 |
April 17, 2000 |
|
I stayed up most of the night last night, until past 8am in fact. I was
working on cleaning up my place still. I'm slowly chipping away at the
entire heap of mess in my place. It's just too much stuff with too many
memories attached to them. I find that I run into little things that,
although have little usefulness or inherent value, they remind me of
friends, places, or times in my life that I hold dear.
I also wanted to assemble my new futon. After reading the instructions
which seem to very explicitly state that this task should be done by
two people. I don't buy it though, since I've put them together
before. I'm normally a stickler for reading the directions before I make
an informed decision that they're deranged and I, as a crafty engineer,
know better. With the possible exception of some exceptional feats of
strength, it went by uneventfully.
I was cleaning up my place to make room for the GTE service man to do his
work. My computer room doesn't really have a phone outlet. All I've
really done to get phone access to that room is to run a phone extension
across my kitchen counter and behind the wall into my other room. The hole
in the wall was there when I moved in. Honest. I found it when I
was originally hooking up the water line for my refrigerator. However, I
was finally scheduled to get DSL at home, so I figured that I should have a
real phone outlet in that room. I called the phone company to get
the sucker installed; I was assuming that they would be able to run the
wire inside the wall. I didn't know precisely how they would do
it, but I thought that they do this kind of thing all the time.
Once the man gets to my place, I tell him precisely where the nearest phone
outlet was and where I wanted the new outlet. After looking at it for
about two minutes he decided that I should not have him do it. You
see… he charges $85 each hour, and he adviced me that all the would be
doing is precisely what I was already doing, except that he would clean it
up a little bit. Like tapping the wire into the wall to make it look
cleaner, but otherwise pretty much the same thing. I stayed up for
this? I thanked him and he left. Terrific. Logically,
I should thank him since he did save me a lot of money, but
there's a part of me that wanted the wire out of plain sight and didn't
mind paying to get that done.
I also had to make sure that I had all the furniture by my doorway. In the
interest of cleaning up my place, I was getting rid of furniture that I
didn't need. In this case, it was a full size bed from my college days and
an old dresser. I can't remember when we had gotten the bed, but it was
some time ago. It was the bed I used for my last couple of years in
college. Since I was moving my futon into my computer room, I would no
longer have a need for it. The dresser was one that my mom had gotten me
during middle school, I believe. I remember going to a used furniture
store with her and picking it out. It's funny. I haven't used it for
years, and felt a little guilty getting rid of something that my mom had
gotten me so long ago. It's about time I should get rid of it though.
Really, it's been over ten years and it had done nothing but take up
space.
I was donating the stuff to the Salvation Army, mostly because they're the
ones that would actually pick it up. Not that I had any real qualms about
putting it in a vehicle and hauling it myself, but I don't have a vehicle
large enough to do this. I might have mentioned this before (giving stuff
to the Salvation Army), but I know enough jokers that would have a field
day dropping off additional stuff at my doorstep with the sole intention of
embarrassing me. I can actually see Scott putting an inflatable sheep by my door;
of course, I got him that sheep as a gag gift.
I also got a new toy for my computer. Technically, I ordered it last week,
but it is just getting here. It is an USB Irda adapter, it basically so I
can add an infrared port to one of my desktop machines. My new computer
only has one serial port so I had to think of other alternatives to
connecting all the devices I have on this machine differently. I suppose
that is is a side effect of having way too many toys. Aren't you glad that
I haven't broken down and gotten a web cam? Trust me, no one needs
pictures of me 24/7.
April 17, 2000