of the new location, so vinyl window clings will soon be mine.

As you know, I’m moving at the end of next month, so I thought that I ought to maybe start thinking about packing. I decided to kick things off with a box of CDs. APC, in theory, uses sturdy boxes to carry their big heavy things, so I filled up the box they used to send my UPS back with some CDs, mostly classical, since I figure those are the ones that I’ll least likely want to listen to in the car. Sure, there’s a certain joy to singing along with some opera, but I can get the same effect with a Queen album without the investment of so much attention or having to sing in a language I don’t know.

I figure that this box now represents a little less than half the CDs I own. So, that’s down, now I just have everything else to go. Time for a break!

Well, I went and found a place to live. To recap for those of you not aware, I’m moving out of Smyrna at the end of the next month. Mike has a job in Midtown with Gamecap now, and Smyrna isn’t exactly close to where I work, either, so we are parting ways, casting ourselves into the wild frontier of single bedroom apartments. Besides, I don’t particularly enjoy living in Smyrna or with other people, so it works out all around.

On Friday, I took one of my floating holidays (St. Wendelinus’ day) and went down to Promove. They gave me a gigantic stack of possible places to live, as is their wont, and, after poring over these profiles and driving around for a bit, I settled upon Calibre Springs, a complex tucked away to the east of Roswell Road, near the neck of Fulton (Fulton county is about 3 miles wide at my new latitude, instead of no miles wide), within the (future) city limits of Sandy Springs and inside the perimeter by at least fifty feet or so. The new apartment has all kinds of nice features, like a gas stove, a sun room, a tiny little balcony, and a price lower than what I would expect from a complex with a French “re” in their name. It’s also closer to work, but south of most of Sandy Springs’ crap, which has an odd way of coming to an abrubt halt at I-285. I think I’ll like it, and I’ll be booted out of Cumberland Glen and totally moved into Callibre Springs on November 30th.

You may ask, “How will this affect me?” Fiona, the computer that all this crap is hosted on, will be turned off during the move, and I don’t know when service will return. I’m going to try to get the Speakeasy no phoneline service before giving up and using Moshelink, so that will require some time for the various companies involved to investigate and activate. Expect up to a month of downtime beginning the last week of November. If burdell.org comes back up in that time, I’ll to redirect some web and email traffic that way. If anyone wants to donate web and email services that I can point gandi’s redicrection services at, now would be a good time to offer. I suspect that there’s no way I’m going to find anyone to host a gopher site, so don’t expect glog updates until everything returns.

I think yesterday was exciting enough to last for a little while. I continued my new hobby of helping people move by helping David Cantrell with his heavy items. U-haul gave him the most beat up truck they could find, with 200,000 miles, a well-dented front end, a broken door, and a feeling that it could shake itself apart at any minute. I suspect that “gentle-ride van” was left on the side mainly as a joke. David apparently has a lot of large, heavy things to require two trips, so although a visit from the parental figures to pick up the busted-up car delayed me enough to miss loading up the truck the first time, I was still in time to help move a washer, dryer, and oversized computer-cum-nightstand. Unpacking the truck wasn’t too great, either, since David’s new place has about a hundred billion stairs. The door to the apartment is on the second floor, but that’s just to trick you; the door opens up to more stairs. An appliance dolly made it possible, but a big robot that can climb stairs and carry things would have been better, as well as way cooler. While I’m complaining about things I volunteered to do, driving the truck also was not the most fun ever. I usually prefer vehicles that take up less space and where you can see what’s behind you. Due to the car situation (four people, five vehicles) the juggling worked out with me driving the truck a couple of times, and it wasn’t quite as fun as being in a Volkswagen commercial. Besides the aforementioned shaking-apart feeling and general busted-upedness, the volume and lack of visibility require that people around you not drive like total assholes, which isn’t usually a safe assumption. Somehow I managed to do the four-lane challenge without killing anyone while taking it back to the U-Haul place, turning right off the loop just after turning left onto it, so I suppose everything was a success.

After that, what better way to end a day than a trip to the hospital? This was one of those rare times I visited a hospital without being the victim, and it actually turns out that hospitals are the most boring places in the world. Cantrell drove Mike there since he was complaining of symptoms that sounded about the like the symptoms of apendicitis, I came along for the ride, and three hours later a doctor says it’s not apendicitis and probably just a hernia. Northside hospital has a McDonald’s attached to it, which seems like it should be wrong somehow, and it didn’t have anyone running down the halls in a panic or in an obvious state of medical distress. I spent a buck or so learning that AIM on a phone sure does suck a lot.

In other news, I’m not sure if this is a new development, but the local Publix has apparently started to stock fancy beers, so being a beer snob might not always require a trip to the World of Beverages. I noticed on Thursday some bottles of beer at the end of the wine aisle. They were the ones the size of wine bottles, so it could be that I’ve always just walked by them. They have Duvel and Three Philosophers, and though the Duvel attempt when Chris, David and I split a four-pack from the World of Beverages proved it to be overpriced and extremely average, Three Philosophers sounds like it at least has more in it (belgian-style beer with cherry lambic), so it’s worth a shot. The bottle says, quite rightly, that my current glassware isn’t thinky enough, so I’m going to try to rectify that with a trip today to CostPlus. Mike isn’t far from the mark when he calls it the “yuppie superstore”, but I’ve exhausted Target’s options, and at least it isn’t the mall.

In other other news, UPS is still doing everything they can to ensure that I hate them. I tried ordering the Standard ML Basis Library from Barnes & Noble’s online store, and checking the tracking information after Friday’s exptected delivery failed to appear revealed that they did indeed fail to deliver it, citing a missing street address as the reason. After a call to a helpful and friendly BN customer service person, it turns out that the address is just fine, but the person driving the truck doesn’t know where it is. Next time I’ll check the box that says I live in a PO Box and can’t take UPS deliveries. At least the Post Office can afford maps.

Happy November, everyone! This isn’t a real blog, so I’m not obligated to talk about the election, and I’ll try to keep the political rants to a minimum. (fact: bloggers are required by law to make at least a kajillion political posts in the four weeks surrounding the election. It’s true.) Even though Cantrell beat me to it, I’d just like to comment on the current political environment and simply shake my finger at all of you, regardless of beliefs or party affiliation. Something that struck me as disturbing in this campaign is that it was never a contest between two valid but differing views, but instead a contest between an absolute right and an absolute evil. People on either side bemoaned the fate of the country should Opponent be elected, threatened to move to Canada, and just generally turned the campaign into a contest of propaganda and fear. I suppose that this is to be expected in politics to some degree, but it’s still disappointing to see. Bush won’t destroy the country, and neither would Kerry have. If you don’t like it, try to take part by writing to your congressmen, and get out and vote again in another four years.

One political thing that I will take a side on is that gay marriage issue. Georgia is one of eleven states that now ban homosexual marriage in their constitution, and the amendment passed by a disturbing landslide. The only argument for this appears to be one of morality, since we apparently need to codify that in law now. Those opposing gay marriage on religious grounds probably already belong to a church with the same beliefs, so it’s not like a lack of such of an amendment is suddenly going to infest your religion with debauchery and sin. If you don’t like gay people, just continue to persecute them within the bounds of free speech. Limiting someone else’s freedom to live as you do is entirely counter to our beloved pillars of Freedom and Liberty. One of the few things that sticks out in my memory from American History in high school is one of the Federalist papers (#10), written by James Madison, that speaks of the need to protect against the “schemes of oppression” of a majority faction. This seems shockingly appropriate today. Just because everyone voted for these amendments doesn’t make them right, just as slavery, Jim Crow laws, and a lack of women’s suffrage weren’t right. I hope that we can see that soon.

On a less political note, Chris Lumens departed yesterday on his journey to the frozen north. I’d just like to wish him luck with living in New Hampshire and thank him for the futon. Let me know if you need help moving again 12 months from now.

That’s all for now. I’m going to go forth again today and look for a car to replace my busted-ass hoopty, so my next post will probably be when I get that. For those of you looking to give me advice, please don’t. I’ve had about a billion suggestions. Working for a company that does car stuff hasn’t really helped to stem that.

Today was Hawaiian shirt day at the office. We all agreed to wear Hawaiian shirts as a casual Friday joke: I missed the trip to Target, so I came in wearing Walmart’s finest. Lincoln got a kick out of it, and he also noted that these were the nicest shirts that any of us have ever worn to the office. They have buttons and collars and everything. For the two or three of you who have seen my shower curtain and lived, my shirt is of the same theme, which should give you an idea of its relative volume. David’s was red with a floral pattern, and Chris’s was key-lime green with some fruit and flowers and stuff. First we started drinking Squirt, now we’re wearing Hawaiian shirts…the office seems to be getting more ridiculous every day.

The other David has begun his move to an apartment two inches inside the perimeter. Tomorrow will be a fun-filled day of day of heavy lifting and heat exhaustion. Hurray! In other news, the Coca-Cola company, makers of fine products such as Coca-Cola and Diet Coke, have decided that their high-calorie drinks and no-calorie drinks simply don’t offer enough choices to the consumer, so they are now offering a medium-calorie drink. C2 boats half the calories and half the carbs; and it also offers almost half the cans, with 8 cans in a 12-pack. I haven’t tried any yet, but I’ll sure to report the results when I do.

I have a thing at which I can sit, as well as a thing to sit upon. My foray into the exciting world of furniture ownership has begun with a desk and a chair. I think that the next thing I would want is some sort of bookshelf, since my plan to pile a couple hundred pounds of books onto a flimsy shelf in the closet seems ill-conceived, and it’s also not large enough. I hope that someday somebody has the courtesy to make judgements about my personality based on the books I own, since I’d hate to think that I’m carrying around all these weird books for nothing. Actually, somebody did do that once, with the reference book being Mark Etkind’s Or Not to Be…, and the person who noticed it thought I was the worst human being in the world for owning a book about suicide notes. Maybe she was right; whatever.

Speaking of books, can anyone recommend a good book on language processing? One of the things that I feel was really missing from Georgia Tech’s computer theory class is a good explanation of language. Regular languages are covered, as well as context-free grammars, but it jumps from there to Turing machines, and never is it explained just what it means to have a particular class of language. What does it mean? How hard is it to parse? I think that I learned more about that sort of thing from one lecture that Matt Might gave in linguistics class than I did from a semester of theory. Language processing is way more interesting than anything dealing with the Master theorem. I would have had a much happier time in theory if they had just thrown out the section on algorithm analysis and gone over context-sensitive grammars.

Moving right along, it seems that I’ve started attracting dogs and small children. Small children will run up to me and hand me whatever random object they happen to be holding, and dogs will run up to me and expect some manner of scratching or petting. I don’t know if this is a new thing or if I’m only now noticing it, since living in the dorms limited my exposure to both kids and dogs. This morning, I left the apartment as the neighbor was taking his dogs out for a walk. They both started following me, and they jumped into the back seat of my car as soon as I opened the door, apparently expecting me to take them to somewhere exciting. What the hell, dogs?

Speaking of going to work, I still haven’t quite gotten the hang of this waking up on time thing. I can show up to work on time, but I don’t have time to make my own coffee. Today I bought coffee from the local QT, which is always a fun experience. For those of you not familiar with QT coffee sizes, there are three of them: the kid’s size, 16 oz.; the normal size, 20 oz.; and for the same price as 20 oz., the man size, 24 oz. 24 ounces is a lot of coffee. I filled that up with 100% pure uncut Columbian supremo, flipped off the nearest Starbucks, and now I should be set for the day. But still, it’d be nice to get the whole coffee thing done before I start driving.