Truly a sign of where my "headquarters" exist. Virtually every one of my useful possessions has now been moved to the new Lair in the Castle. (I'm still playing with variations on the title; one of these days, I'll come up with something for the official canon.) The one exception, of course, is the contraption at which I now sit and type.

I have yet to sleep a night at the new place. Or even spend more than about an hour on end there. Don't get me wrong. I love the apartment. But... It lacks furniture. It lacks a landline, much less a broadband net connection. It lacks a nice easy chair for me to sit in. Most of all, it lacks Argo. All of this will be changing, very soon.

Starting back where we left off during the last rambling yesterday...

Not a great deal to say about the afternoon. Much time was spent sorting, categorizing, and filtering, meatspace style. Many generous offerings were presented to the god of the landfill.

The obnoxiously unnerving piece of paper referenced kept popping up in front of me repeatedly, and I kept throwing it aside. Finally, when I could stand it no longer, I conducted something resembling an attempt at a purging ritual. This process involved a cigarette lighter, a toilet, and some amateurish antics. What resulted was a small quantity of not quite half charred dead tree, a flush of said toilet, and a distinctively bad smell which traveled farther than I would have liked, leading my mom to come down from upstairs in search of its source, to which I feigned ignorance.

I felt like an idiot. I had achieved the exact opposite of the desired effect; instead of the having cleanly and thoroughly and disposed of the ugliness, I had created a bigger mess, and sent the still-possibly-recoverable-in-a-bad-horror-movie artifact on its way to the sewer. Somehow, the symbolism seemed appropriate. I packed up Tobias and drove a load over to the Castle Lair, my mind more cloudy than the sky outside.

I would later realize that I have been struggling with a phantom. A figment. An adversary that, quite simply, no longer exists, and perhaps never really did. There is nothing to fear. Nothing to fight. No cause for alarm, nor even the bleak cloak of cynicism. I need not be intimidated or jaded. I am glad I got rid of that thing, crude as my methods were. Life, amidst all its pain, goes on, and so do I.

Late afternoon Sunday. Approximately. 1730. I carried my audio system, and various other articles, into the new Lair atop the Castle, After getting Tobias's full load inside, I meandered around, and began thinking for the first time about how things should be arranged. No longer just one room, but an entire apartment for me to manage! Many possibilities.

I started by moving what I knew should belong in a certain place, and went from there. Bedroom: Layout mostly solidified. Living room: tv location determined, but the rest is uncertain. I need more to work with. I want a nice big easy chair, and perhaps a couch. Some little tables and stands to put things on. Some random miscellaneous chairs would be good too. (Given the actual proportion of the total time that's actually spent in such activities, I spent altogether too much time pondering how a fest setup would work.)

I took out my grandpa's camcorder (it didn't take much convincing for mom to agree that although the camcorder had been a gift to all of us, it should reside at my place on the condition that anyone else in the family can come and use it if they want to), and I shot some footage of the interior, making sure to include plenty of dizziness-inducing motions.

I plugged my telephone into the landline. No dialtone. So much for the idea of bringing Argo directly over for immediate dialup access. I checked the terms again. Yes, it is the tenant's responsibility to get any telephone service activated, which is probably better anyway, because it allows for customization of the account as necessary.

With the sky fully dark outside, I realized that I hadn't eaten anything all day except a couple pieces of toast, and I was getting hungry. (That steak from Saturday night had really stayed with me most of the day.) I departed, but wasn't really sure what I wanted to eat yet, so I headed back to the Louisville Compound. Ended up going to Safeway for some frozen pizza and soda. It hit the spot perfectly. (Let this be another healthful dieting lesson from the gospel of Bitscape.)

While I ate, I put on an episode of Farscape. (Having not downloaded a complete version of Bone to be Wild, I skipped on to the season 1 finale: Family Ties.) It was thoroughly enjoyable. So enjoyable, in fact, that I decided to go on and watch the season 2 premiere: Mind the Baby. Also thoroughly enjoyable and engrossing, until about 30 minutes in. Another incomplete episode. Grrrr. (Odd, because I thought I had obtained this one directly from either Jaeger or Humblik's collection. I'm not sure what happened there.)

2200. Frustrated by the abrupt termination of such great entertainment, I did a little web surfing, and happened upon a link to a recent Noam Chomsky speech (RealAudio format. Yes, I wish they'd use something intelligent like streaming mp3 or ogg as much as anybody, but I take what I can get.)

I was getting tired, so I laid my sleeping bag out on the floor, and as I went to sleep, I listened to the linguistics professor discuss the September 11 tragedy, putting the "historic event" (he defined "historic event" as something which changes the course of history) into a much broader historical context. The guy definitely has some fascinating, if at times disturbing, ideas. After an hour of that, when I was right on the threshold of sleep, I reluctantly terminated the audio stream. A great talk. I think it gave me nightmares.

At around 0100, I found myself lying awake in a state of physical discomfort. I moved my sleeping bag out to the family room couch, and felt much better there. Slept like a baby until Argo awakened me through the open door. I grudgingly got up immediately and took a shower.

Before work, I stopped by the recycling deposit area and gave it some things. Then I made a quick trip to the Castle Lair to drop off a couple items, and picked up some papers I had left there, and would need.

At the office, in between doing work (not much of it to do this morning, although unfortuately I can't say that about the remainder of this week), I placed calls to Qwest, U-Haul, and AT"T broadband.

My landline will be installed Thursday. I suppose that's as quick as could ever be hoped for from that company. The rep asked me if I wanted their high speed Internet connectivity with that as well. Not Bloody Likely. Well, I didn't literally say that, because I am fully aware that the friendly little customer service peon on the other end of the line has no control, and probably no knowledge of the blunders by others in his organization. "Gee, let me think. Do I want your Internet access service? Well, let's think about who was consistently at fault for times when my last DSL line went down for extended periods of time. Was it Covad? Nooooo. Was it RMI? Nooooo. Who could it have been? No, it couldn't have been that company that's now trying to forcfully shove bug-ridden, virus prone M$ products down their customer's throats. That could never be the case. Impossible!"

Ahem. I said, "No."

After a few attempts, I finally managed to get lucky enough to have someone at U-Haul answer the phone. Sounded like the same person I dealt with Saturday. (Ok, I confess. She was cute.) I gave my name, explained what had happened Saturday night, how I had been unable to park where specified, backed into another truck, bending its mirror and putting a visible dent in the door.

The response: "Big thanks for calling to tell us what happened. Let's see... You ordered the insurance, so there will be no charge for the damage. I'll just go out and mark the truck that was damaged, and that's the last you will hear about it. Thanks for doing business with us."

I couldn't thank her profusely enough. What a huge relief! That was it. Excellent.

So now, an official Bitscape's Lounge product placement: U-Haul rocks. And if you suck at driving big trucks as much as I do, buy the insurance. What a godsend.

AT&T. I called asked about their options for digital cable. The representative responded by asking what channels I wanted. This was easy: SciFi, SciFi, Scifi! Ok, so I also mentioned Comedy Central (gotta get that Eric Cartman fix), Discovery (might be educational), and perhaps the History channel. All included in the standard package. I decided that just for the hell of it, I'd try out the package with the nonstop commercial-free digital music channels, as that did seem pretty cool when bouncing demonstrated it at his place.

Unlike bouncing, I prefer to get my home cinema experiences through the medium of DVD, so I didn't go for the mega pay per view movie on 20 channels every 15 minutes "plus all that" stuff.

I decided to sign up and try out their Internet service, despite the fact that it's dynamic IP only, (bouncing tells me they also block incoming port 80, which sucks, but I don't consider it a complete dissuation.) Even if I like it, I may still decide to order DSL later on because of DSL's other advantages, but I want to try cable for at least a little while anyway.

What followed were a series of very odd inquiries into the irrelevant, such as the brand name of my computer ("I built it myself"), whether it is a desktop or notebook, what kind of processor and how much memory it has, how much hard drive space, and what operating system it runs (the guy didn't balk when I said "Debian GNU/Linux", and went on to the next question). Very, very odd.

There will be two separate installers coming -- one for the television, and one for the Internet service. Luckily, I got them both scheduled within the same window of time. A week from tomorrow. Tuesday, October 30. (They could have gotten me hooked up this week, but work is going to be so insanely busy for the next few days that I decided it would be best to schedule it a little bit later.)

Now, here I am back at the Louisville Compound, having consumed another frozen pizza during the course of this rambling. I'd kind of like to take another trip to the new place to hang around doing mostly nothing. Maybe hook up my av system. But irc begins in a half hour, and I definitely don't want to miss any of that. So it looks like another night at the Louisville Compound. Enjoy it while it lasts.

I go where Argo goes. Peace.