Older blog entries for Ryan (starting at number 77)

28 Jun 2001 (updated 28 Jun 2001 at 14:24 UTC) »

Boston.

The low down on my move. I already typed three quarters of this up once and in greater detail. Mozilla crashed when I clicked "Post." Death to Mozilla today.

Friday, June 22 in Ottawa:

M. O. V. I. N. G. bullshit followed by lots of cleaning. Find out the original E.T.A. for my shipment of Monday or Tuesday is no longer correct. It's Thursday now. Bastards. Wondering whether I can crash at a friends or should by an air mattress when I get to Boston.

Saturday, June 23 in Ottawa:

Continued cleaning, followed by slacking, followed by irritation at waffling, indecisive friends, followed by heavy drinking of Golden Glow until three am. Retired to my lame ass old bed fearful of the hangover that was sure to kick in come morning/afternoon.

Sunday, June 24, in Ottawa:

At 6am, the superintendent of my building came by wanting to inspect the apartment. Still drunk, I turn very beligerent and tell him to get the fuck out of my home. He signs a piece of paper saying everything looks fine and that I should just leave the keys under the kitchen sink when I leave. Whatever. I go back to sleep after ingesting roughly a gallon of water and two Ibuprofen and a bunch of Cheerios. Shortly before noon, my pal Cory wakes me up by calling to see if I can stop the record store he works at later in the day to hang out. I promise to do so and then take a shower. After showering I throw out the old mattress and box spring followed by all the old linens, pillows, and other sundry items that remained in the apartment. Everytime I took something out to the dumpster the previous thing I'd taken, unless it was a bag of trash, was missing. There are some truly efficient dumpster divers in Ottawa. Those of you who are rabidly patriotic Canadians will smile and say something like, "Of course! They're Canadian!" while the rest of use just shake our heads at your "socialized medicine." More slacking, dinner, and then headed off to see Tomb Raider with Peter, Lee, and a pair of Lee's friends. It sucked. Then crashed at Peter's place.

Monday, June 25 begins in Ottawa:

Up at 8:00am to get ready to go to the airport. We sit around and watch the first half of the X-Men movie(because ours brains aren't working yet) before I actually get in the shower and leave. I accidentally leave my nearly empty keyring and razor at Pete's. Go me. Uneventful waiting and flight to Boston.

Monday, June 25 in Boston:

Leave the airport for the work. Drop my shit off at the new desk. My desk is in a corner, quite a ways from any one else and with no neighbours. I don't take this as a slight, but rather a compliment to my complete disregard for corporate policy and procedure governing how I should behave at work. I'm in the process of constructing a shower curtain doorway thingy and a roof. After that, the keg fridge! I then proceed to retrieve my copy of the apartment lease and the keys to said apartment. Goes without incident. Go to the apartment, turn the air conditioning back on because it's hot as hell out, and then head back to the office. Make a bunch of calls, pay a bunch of bills online and otherwise take care of random items. Pick up a shower curtain and a bath mat on the way home. Go out to dinner with Joe and then hang out with he and Jacob the Neurotic Little Monkey at a coffee shop. Go home and go to sleep. Fortunately my landlord left a foam mattress in the apartment for me to sleep on. Nice guy.

Tuesday, June 26 in Boston:

Work. Get a burrito for dinner and run into Jacob and Joe on their way back from watching Tomb Raider. Go out with Jacob to be amused, entertained, and marginally frightened by his world view. Met Tom the Super Jew again. He's fun. Went home and went to sleep instead of drinking since I needed to get various things done fairly early in the morning.

Wednesday, June 27 in Boston:

Work. Called the movers to find out why I haven't heard from the driver yet. Get some calls back a few hours later. Seems like the driver has changed the delivery date to June 8 without bothering to mention it to anyone. He wants to deliver my stuff two weeks after pickup. A road distance of roughly 450 miles is going to take 14+ days to deliver. I am obviously not a happy camper. Have a 3:00pm to 6:00pm meeting. At 4:15pm I get a call from the driver of my shipment saying he's waiting at my place. "What the fuck?", that's not what they said 3 hours ago. I leave the meeting, head home in a too expensive, too slow, and sadly clueless taxi only to discover no truck. I do find the phone guy, who's there to re-punch my pairs into the patch panel in the basement. He does his shit and, HAPPINESS!, I have a working phone jack. Mover doesn't show so I check my messages. There's a message from the mover while I was in the taxi stating that he had meant to call another person who's shit he is delivering now. BASTARD! Back to work for the ass end of the meeting. Go out for dinner at the Diesel Cafe a few blocks from my place. Am amazed and pleased that I am not, apparently, living in super-straight-yuppie-ville. Half of Davis Square seems to be run by dykes. Good. Got some ice cream and then go home to call various people and tell them of my experiences in Boston to date.

Opinions to date:

  1. The T isn't half bad.
  2. The nearest grocery store is 2.5 miles away.
  3. The Bostonian accent is awfully irritating.
  4. Working in an office environment is kind of odd after not doing for nearly two years.
  5. I can't find soy milk in a store. This is irritating.
  6. I want my new/used bike sooner than next week.
  7. Boston has a fair number of cute young women considering there's something like three quarters of a million students in the greater metro area when school is in session.
  8. I really miss my bed.
  9. I really, really miss my cooking gear.
  10. I really, really, really miss my ferrets.
  11. Canadians do actually seem to be nicer, friendlier people. Fucked up.

Word to the wise: Never, ever, ever use a national/international moving company, boys and girls.

Mmmmmm... new tattoos.

Mmmmmm... new piercings.

Mmmmmm... pain.

Canada sucks.

Full stop. Most specifically, Canada Post sucks. I have here, in my hand, a letter from one of my US financial institutions, postmarked 27 December 2000. It arrived in my mailbox today.

I met the postman as he delivered it. I looked at the postmark and then looked at him.

"Is there something wrong?", he asked. I passed over the letter so he could examine it more closely. He spies the postmark and says, "Oh, yeah. Fairly normal. We're backlogged months with incoming US mail."

"Months? It's been two. You can't be serious.", I exclaim.

"Oh, yeah," he says, "Those folk at the border and at the airport processing just don't give a damn."

"Oh, glad to know. Is it as bad with domestic mail?", I inquire, deciding that this is worth digging for some more info.

"Usually not so bad, but don't trust anything valuable to us. FedEx, Purolator, DHL, or just a bike courier for local stuff," he explains. "Most of the carriers are burnt out and careless. The sorting folks are even worse off."

"Shit!" I think, understanding why half my checks never make it to my landlord.

"Thanks for the letter. It's for taxes and I would have been fucked without. Definitely better late than never." Hell, it's pretty unlikely to be his fault that it took two months to get to me.

This is a drawback of a socialist government, right? The US postal system is the epitomy of efficiency and accuracy, right?

Wrong.

Mail from the same financial institution was returned last week. That mail was sent in November to a drop box IN THE SAME ZIP CODE that eventually forwards to me in Canada in a semi-monthly batch.

What scares me is it seems my employers email relays are just as sketchy. Go infrastructure. Their mail room folks kick ass though. And they can drink like fish too.

Other notes: Congratulations to graydon on his forthcoming marriage.

Look! How I do mock you! Suffering is what you are!

You can't match my voodoo!

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... Garlic bread!

So. For all the "The Bay area of California is the BEST!" people out there I have but one thing to say:

Taxis and rental cars are not public transportation.

For a "metropolitan census area" that large, I can't believe that the BART and Caltrain are considered to be decent when you have to walk something like 12 blocks between the closest CalTrain and BART stations. And there's no connection to the airport. Yet. It's almost as bad as Dorval in Montreal. And most of the CalTrain stations have little to no transporation in the Pennisula towns to get to your final destination once you leave the train. It's a shambles.

Give me snowshoes any day. Better yet, let me move back to Hong Kong or London.

My open source desktop can beat up your open source desktop!

PHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONT!!!!
SEVEN HUNDRED MILLION YEARS AGO you would have been YEAST!

Did you hear me!? YEAST!!!!

If I ever, ever catch you complaining about stock prices again, I won't hesitate to remind you that you had at least a 50/50 chance of being BREAD right now! Pumpernickel possibly.

Humans: Desperately in need of a universal bitch slap.

P.S. I would have been a cupcake. A chocolate cupcake with strawberry frosting and some little white sprinkles. Maybe a candle, too.

P.P.S. Mmmmmmmmm.... sourdough.

[rtilder@littleplasticcastle rtilder]$ host ifyouwantmybodyandyouthinkimsexy.com
Host not found.
[rtilder@littleplasticcastle rtilder]$

We're going to let you know, Rod Stewart!!

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