Plaidophile

Sorry for not being accessible even though I looked like I was. Last night I was on via the WAP interface and then T-Zones stopped working and so I couldn't sign off, and today I was too busy to ever check it for pending messages. :)

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So, I start work tomorrow. Neat, huh?

Why don't any decent American carriers carry any decent phones? "Decent" meaning working with both iSync and Clicker (as a phone; the Treo 650 only works with it as a PDA which means it doesn't support the phone event stuff, which is mostly what I use Clicker for).

Yay, now I have an apartment, or at least a deposit on one, which I will be able to move into on the 20th.

I took a tour of the Wall Street Tower and totally fell in love. The great thing is that the unit (Miller floorplan) is big (the living room area alone is almost as big as my whole apartment in NY was) but comfy and private and has a GREAT view, on the 14th floor even, and the apartment as a whole has a hell of a lot of really ginchy services and so on, and only costs a little smidge more than the NYC craphole.

Plus, it turns out they have a little deal with amazon.com, which makes my security deposit tiny, nullified my application fees, and greatly reduced the move-in fee.

Today I bought a new car. Yay, soon I won't have to keep driving this crap-ass Hyundai the rental company provided.

So, I got here pretty early. Then I hung out with Spud and John and had lunch and Jim didn't show up and then we went bowling and then Spud took me to the car rental place and I got my car and then I got my apartment and then I went to the apartment and took a shower and went out to dinner with Spud and John and Spud's family and some of their friends and now I'm back in my apartment and I'm watching TV and am very much ready to go to bed.

Gotta find a grocery store though.

Apparently, airplanes aren't the only winged creatures which live at the JFK airport; the terminal is full of lots of little birds, who live on the crumbs of various travelers' sloppy eating habits.

I managed to get a few pictures of one particularly curious bird which was hopping around and inspecting everyone's luggage. (Though I missed a chance to take pictures of a feeding frenzy, as my stupid Canon Powershot was taking forever to get ready.)

I was just doing some bored ego-surfing, and discovered that according to some sort of popularity metric, separate pages on my site are #8, #13, and #75th most popular .cx pages on the Internet (my weblog, the main site, and the fluffy porcupine entry page, respectively). goat.cx (no I'm not making it a clickable link) is only #34th, and goatse.cx (which is safe to click on now) doesn't even show up at all.

So, Leo, my NYC landlord, just called me on the phone. He asked me if I was in fact moving out at the end of the month. I told him I'd already vacated the apartment. He asked me when I was going to give him the keys back.

Yay. My room is right by the elevator (so I get to hear everyone all night long) and its window faces the freeway (so I get to hear traffic too, though at least it's a consistent white-noise rumble), the "free" WiFi advertised in the lobby is actually $9.95/day (so I'm online via cellphone, so it's web and email only for me right now), and the complimentary breakfast doesn't start until 6AM while I need to take the 5AM airport shuttle.

I also haven't had any lunch yet (and there's no restaurants within walking distance here though the front desk gave me a couple takeout menus for places which will deliver here which don't even have a delivery charge or minimum order, yay!), didn't get to say bye to David (the building super), and don't look forward to the fun processes of canceling my utilities, particularly Verizon.

So, after finally falling to sleep at around 1 AM or so, I woke up at about 5 AM. Grr, nerves.

I still don't know when the movers are arriving. I hope I find out soon. I probably won't find out for another hour or so, since it's still only 8 AM. I've been doing a lot of last-minute cleaning and a bit more organizing, though at this point I need to either make a concerted tidying effort or just leave well enough alone and let the movers do their job.

Just got back from dinner with friends, namely Neill, Duncan, Roymond, and Elaine. So now I know who my posse is. It's a little annoying that none of the other Guillemot people who said they'd be there were there, but, oh well. (Also of course DH would have come but he was/is in Washington, DC helping his girlfriend move, and Ed and my demi-cousin Nim had prior engagements, so I don't fault them for not showing up.) It was still a great gathering.

I've decided to make comment posting registration-required for now. The only thread this will really make any real difference on is the phpBB+MovableType thread, but I think this makes it easier for me to provide support since I'll be able to better track ongoing issues (since phpBB has no easy way to search on unregistered posts by name).

No particular event caused this, it's just that most of the unregistered posts I get are either manually-posted spam, thread-bumping noise due to Google searches, or from people who went and registered an account anyway so they'd might as well be encouraged to get all the benefits of registration (reply tracking, edit/retract, etc.) up-front anyway.

Eep, I'm starting work in a week! The movers are coming in two days!

I am full of anxiety!

You know I don't like memes.

So this stops with me.

I just had a burrito which was just so awesome I had to describe it.

Hey, everyone with a Mac, download SubEthaEdit then connect to an active document and, like, have fun and stuff.

St. Ives' Cucumber Melon Moisturizing Body Wash (with vitamin E) also makes an excellent shave gel.

My stuff's getting picked up on the 25th, and I leave on the 26th.

For those of you in NYC who wanted to meet up with me before I leave for Seattle, I'm having a little get-together at the Limerick Pub on 23rd street (between 5th and 6th avenue, across from the Outback Steakhouse) next Tuesday (the 24th) at 7PM.

Well, healthcare in general.

So, I'm still waiting to hear back from the moving company about when I'm actually going to move (since they ran into a little scheduling hiccup, namely the shippers not knowing when they can schedule me for and then not going out of their way to find out).

In the meantime, I'm growing more and more fond of the idea of leaving this place.

Right now I'm hacking on phpBB to try to make topic reply notifications expire after three days (since sometimes a reply notification doesn't get through), which is something I thought would be a simple and easy hack but it seems that there are complications, as usual. Meh.

Back in the good old days of number-prompt menus, you could access most systems without talking and disturbing others (in an office or while on a cellphone), and any talking would be limited to actually speaking with a real person. With frequently-accessed systems, you could remember a quick series of keys to get to frequently-accessed menus, and also interrupt the speaker by simply making a selection when you know which one needs to be made. If you knew you just needed to speak with a live operator, you could just press 0 and immediately be put into the queue.

I have always had oral herpes simplex B (known commonly as cold sores, and not to be confused with genital herpes), and as a result, when I'm under extreme duress I'd get these really painful open sores in my mouth.

I had a pretty good flareup on April 5 with a sore which seemed like it would be the kind which would get pretty big, run its whole course and last a whole month. Strangely, on April 7, it was entirely gone.

This was back in April, like on the 19th or something.

This is sort of an alternate-universe take on my normal wasabi beef noodle soup. It's definitely not authentic by any stretch of the imagination, but it's still yummy.

So, things are finally underway with the relocation company.

Today, I saw The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with a couple of out-of-town friends (who will soon be in-town friends). It's definitely worth seeing, but not if you're a total pedant who thinks that the movie needs to perfectly reflect the book, because it doesn't at all.

Google Web Accelerator preloads every link on a page, including logout/delete/etc. This actually isn't anything new in web-accelerator land, but apparently since Google is involved, people are suddenly treating the issue differently.

My DSL's been down since noon or so. So I'm online through my cellphone. Which means email and minimal/slow web only. Just like for the past week. Grr.

Oh well.

So, once upon a time, I had a 600 anytime/unlimited weekend minute plan on my phone. But I almost never ever used more than 100 minutes, so last August I changed my plan to 300 anytime. Which I forgot about doing.

In April I used 390 anytime minutes. So I got $40 of overage charges.

T-Mobile used to give me lots of "loyalty minutes" for not switching to another carrier (which I never used). Of course, when I actually need them, they're gone.

I'm back home. At least, the place that I will continue to call "home" for the next three weeks or so.

So, as I was leaving San Francisco on Tuesday, my throat was pretty sore. Just in case this was a sign of an impending sinus infection, I started taking regular doses of pseudoephedrine, and also got a travel-size bottle of Robitussin DM.

As usual, that wasn't enough. My immune system has been on a teeter-totter the whole time; my first two days here were just peachy (I'd forgotten I was even feeling sick, even), but on my second night I was feeling absolutely terrible.