As the Dust Settles

CLUTTER

The number of boxes has diminished to a manageable level, but I have maxed out pretty much all my available storage, and there are still plenty of things I don’t know what to do with.  For the moment these things are mostly strewn around the walls.  There are snow shovels and vacuums, brass mugs and cider bottles, boxes of unwanted kitchen implements I’m trying to hand off to niece Kate, boxes of Jack’s old toys that need to go up into Weaver’s attic, boxes of tools I need out right now, giant piles of folded-flat boxes destined for the Empress’ storage unit because I don’t want to throw them out in case I have to move again…

HARDWARE

I now have a toliet paper rod.  Oh, wait, a toliet tissue spindle.  Excuuuuuuuse me….

There is no screen in the kitchen window.  That was supposed to be put in Monday (which I knew it would not be, Monday being Labor Day,) or failing that, yesterday.  This wouldn’t be terribly critical, except that there is only one window in the kitchen, and no exhaust fan, so it is unnecessarily punitive cooking in there without it open.  If I do open it, without the screen, I get flies.  I have averaged about 1 fly in here per day.  Which is quite a bit, compared to what I’m used to.

The air-conditioner which was supposed to come with the apartment has been delivered.  The superintendent is coming some time today to install it in the bedroom window, which I do not have the capacity to do myself, since the bedroom window is 4 foot wide, and the arrangement will necessitate saws and lumber and crap.  I have the necessary materials to put my air-conditioner in the living room window, which is normal sized, but I have been holding off on trying to do that because it is getting cooler, and because I am not anxious to plug an air-conditioner into the same circuit as Eve again, knowing that I am also probably going to have to plug the TV and the Wii into that same circuit.

DISHES

I am in-progress on sorting through and putting away all of my accumulated kitchen crap. As part of this process, I have unpacked all of my old dishes and restored them to their place in the cabinets.  I had packed them away, I thought for good, after acquiring a very cool, modern set of blood-red dishes from Bed, Bath & Beyond for Christmas, dishes that were square.   But aside from the fact that the large square dishes didn’t fit in my microwave, and the fact that the small square dishes tended to fracture when I put them in the microwave, then fall apart in my hands when washing them, the frequency with which the corners caught on things was just incredible.   I smashed so many corners off those plates, every time I turned around- on the dishrack, on the faucets, on the cabinet doors- that only two made it to the move to even be packed.  So enough already.  Cool is good, but it’s not a substitute for utility.

I like my old plates anyway.  Their back story (everything in my house has a back story, it’s like Warehouse 13) is that they were the plates I picked out when Weaver and I got married, and that I only found out later, after we split, that she disliked them.  She had agreed to get them because (depending on when during the last 15 years you get the story) they were the only thing about our entire wedding arrangements I had expressed any interest in, or because she felt guilty because she was making all the final decisions and wanted to me to feel like I had some say in something.   I had the last laugh, though.  I still have the plates, and I love them, and all the people who’ve ever been to my house and been inclined to comment on such things have told me how much they like them, too.  So there.  :)

(And no, this is not ancient history.  Weaver brought that story up herself, less than a week ago!)

FIOS

I now have FIOS.  In theory, this should be a significant improvement over Kromcast cable.  In practice, not so sure…

Two technicians came in and installed a briefcase-sized box to the wall of my bedroom closet, which is where the fiber optic lines come into the apartment.  The box converts the fiber optic signal back into a regular electric signal, which is logical, but doesn’t get mentioned in any of the literature.  In older buildings like this one, where the box is not pre-existing and wired directly into the house power supply, the box also requires a power source, AKA, to be plugged into an existing outlet, which is definitely not in any of the literature.  There is therefore a hole drilled through the wall of the bedroom closet into the bedroom, allowing this to occur.  (And I only have two outlets in the bedroom, so I’m not terribly happy about that.)  The box contains a battery which will allow it to operate for something like six hours if the power supply fails, but this isn’t for your computer:  it’s for your phone, in case you also have your phone through FIOS.  It has lights on it, but mercifully (as it’s right behind the head of my bed) does not contain a fan or make any kind of noise.

From the box, the technicians ran the line through existing coaxial cable, into the attic above the apartment and then out of a jack in the wall of the living room.   From there it runs, also through coaxial cable, into my surge suppressor, and out again to their wireless router.  From the wireless router, it then connects to Eve via Ethernet cable (to avoid the speed slowdown from running wireless.)

I should be getting 25 Mbps, both upload and download.  After some wrangling and a number of different speed tests, including Verizon’s own, I seem to be.   There are occasional glitches, though. Skype, in particular, which I use a great deal, has been super-buggy since the switch over:  I keep getting video lag, dropped calls and outright crashes due to “slow connection speed”, especially when trying to talk to my mother Opal down the coast, which is both hilarious and annoying, as it makes me look technically incompetent, and prevents me from having extended conversations with her for free.

I also have no data yet on how it performs under adverse weather conditions.  Weaver says every time it rains, the power in Shadetree goes up and down and up and down anyway…