Today, directions on how to live Ardith's life in a quiet corner of Cedar Rapids, IA. Starting with Friday, when she gets her cable modem hooked up:
As soon as the cable guy leaves, unhook modem and plug in properly paranoid router. Set up wireless, discover wireless is not working right. Play with nice fast internet connection instead. Download updates from Debian unstable tree. Make dinner while new packages are installing.
After dinner, run to the store. Buy needful things like food and a new remote for the TV. A remote that allow one to access channel 0, where the TV puts the external video input. From, say, the PS2. Try out new remote, end up playing games all evening. Do dishes and go to bed.
Wake up slightly later than planned. Play on the internet all morning. Begin fixing lunch, only to find out the milk is 5 days old. Run to the store for more milk. Finish making lunch.
Note that the Debian package setup left running on Friday has quit with errors. Note references to X.org packages. Wonder briefly if this will mean trouble down the road, then ignore for more game-playing fun in the basement. Emerge at around suppertime, go outside, look at lawn, and realize a) it needs to be mowed, b) it's not going to happen that evening, and c) it's likewise not going to happen on Monday. Resign oneself to being a heathen and mowing the lawn on Sunday.
Add up money still owed to parents. Consider possibilities of paying it all in full this week. Decide that's not going to quite happen. Become happy that first mortgage bill won't come due until July first.
Return to Debian package mess. Discover the download time was perfectly chosen to coincide with the middle of the upgrade to X.org version 7. Fiddle with lots of things until all packages are successfully installed. Close out X. Discover it won't start up again. Play with NVidia drivers, with no success. Go to bed, without doing the dishes.
Sunday morning, break down and turn on air conditioning. Blame current May heatwave on global warming.
Go to church. Sunday school is the commencement for the graduating high-school seniors. Realize they look awfully young. Realize that five years have passed since one's own highschool graduation. Feel old, while at the same time noticing in the mirror one could still easily be taken for a high-school student. Realize this conundrum won't be going away anytime soon.
Sermon on Gnosticism, and why it's not the same thing as Christianity at all. Hear reference to games one has played in the same sentence as 'Gnostic cult'. Wonder briefly about the number of game-players who actually consider the games they play to be representative of real life. Wonder how to match this with the often-made claim that games are 'escapist' and thus not worth actually spending time on. Remind self not to buy more games until the ones currently owned are finished. Realize this reminder may fall on deaf ears.
Go home, heat up leftovers for lunch. Get X.org working with unaccelerated video driver. Upon looking up info online, find out that X.org 7 is currently rather buggy, with accelerated NVidia drivers among those not supported real well. Bemoan slow video drivers for awhile. Resign oneself to life on the cutting edge.
Look at thermometer. Notice that it's over 90. Put off mowing lawn for a couple of hours. Look at thermometer again. Notice it's still 91. Realize if it's put off any longer, it'll be too easy to wait until it gets too dark. Begin mowing lawn.
After 10 minutes, stop mowing lawn, go inside and put bandage over blister still not healed from the last time one mowed the lawn. Resume mowing lawn.
After another 40 minutes, realize it's really hot outside. Go inside and drink water. Resume mowing lawn.
After mowing lawn, pour glass of juice and wash face in cold water. Drink half the juice, then add ice. Pour more juice in the glass. Go downstairs and sit in the nice cool basement. Realize there are only three good things about mowing the lawn in 90-degree weather: central air, basements which are 5-7 degrees cooler than the main floor, and refrigerators. Oh, and freezers with ice.
Write long blog post about eventful weekend in third-person. With fewer articles than normal. Claim this is 'creative'. Use as excuse to put off unpacking remaining books.
EDIT: Over a year later, close comments, as stupid comment-spammers can't get the hint.
You know, Mediacom may be an Evil Cable Company, but download speeds of upwards of 300KB/s are nice. Very nice. Apt-get is currently predicting 25 minutes for 500MB of updates.
Quite easy to set up, too. Of course, the real trick will be to see how long until they try to raise my rates.
But for now, I'm quite the happy little internet-junkie.
Just slightly missing-in-action since moving, I know.
Theoretically, I'll be back online Friday evening. After the cable company comes out to set up my cable modem.
Because, you see, I'm so far from the phone switch that Qwest can only give me the 256Kb DSL speed. Which won't make me nearly happy enough.
Thus, the cable modem. And I really must get back to work now.
Closing's done; I have the house keys and the garage door opener is clipped to the visor in my car.
Plus, I made $35 off the closing. I win.
Time to go move boxes now. And maybe I'll have to cook supper in my new house. Just because I can.
Today, I did laundry. Hopefully, that will be the last time I need quarters to do laundry for a very long time.
I also did a final walk-through of the house. The house, as expected, looked fine. I'll probably have to mow the lawn early next week. And I should trim the bushes, as well.
Oh, and there's lily-of-the-valley in one of the flowerbeds.
*is happy*
I'm currently in the middle of a love-hate relationship with Qwest.
On the one hand, they haven't sold my phone records to the NSA.
On the other hand, when I move, I won't have phone service in my new house until the next Tuesday. And I apparently have to be there while they do whatever it is they do. And they won't tell me what time of day, just that it's going to be "between 9 and 5." And I can't even see about my DSL until after they get the phone line set up. Which means it'll probably be another few days until I get my internet access back.
On the other hand, they haven't sold my phone records to the NSA.
*sigh*
Awesome. Just lovely.
My local phone company is Qwest, but I looked up my phone number online just for fun. In a Reverse Phone Directory. And yes, that does lead to my name and address, as I would expect it to, since I'm listed in the phone book. It's insanely easy to connect most phone numbers to names, and I'm not even the NSA.
This, plus the already-revealed warrantless eavesdropping on international calls by U.S. citizens? I'm not happy.
6:20PM:
Oh, and while we're at it. What earthly good is an enormous database of phone records if you don't plan to use it for some kind of data mining? Inquiring minds want to know.
I was going to write an amusing and witty post about recent occurrences in the world of console gaming. It would have been hilarious; maybe I still will. Unfortunately, I had to go grocery shopping. Then, I came home and read the news. The world is still extremely depressing. Thus, no amusing and witty post.
So sad. Maybe tomorrow.