Plaidophile

• The only computer visible is a MacBook Air, which is probably running OSX (although he never displays it running anything at all). Stephen never says he actually uses GNU, he just prattles on about how wonderful it is, but seemingly (per his comments regarding OSX's EULA) doesn't realize that, at an OS level, OSX is essentially GNU with a non-GNU UI running on top of it.
• The music at the end is built entirely out of commercial, royalty-free, but non-redistributable piano loops which are part of GarageBand (which is commercial software), and somehow the credits list it as being some song that was ostensibly composed by someone (apparently stringing loops together in more or less exactly the order they are provided is composition now?) but of course this is a long-running pet peeve of mine.
• While it's nice that they used an Ogg video, they use a Java-bytecode-based player to play it, so it's not like it's end-to-end Free there either.

I enjoy making and reading comics, and I enjoy making and listening to music, and the Internet generally makes all four of those activities better and more accessible. Maybe I'll just stick to those things.

Well CJ, I'm glad you asked that. We don't have [something timely], instead we have [ninjumething timely]. It's just like your [something timely], except instead of doing [mundane tasks], you have to watch out for the [four-armed fire-breathing tasks], with sword-carrying midgets on their backs. I remember the first time I took out a [task] with only a single shuriken!

Then you have the [ranché thicept]. It's like a [random thing] and a [cliché concept] combined, only they're invisible. Man, I tell you, you do not want to get on their bad sides.

Finally, there's an all-out battle royale between every ninja while completing the [timely event]. Of course you can't see it because everything moves so fast, and when you do see something it is probably your own body. Because your head has been cut off. From it.

Well CJ, thank you for your question! I look forward to [question-related verb]ing you soon!

• Going to great lengths to reuse plastic luggage tags through three different home addresses
• In order to do this, using a piece of an envelope from a bill rather than provide my own paper
• Adding further identification to my luggage by using a purple ribbon. Which came from a party favor from my cousin's wedding four years ago.
• Knowing exactly where this ribbon came from, and clearly remembering saving it thinking, "Hey, this might come in handy."

A really nice thing about Harrison is that there's a bike path for pretty much the whole distance there, and Division and Townsend are both wide and have bike-friendly affordances. Plus, Mission and 24th are both pretty slow-moving so I have no trouble keeping up with traffic. Harrison does have a lot of stop signs, though, and most bicyclists just breeze through them (on the way down this morning I stopped which turned out to be even more confusing and dangerous due to other cyclists in the bike lane and drivers who didn't know what to do about different cyclists doing things differently), so on the way home I took the middle (if illegal) ground of slowing down on my approach and only stopping if someone else (car, pedestrian, or other cyclist) was ready to cross. That way worked out pretty well.

Also, strictly speaking a lot of the stop signs on the way to work don't quite apply to the bike lane, since they're three-way stops and there's no way for traffic to cross the bike lane's path, and in those cases the bike lane's marker extends through the whole intersection (but I hadn't encountered this situation before so I was a bit confused). Although when going by the Best Buy it's a bit strange because it's legally a 3-way intersection but then the driveway to Best Buy's parking lot makes for a fourth way, but the bike lane marker extends past the driveway too. That's one of those weird legal gray areas which I really have no idea what's the appropriate response, especially since there is the potential for cross traffic but it's not onto a street.

Oh, and no arguments or stressy bits today, even when I almost hit a dog which darted out into the crosswalk in front of me this morning. ("Fortunately" the owner was completely clueless and she didn't see me coming or nearly hit her either, as she was messing with her phone...)

Oh, also, at the end of the day, when I did get home, hauling my bike up the stairs wasn't a problem at all. Whee! And i didn't even need my inhaler today!

So I'm tempted to just get one of these.

Also I finally found my bike helmet (it was packed alongside the George Foreman grill, which makes perfect sense if you think about it, although I leave deriving this as an exercise to the reader) so now I can start commuting by bike.

• It will be very nice to get Internet at home again. Blogging from the iPhone is certainly easier than from my previous phone but certainly not something I want to do if I can help it.
• My condo is in some sort of anomalous "cone of silence." There is absolutely no audible street noise, unless I open the window, and even then it's very faint. This is even though it's right in the middle of a very lively and noisy neighborhood. It was so quiet my ears were ringing. I will definitely want to get my bedroom stereo set up again.
• Most of the local restaurants are cash-only. I had no cash last night. I ended up going to Burger King (ugh).
• I am swimming in boxes. One of them has my bike helmet. Until I find which one that is, I'm commuting via BART or the bus (either option still involves a lot of walking), since I have no desire to ride my bike without a helmet.
• My living room is HUGE. My 40" TV seems so tiny now. Also my layout is quite nice. I have the entertainment center against a wall, then my 8'x11' area rug in front of it (flush up against it), then my couch at the other end of the area rug, and then there's still a few feet behind the couch, so I actually have my surround speakers behind for a change, and I'll probably keep that area open or maybe put some of my media storage there. The layout that's taking shape is very nice, in any case.
• My upstairs neighbors sure do walk around a lot. But then again they're in the process of moving out, so things will probably settle down soon enough.
• The move ended up costing about 3x what I was quoted, because of the dumb miscommunications I mentioned previously. I mean it was still a pretty good price for the service and professionalism I got, and the movers were all very fun to talk to (they are all pretty well-educated but didn't have the patience for desk jobs and decided they'd rather work with their hands), and it was still within my budget (barely), but still, it was a bit of a shock to the wallet. I should have asked for a revised quote.
• I don't think any of my neighbors speak English. I've come across two of them so far, namely my next door neighbor who is an older Asian man (I am certainly not presumptuous enough to guess as to which country he's from), and an older Hispanic woman. I tried introducing myself to both of them and I was met with something of a blank "Sorry, what?" stare each time.
• The OTA HDTV situation is excellent at my new place, so I probably won't be spending the $7/mo extra to Comcast (unless I decide I really want Discovery HD or something). Fortunately the TiVo has a dual-antenna setup and will supposedly record from both antenna and analog/QAM cable simultaneously.
• I still have a few things to move out from my old place (my cleaning stuff, which I left there so I could finish cleaning, of course). There's also a few things I want to buy (I'm going to try using a drying rack instead of a dryer). Conveniently, my Realtor gave me a $50 gift card for Bed Bath & Beyond, and the BB&B is pretty close to work. Most likely I'll do the cleaning this afternoon, and then just rent a Zipcar this weekend and take care of the rest of it at once. (Unfortunately, BB&B's clothes dryer racks are pretty badly-designed compared to that Ikea one.)
• Or I could just go relatively low-tech.

Fortunately, it looks like they'll be able to do the rest of the move tomorrow morning, but in the meantime I guess I'll be sleeping on my couch tonight or something. Hoooooooray.

• From the house I owned in Las Cruces would be the scanner, the Sharp Zaurus, the PS1, the PS2, and my small Wacom tablet (which I use at work occasionally)
• From the place I was renting before that would be the SIDstation and my JVC receiver (which I use in my bedroom)
• And from before that, during my brief time in Virginia, is the Dreamcast
• And going way back to college is the N64

You'd think California didn't have a 35% Hispanic population or something.

After condo purchase: about 8 months' worth of living expenses saved up, and gain another month of cushion for every three months worked (well, before the tax break; after the tax break it's more like 11 months and 1:2 respectively, but I prefer to track that as an annual lump sum payment rather than an amortized cost)

Meanwhile, Chase has yet again decided that activity on my account (in this case, changing my address and phone number via their website and then OMG having the USPS do a change of address validation!) is a sign of possible fraud. Chase certainly has an odd notion of reasons to freeze an account. How obnoxious.

What I have to do:

• Get a mover (probably going to go with these guys since they review very well on Yelp)
• Deal with utilities
• Figure out my commute. Originally I was going to bike but then I noticed that the elevation profile is a lot worse than I thought, but then it turns out that SFMuni has a $45 monthly pass which covers both buses and BART within the city, so that gives me plenty of options. I like the idea of biking between the endpoints and the BART stations, so I get about 1.5 miles of biking (or walking) each way every day. And of course this makes my folding bike still very worthwhile.
• Figure out what I'm going to do about Internet service. I'll probably go with Comcast, since limited basic also has full QAM here, so $18 for limited analog cable + $43 for Internet (well, $33 for the first 6 months but whatever) = $61, which is a lot less than DSL alone here ($20 for the phone line and $65 for the DSL) and also has much higher bandwidth (12Mbps!). Of course, it helps that @comcastcares has been very helpful in answering my questions.
• Pack up the stuff I can pack up myself. Fortunately I've been very lazy and have been accumulating Amazon and woot boxes for the last several months, and of course the recycling bin always has plenty more. So that part shouldn't be a problem.
• Acquaint myself with the neighborhood. I know there is a jazz club next door and a Safeway across the street and a taqueria about a block away (and a somewhat-famous Indian/pizza place a little further). I am sure this will be excellent.

The title company gave me a bottle of Champagne Savoie-region sparkling Chardonnay to celebrate. I'll just have to save it for the housewarming party, along with that bottle of nice Prosecco I've been holding onto since I forgot to break it out at my LAST housewarming party.

Oddly enough, even though the paperwork was way thicker than when I bought the place in Seattle, the signing went a lot quicker. In Seattle they insisted that they read to me the entirety of the paperwork (this title agent just summarized and I'd already read most of the stuff in advance anyway), and also in Seattle they insisted that I add my middle initial to my signature even though it's not as if the first or last names are recognizeable in it, while in California my usual 400-millisecond degenerate Bézier curve pair was sufficient.

My assumption is that they do something like take two sheets of the foil, crimp it to form tubes, fill the tubes with the condiment, then crimp crossways to seal it into little packets, and then cut the packets apart, but that doesn't seem like it'd work too well for some condiments (such as Tabasco sauce).