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July 2005

Randomly Sunday

Random thoughts for a Saturday morning:

  • Evidently, we’re not the only people fleeing the City of Doom. Per Census Bureau estimates, San Francisco has lost 32,000 people since the 2000 census. And if you believe the population signs as you drive into the city, almost 50,000 people have left since the 2001-ish estimate of 793,000 was published. Somehow, though, I bet the signs won’t be changed to reflect the current estimate anytime soon…
  • Charlotte, on the other hand, is looking pretty darned healthy…
  • Chutzpah: that’s what the Bellsouth telemarketer I spoke with yesterday had. Or maybe it was just brain damage. After (1) asking me what I though about my new phone service and (2) sitting through the ensuing tirade about how I’d been sold DSL service as part of a package without ever being told that DSL wasn’t available in my new apartment, and (3) listening apologetically as I told her I was strongly questioning whether or not I wanted to continue using Bellsouth AT ALL, she then proceeded to try and sell me an UPGRADED service package. Jeez…
  • Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new contender for worst local newscast in the country. I thought I’d seen the bottom of the barrel several years ago with the short-lived show on KBWB in San Francisco, but I think this is even worse. Aside from being stupid and annoying and trite, they don’t even have the technical proficiency thing down, with music cues and pre-recorded stories invariably drowning out the last three words of every sentence by the anchors. And here’s a hint: a “musical guest” may be appropriate on your morning show, but it just don’t fly on a primetime news show, especially when the musical guest (invariably) sucks ass…
  • A summer thunderstorm in North Carolina is a wonderful thing, and I’d forgotten how wonderful. Yesterday about 5:30, it sounded like the world was about to end, and we probably got as much rain in one hour as San Francisco gets during a week in February. The only down side is that the satellite has a tendency to go out…
  • Oh yeah. The hometown paper interviewed me again yesterday. It’s amazing how newsworthy I seem to have become in Greensboro for doing, well, nothing particularly important…

Cable Problems

It’s been 24 hours since I’ve had any cable internet connectivity through Time Warner, and the customer support line mentions system-wide outages due to Friday’s storm. It was a pretty good storm, but nothing really out of the ordinary, so I’m wondering if this is a really common problem with cable internet service. Is it going to be like this EVERY time there’s a storm?

I’ve always had (generally reliable) DSL in the past, so if anyone could offer comments, I’d be most interested in reading them…

5 July 2005

Went up to Greensboro overnight to visit the folks after putting Mark on a plane in Raleigh. This may come as no surprise, but my cable internet service was still down upon my return an hour ago. It may be something fairly major, as all of Time Warner’s phone lines are busy now, so I can’t even call for an ETA or update. Heaven forbid they should have system status updates on their website like Pair and any number of ISPs do…

Dang, dialup sure is slow. Especially when you have actual work to do…

Records

Now don’t think for a moment that I don’t miss Mark a lot since he left on his two-week road trip this weekend. Tonight, however, I was able to get my mind off it very successfully because I have — after thirteen years — finally been reunited with my vinyl. And this is a truly wonderful thing…

I never brought the records west with me. There was just too much stuff and I never really had a way to do it. So they’ve been in the closet of my childhood bedroom in Greensboro since 1992. Until now…

Having been heavily involved in the college radio thing during the early 1980s, I have a fairly interesting collection of stuff, much of which never made it to CD. In addition, I have copies of old syndicated radio shows from the period, like “Rock Over London” and the “BBC College Concert”. And I found tapes of my old radio broadcasts which I’d though were lost forever…

Let the digitizing begin. Anybody wanna sponsor me if I start an internet radio station?

Squishiness and Supermarkets

Damn. I already miss the boy like crazy, and then I read this and it gets me all sniffly on a Monday morning. Come home soon, m’love…

I did my Charlotte research for Groceteria yesterday afternoon at the main library downtown. No, wait. That’s “Uptown”. Nope, that’s not it either. In “Center City”. Yeah. That’s the ticket. Anyway, I was very happy to find that (a) several parking garages are free on the weekends, and (b) Fuel Pizza at 6th and College is open on Sunday. The latter made me especially happy, since I hadn’t realized how long I’d be in the library and neglected to eat before I went…

And yes, I was geeky and entered every address into a spreadsheet last night after getting home. To coin a phrase: I love “spending (my) free time doing things which uncomfortably resemble work for most of the world.” Yes, we very much ARE meant for each other, thanks…

OK. Back to job hunting…

13 July 2005

I’m so glad I no longer live in a place where it’s easer to buy a bag of marijuana than a hamburger. I knew there was some reason people were so much less annoying here. Link, by the way, is via my hubby, who’s sitting at a Starbucks in Fresno enjoying his free T-Mobile account and waiting to become an uncle…

Me, I’m just sitting here frustrated at not being able to buy a pair of shoes tonight. All I wanted was a nice, semi-dressy pair of black oxfords. For the past several years, we’ve been in a period of REALLY UGLY men’s shoes, one which rivals the worst years of the 1970s. Why must everything either be boxy and square-toed and buckly, or (even worse) look like bowling shoes? Something must be done about this, and soon…

Back to the living room for me. In Mark’s absence, I’m doing my annual viewing of the entire Godfather series, and tonight’s feature is Part II, Disc 2. That’s one thing I DO miss about the 1970s: Robert DeNiro looking sexy and studly rather than just sort of looking like Harvey Keitel…

More:

Visit from Mom and Dad

Mom and Dad came down for a visit this morning, their first since I moved back to their end of the country. We had lunch (at the cafeteria, natch), wandered around town a bit, and tried unsuccessfully to shop. It struck me that this was the first time my dad had visited a place Mark and I lived in together (my mom too, for that matter), and the one bed didn’t seem to cause him too much discomfort. Or else, he was just comforted by the nice, cold Piggly Wiggly orange soda I had waiting for him…

Speaking of home, I guess it’s time I updated the Where I Live page with some tentative new photos. Keep in mind that it will look much nicer when we finally buy a couch…

More:

  • Now that Mark has broken the news, I can also now mention the fact that we’re uncles. And damn, I’m glad he’s on the way home…
  • Tonight, for those of you who care or keep track of such things, is the twenty-third anniversary of my first time on the radio. And now that I’ve found it, I can actually listen to a very low-fi recording of that first broadcast…

 

Where I Live

This is where we lived from June 2005 to June 2006. It’s a bland and soulless suburban apartment complex in Charlotte NC, and I loved it for a while. The old apartment had “character”. The new one had appliances, and plumbing that worked, and nearly twice as much space. In addition, it cost much less than the old one. What was not to love?

 

This ass the living room. It looked cozier and more comfortable once we got a couch. There was also a dining room. I’d never had a dining room before…

This was the kitchen and the dining room. The kitchen had a dishwasher and a disposal, and the doors led to a laundry room. We were very excited to have a laundry room. And in the dining room, you could see our lovely table and chairs from Wal-Mart…

This was the office. We finally had all out books in one place, and my collection of old radios was adequately displayed…

 

David’s desk and Mark’s desk…

 

This was the bedroom. It was more than twice as large as our old bedroom, which was about the size of the walk-in closet…

Finally, there was the bathroom. Actually the bathrooms. There were two. It was good…

And that was our home. Thanks for visiting…

Hotels

The latest from the City of Doom: the Board of Supervisors is considering yet another bit of reactionary legislation, this one aimed at the owners of the Fairmont Hotel, who want to convert a 1960s-era tower annex (not the historic, original hotel) into condominiums. It would apparently become illegal now to convert transient hotel rooms into residential units. Of course, there are already prohibitions against turning residential SRO hotel rooms into transient units as well…

Perhaps there should just be one city ordinance which forbids any change of usage whatsoever within any building in San Francisco. Unless, of course, that building is to be turned into a homeless shelter or a medical marijuana dispensary…