It took a while, but I finally got my photos from the Puyallup Fair processed and uploaded. Prairie and I went on a whim late in the summer, and had a really good day wandering around the fairgrounds. We didn’t go on any rides, but did play some of the carny games, got some cotton candy, looked at exhibits, and had a blast watching the Mutton Bustin’!
Prompted in no small part by the upcoming movie, I’ve been on a complete Star Trek kick lately. I’ve been reading Star Trek novels like they’re going out of style (check out my library sorted by what I’ve read most recently for an idea), I’ve been jonesing to watch the movies, one by one, in order (though I don’t know when I’m going to manage that, as Prairie is decidedly not of a mind to do any such thing…the things she has to put up with, living with a geek…), and I’m really noticing a pretty glaring gap in my DVD collection. While I’ve got the entirety of TNG and DS9 on DVD, I don’t have the ones I grew up with. I don’t have the original series.
And, sadly, I don’t think I will anytime soon, because the current choices…well, they aren’t good.
When Star Trek was first being released to DVD, the ‘season set’ trend hadn’t kicked in, so they were initially being released on the same model of the old VHS collections: two episodes per DVD, with two DVDs released every few months. Slow going, and expensive. I made it about halfway through Season One when those were first being released, then gave up, and eventually sold the DVDs off.
The second stab was a bit better, collecting an entire season in a set. In all honesty, these are the sets I’d like to have. However, they’re out of production, and I remember them being priced pretty high. No matter what they were priced originally, they’re rather ridiculously priced now: Amazon has the full three seasons for $199.99 used — that’s $67 per season! If I actually wanted a new set, it’d be $400! I like Trek, but I’m not that dedicated. Even eBay only brings the full collection down to the $150 range…better (but not great), if the price doesn’t get pushed up too high, if the seller doesn’t ship you scratched, crappy disks, and if you’re willing to take the risk of eBay — which I’m not.
Then there’s the current releases. They’re all overpriced, at around $80 each, or $200 for the full three seasons (come on, most TV season sets are now in the $30 range, and even the full 40-disc 7-season Buffy set is under $200), Season One is a weird hybrid normal DVD and HD-DVD (which is unplayable for me) that would keep me from accessing all the special features…and to top it all off, they’re the new “remastered” versions. Now, I’ve heard good things about the work done on the remastered episodes, and I wouldn’t really mind owning those versions…if the originals were included as well (gee, does this sound familiar, Star Wars fans?).
I don’t want my only option to be the new, George Lucas inspired, “we’ve got to put new special effects in or noone will want to watch this show anymore, even though it’s been consistently popular for forty years” versions. I want the show that my dad introduced me to. The show that had me pointing excitedly somewhere behind me and over my shoulder, exclaiming “Speeeeshhh!” as the Enterprise flew by in the opening credits. The show I grew up with, that I watched whenever I had the chance, that Royce and I would quote lines at each other from, that influenced my ongoing love of science fiction. The show that got me to my first ‘con, many, many years ago in Anchorage.
And right now, I can’t get it.
And I’m annoyed.
Meh.
(On the bright side, at least I’m not posting about politics….)
Another multi-image collage to tide things over while I try to get caught up with photos. I’ve never seen a human cannonball before, and actually didn’t even know this was still done. Pretty cool to see! It’s hard to see at this size, but on the top right image, you can actually see smoke and flame coming out of the barrel of the cannon as he exits.
Hooray for voting by mail. I’m all voted, and just need to drop the ballot in tomorrow’s mail.
I need a comment aggregator.
Between the number of people I “know” (in the modern, electronic, netspace version of the word) who have accounts scattered among various online services and my ongoing attempt to own myself by claiming my name (either given or the online pseudonym of ‘djwudi’) across the ‘net, I’ve ended up with accounts on a multitude of websites. In order to try to ensure that all of those various people have a fair chance of keeping up with whatever trivialities burble to the surface of my brain and escape out into the electronic aether, I use services like ping.fm, WordPress plugins, and RSS aggregation options to mirror my output across all of those websites.
The upside to this is that whether I’m posting a short tweet, a link to something neat, or actually writing a post to my blog, the content automagically appears in one form or another across the sites I belong to.
The downside is that I only have so much time to actually check into all those various sites. My weblog, Flickr and Twitter accounts get frequent attention, Facebook gets semi-regular attention, Friendfeed gets slightly more than occasional attention, and the rest tend to fall between the cracks, often not getting checked in with unless some automated message tells me that someone’s trying to get my attention, add me as a ‘friend,’ or some other sort of administrative fiddlybit. Then, when I do log into one or another of these sites, I often find a number of responses and comments that have been sitting ignored (unintentionally) since their appearance.
What I need, then, is some form of comment aggregator service that would track when a particular post (of any form) is made, monitor its status on each of the various services, then either collect any comments at a central location or even simply alert me when a comment is made.
While I doubt such a service could be effectively constructed, due to the number of competing services that would have to integrate in some form, part of me wonders if this could be added as some form of extention to the Ping.fm service: since I assume that ping.fm has to get some form of ‘ok’ response when it sends my content out to that service, if that ‘ok’ response could include a reference to the item ID on the target site, perhaps ping.fm could store links to those URIs along with the original item in the ‘Recent Posts’ tab. Some form of notification would be even better, so you didn’t have to go check the ‘Recent Posts’ tab to keep track.
I’m sure there’s a number of reasons why this wouldn’t work, but you get the idea.
How do other people handle their distributed conversations? Is there a magic button (other than the “off” button) that I haven’t stumbled across yet?
Yesterday afternoon, Prairie and I got a call from her sister Hope offering us tickets to the closing night show of The Phantom of the Opera at the Paramount. She’d gotten sick earlier in the day and just wasn’t up to going out, so she and Peter decided to see if we wanted to go. We, of course, were happy to take them (after passing on our sympathies, of course), and headed out for an unexpected but not unwelcome night out at the theater.
I’ve grown up with Phantom, from having the soundtrack nearly as long as I can remember to owning the behind-the-scenes book The Complete Phantom of the Opera to having performed a few of the numbers during my days in the Anchorage Children’s Choir, and this was my second time seeing the show. While not unfamiliar with the show — its nearly impossible to have an interest in modern theater culture and not know about Phantom — this was Prairie’s first opportunity to see it on stage.
The show itself, while enjoyable for the spectacle, wasn’t at all a great show. The performances were good, though I wouldn’t really rate them much better than that, and much of the spectacle felt a little rushed, like you didn’t really have time to appreciate the moment before being whisked off to the next scene. There were no flubs, it certainly wasn’t a bad performance, and we both enjoyed the grandeur of the whole thing. It just wasn’t stellar.
Additionally, we’re curious if we might be more appreciative of the less-expensive balcony seats for our next show at the Paramount. Each time we’ve gone to a show and splurged for floor seats, the sound mix in the theater has been surprisingly bad, with the actors overly loud compared to the music and many of the group numbers turning into a muddled, unintelligible mess. We don’t remember having this issue when we’ve seen shows from the balcony, though, so we’re curious if the acoustics in the Paramount happen to favor the balcony. For our next show, we’re going to stay away from the floor and see what we think.
Lastly, two points that I’ve touched on before but that, unfortunately, still need to be addressed (and, realistically, probably aren’t going to change in the foreseeable future):
It’s truly distressing how few people think of theater as Theater (with a capital ‘t’). Both Prairie and I were brought up to see a night out at a show as something special. It’s not something that happens every day (or even every week or month), and so it’s not something to be taken completely casually. It is something that should be dressed for: I’d argue for good business work clothes at the minimum, if you’re not actually going to take the time to dress up. Above all, jeans and t-shirts? Not acceptable!
The crowd at last nights show, admittedly, was a bit better than we’ve seen at other shows in the past. That said, I still hold that ratty jeans and tracksuits should be unacceptable at the theater.
One last thing: a standing ovation should be given for extraordinarily good performances. Not for every performance you happen to be at. Not for slightly above average performances. And certainly not for performances with flubbed lines, broken props, and bad sound. I’ve noticed this trend a lot lately, where it’s more rare to be at a performance that doesn’t get a standing ovation than to be at a performance that does. That’s really not how this is supposed to work, folks. A standing ovation is something special, to be reserved for those truly stand-out performances, not used for every performance you bother to attend.
Prairie and I just sat in our seats last night. The people around us probably thought we were being rude (ironic, given that I had to shoot the twit on my left a few glares when she started singing along with the show), but it just wasn’t an ovation-worthy performance. Good, yes; worthy of applause and appreciation, yes; worthy of a whoopin’ and hollerin’ standing ovation? Certainly not.
A few weekends ago, Prairie and I went down to visit family south of us: her mom and sister in Vancouver, WA; my brother and his family in Corvallis, OR; then Prairie’s dad and grandpa in Woodland, WA on our way back up to Seattle.
I’ve finally finished putting all the photos from the weekend up in a photoset. Here’s my nephews Paul and Noah to kick things off!
Last weekend, Prairie and I went on a round of family visits, seeing her mom and sister in Vancouver, WA, my brother and family in Corvallis, OR, and her dad and grandpa in Woodland, WA. While we were in Woodland with Prairie’s dad and grandpa, Prairie took a few minutes to poke around the house and collect some old glassware to bring home. While she was exploring, she found some fun old currency, some of which we recognized, some of which we didn’t. I’ve scanned them in and done a little Wikipedia research, and here’s what we came up with.
1935G “No Motto” $1 Silver Certificate
Silver Certificates were printed for a time in the United States as a form of paper currency. They were produced in response to silver agitation by citizens who were angered by the Fourth Coinage Act, which placed the United States on the gold standard. The certificate was matched to the same amount of value in silver coinage. For example, one fifty dollar Silver Certificate equals fifty silver dollars. Note the Series 1935G came in two varieties, with motto (“In God We Trust”) and without motto. The with motto demands higher premiums than the without motto.
1953C $2 United States Note
The United States two-dollar bill ($2) is a current denomination of U.S. currency. When U.S. currency was changed to its current size, the $2 bill was issued only as a United States Note. After United States Notes were discontinued, the $2 bill later began to be issued as a Federal Reserve Note. The denomination of two dollars was first used by the United States federal government in July 1862. The denomination was continuously used until 1966 when the only class of U.S. currency it was then assigned to, United States Notes, began to be discontinued. All small-sized $2 United States Notes with a red seal and older large size notes are obsolete and are collectibles.
Series 481 (6/20/51 thru 5/25/54) Five Cent Military Payment Certificate
Military Payment Certificates, or MPC, were used from the end of World War II until the end of the Vietnam War, between the years 1946 and 1973. MPC’s utilized layers of line lithography to create colorful banknotes that could be produced cheaply. Fifteen series of MPC’s were created but only 13 series were issued.
1917 Cinq Francs Note
The franc (represented by the franc sign ₣ or more commonly just F) is a former currency of France. Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money. It was re-introduced (in decimal form) in 1795 and remained the national currency until the introduction of the euro in 1999 (for accounting purposes) and 2002 (coins and banknotes).
After finding this post, and being prompted by this post, I decided to update my geek code. Decode the following gibberish here:
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GAT d-(--) s:-- a35 C++(+++) U*++++ P+ L- E---
W+++ N+++ o K w--- O- M+++ V PS++ PE Y+ PGP t+(+++)
5 X+ R- tv b+(+++) DI++ D+ G e+ h--- r++ y++**
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
There’s been a few slight mentions of my new job here, and Dad asked for some more details. As has generally been the case for the past few years, I’m not going to say a lot about my job here, but here’s the basic scoop:
While I’d been tossing resumes at Craigslist postings for a few weeks before the move, I wasn’t having much success. Since I wanted to get away from mall jobs, I’d been concentrating on entry-level office jobs, generally along the receptionist/secretarial/admin assistant line of positions. I was sure I could do the work, however as my resume doesn’t really stress the skills I have (funny how mall retail and reprographics print shops doesn’t scream ‘office capable’ to many people), I wasn’t having much luck.
I eventually did get one interview, but I ended up turning it down. I’d applied for a receptionist position, but over the course of one phone call and an interview, the position shifted into being a glorified delivery driver, delivering and assembling copiers on-site for clients. Not only was it pretty far removed from what I wanted or had applied for, but the guy interviewing me set off a lot of warning flags — denigrating the rest of the crew during the interview (he wanted to hire me because I came across smarter than the “idiots” and could supervise them) was just one. On top of that, he would have required me to cut my hair to something “respectable” — a request that seemed a little odd coming from a man with fading, but still quite visible and legible “FUCK IT” tattoos across his fingers. Even though I knew I needed a new job, this just didn’t seem like the best option for me, so I turned it down.
That afternoon, I got a list of employment agencies in the Kent area and took off, intending to drop my resume off with a few of them to see if I could get any hits there. That ended up being a much better way to approach things.
My first stop was at Express Personnel, and though they normally operate on an appointment basis, they were able to do a walk-in interview for me. Though the interview started a little shaky — there was a bit of confusion as to just what I was aiming for, as I didn’t really know the best way to say “I know I’m smart, capable, and I’m desperate to get out of retail” — but pretty soon we started narrowing things down. I took typing, ten-key, and keyboard data entry tests (90 words per minute, over 10k ten-key keystrokes per hour, and over 12k keyboard keystrokes per hour), Word and Excel proficiency tests, and a Wonderlic Personnel Test (with a score of between 36 and 40, if I’m remembering correctly, well into the higher reaches of what’s expected), all of which worked together to convince my interviewer that I actually did have more than two brain cells to rub together, and might be worth placing somewhere.
Over the next week, Express set me up with an interview at a prospective employer, I had an interview with them, and a few days later, got the word that they liked me, and I would be starting soon. Hooray!
My first day was last Friday, and so far, I’m definitely enjoying this. I’m a front desk/receptionist/admin assistant person for a packaging materials and supply business. Duties are pretty much as you’d expect: answering phones and forwarding calls, greeting visitors, taking care of various paperwork, filing, tracking e-mail, and so on. I’m only on day three, but I’m doing my best to get the hang of everything as quickly as possible (and really, the actions are all easily within my current realm of knowledge, it’s mostly procedures specific to this office that I need to learn).
Some of the best perks, though: $12/hr, a nice change from the $9/hr + variable commission I was earning at Kits, a full 40 hours a week, and a regular workday 8:30am-5:30pm, Monday to Friday schedule. I have evenings, and weekends! Reliably! Every week! I’m not going to have to show up at a mall at 5 in the morning on Black Friday anymore. It’s only been three days and one weekend so far, but Prairie and I are really enjoying the new schedule.
So there’s the scoop on that. I’m part of the normal working world now.
In happier news: first photos of the new apartment!
Here’s what you see when you walk in the front door. Bookshelves along the rear wall, the deck (which has become our favorite spot for breakfast and dinner, thanks to the patio furniture that Prairie’s dad gifted us with), our new couch and chair (brand-new furniture, right from a furniture store — we’re really turning into adults, aren’t we?), the fireplace, entertainment center, and dining room.
Another view of the living room, this time from the door to the deck. The three bookshelves on the right will gain a fourth as soon as we can add one, every shelf on those is double-stacked with books.
My office. In the last apartment, my office doubled as the guest room, but now it’s primarily just my office, only acting as a secondary guest room when we have enough guests to need it.
That’s because with a three-bedroom apartment, Prairie now gets an office of her own, instead of having to camp out in a corner of the living room, and her office is now the main guest room. It’s also very girly and pink, which is just the way she wanted it!
There’s also two bathrooms — but those are bathrooms, and not terribly exciting to take pictures of — and our bedroom, which we don’t feel needs to be broadcast to the world. That’s our room, after all. 
We’re really enjoying this apartment. Lots of space, not nearly as cramped, and as we specified wanting a corner or end unit, we’ve got enough windows to get a good breeze keeping the place cool at all times. Since we’re on the third floor, the trees outside keep things nice and private, so we don’t have to worry about people peeking in the windows at us (a pretty common occurrence at our last complex). The deck looks over a small playground, so there’s almost always kids playing out back.
Joke all you want about living in Kent — and I’ve already heard more than a few cracks from Seattleites who don’t get why we’d want to be in the suburbs — but so far, we’re liking it a lot.
Finally — after far too much sturm und drang — we’re back up and running! Well, mostly. The most important parts, at least.
As of the last major update, I’d told Speakeasy to take a flying leap. After getting done with that, I called Qwest to see what they could do directly (our other option is Comcast, who I just can’t trust my ‘net service to). Qwest was quite helpful, and told me that they’d be able to have a DSL ‘net connection and DirecTV service installed and active on Wednesday the 30th, with VoIP phone service up and running a few days after that. That sounded reasonable to me (it was the same timeframe Speakeasy would have given me if I’d been willing to give them yet another chance), so I gave it a go.
On Monday, Prairie and I got to talked, and decided that it’d be a good thing to make sure the DirecTV install tech was going to bring a tripod mount for the satellite dish, as we’re not allowed to mount anything directly to the building. I called DirecTV, verified that a tripod would be in the truck, and then the service rep told me that if I wanted, I could upgrade one of the DirecTV receivers to a DVR version for free. Free is always a nice price, so I said sure, go ahead.
Wednesday was supposed to be the “go” day: DirecTV between 8am and noon, a Qwest tech on site to do the physical connection by 5pm, and the DSL modem hardware arriving sometime that day (it’s sent directly from Qwest, rather than having the tech bring it with him). Prairie went off to work, and I sat here at home and waited for the DirecTV tech.
And waited. And waited. And eventually, noon came and went, and there’d been no sign of the tech. I called DirecTV, and things immediately went all pear-shaped, as the first person I talked to told me that she could find no record of me in the system, and dumped me off on someone else who was in another department and was of even less help. I called back, got a different representative, and they were able to find me — only to tell me that, though I hadn’t been informed of this during the call, when I upgraded to the DVR receiver, the rep had had to cancel my original install and reschedule it for Sunday, Aug. 3rd. There’s nothing I can do about this, unfortunately — and I was quite vocal about this being a pretty sour first experience with DirecTV — so that will be happening Sunday morning. Still, the TV is the least important of the three pieces of the communication puzzle.
After venting to Prairie for a few minutes, I took a walk to calm down and check the mail to see if the box from Qwest with the DSL modem had arrived. It wasn’t in the mail, but when I got back to the apartment, there was a Qwest truck sitting in our parking spot. The tech had just finished up hooking up the DSL connection, and he said that we were live, all we needed was the DSL modem. Qwest ships those by UPS, so it should show up before 5pm. So far so good — I knew that at least part of the process had worked correctly — so he went on his way, and I waited for UPS.
And waited. And waited. At 5pm, I went down to check to see if UPS had given them a box for me without putting a note on my door. Nope, no go. Back home, and by 5:30, I was back on the line with Qwest to see what the story was with the hardware. The guy on the phone clicks around a bit, and then tells me that there’d been “a delay” with the package, but it was in UPS’s hands and should be arriving Thursday (the next day). Well, okay — not terribly thrilling, but at least it was on the way, and he was able to give me a tracking number so that I could check up on it if I could find a way to get to Qwest’s website.
This morning, I used the WiFi network at Prairie’s office to check the tracking number. It turns out that according to UPS, they picked the package up at 7:35pm in Denver, CO. This would have been just after I got off the phone with the representative who’d told me there’d been a “delay” — apparently, the “delay” was simply not sending the package out on time, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’d been reading the tracking number to me off the bill on the package before running it down to the mailroom!
On the bright side, though, they did ship the box next day air, so it arrived at the apartment complex while I was coming back from Prairie’s office. As an added bonus, the box had the VoIP modem as well as the DSL modem, so after a few minutes plugging in cables and fiddling with configuration details, I was finally back online, and able to place telephone calls without chewing through the minutes on my pre-paid cell phone. It took two weeks after physically moving into the building (and a month and a half after starting the original service transfer process with Speakeasy), multiple friendly and not-so-friendly calls to the various companies dealing with various screwups, bailing out of one company and getting set up on another, and burning through at least $50 worth of pre-paid cell phone minutes, but it’s done.
So. Two pieces down — internet and telephone — and one to go — DirecTV. We’ll see how that goes come Sunday.
As of a couple hours ago, for the first time since I moved down here and got myself online, I’m no longer a Speakeasy customer. At this point, I can strongly recommend against using Speakeasy for personal broadband service. Perhaps they’re still doing well at the business level, but from a customer point of view, they’re really not worth it.
Here’s a quick rundown of the current situation:
Because Speakeasy works with two other vendors for their installations — Qwest and Covad — it takes a bit longer to get set up with service through them, generally on the order of about a month. In the past, the service that Speakeasy provided made the extra wait worth it. Not so much anymore.
One month before we moved to our new apartment, I called Speakeasy and set up a new install at the new address. This gave plenty of time for them to get everything taken care of by our move-in date of the 18th.
Around the 12th — while Prairie and I were still packing up in North Seattle — Qwest arrived and completed the loop (whatever that means). On the 17th, the Covad tech called me to let me know that he was in the apartment to do the final install, but that he wasn’t getting a signal. After a little digging, he found that Speakeasy had given Qwest the wrong address, and they’d installed their loop at apartment D100 instead of K100 (not the real apartment numbers). There was nothing he could do, so he sent off his report, and I called Speakeasy.
Speakeasy told me that they didn’t know how this had happened, the address was entered correctly in their system, but whoever had sent the order to Qwest had mistyped it. Unfortunately, this meant that they had to cancel the order and start the entire process again. I made it known that I was pretty upset about facing another month wait to get online because they screwed up, and they said they’d try to escalate the process. I asked about canceling my Speakeasy account, but because our last move was only ten months ago, I was still two months shy of the end of my 12-month contract, and would be hit with a $300 early disconnect charge if I walked away. Eventually, they told me that they’d have Qwest out to the new apartment on the 21st to put the loop in the right spot, and Covad would be able to make it out on the 23rd.
Over the weekend, Prairie and I move everything out of the North Seattle apartment. We left the ‘net and phone hookup intact as long as we could, but eventually disconnected them, figuring we’d have just a couple days of using our emergency-only, pre-paid buy-the-minute cell phones.
Yesterday (the 23rd), the Covad tech calls me to tell me he’s on his way, and he just wanted to double-check the address he was driving to: Apartment D100. Um…no, K100, I say. He said that he hoped Qwest got it right, as did I. A few minutes later, he shows up at my door, shrugs, and tells me that once again, the loop was installed by Qwest, on Speakeasy’s instructions, at the wrong apartment.
I get back on the phone with Speakeasy, even more upset. More excuses come over the line — everybody pointing fingers at everyone else, while I’m the one without internet or telephone service. By this point, I’ve been on the phone fighting with Speakeasy so much that I’ve burned completely through the hours of time I’d put on my prepaid cell phone, and had to refill in the middle of one round with Speakeasy after getting cut off when the phone went dead. Eventually, they tell me that they’ll escalate another level, push to get Qwest out to to their loop in the right building the next day (Thursday, the 24th), have Covad out to do the final install the evening of the 24th or possibly Friday the 25th, and that they’ll have an update by 5pm at the latest on the 24th.
Just before 5pm today, I call them, since they’d not called me at any point during the day. At this point, I’m told that we’re “set for the 28th (Monday).” I’m not thrilled, not sure if I can trust them, and very vocal about this. I was about resigned to give them one last chance — though after the second screwup, they had finally allowed that should I leave, they would be able to waive the $300 early disconnect fee — when I thought to verify that the 28th was the date for the final install. No, actually, that’s the date for Qwest to come back and make a third try at putting in the loop, Covad wouldn’t be able to make it out to do the final install until the 30th, Wednesday. By now, I’m rapidly losing the ability to deal coherently or politely with any of this. The guy I’m talking to can tell that I’m very upset, says that he’ll do everything he can to help, and tells me that while his shift is up at 5pm and he’s about to go home, he will be working remotely, so if I want to drop him an e-mail that evening….
“What?” I paused for a moment. “Was that some sort of sick joke? Did you hear what you just said to me? If I could drop you an e-mail, we wouldn’t be having this conversation!”
And with that, I’m done with Speakeasy. I’ve cancelled this continually botched installation, I’ve cancelled the ‘net and VOIP hookup at the old address (which needed to stay active until the new install was up to avoid the early disconnect fee), and they — finally — decided their company wouldn’t tumble into bankruptcy without my $300 and waived the fee.
Of course, the downside to this is that we’re still without telephone or internet at the new apartment, and because we’re starting the process from scratch, it’ll probably be a week to ten days or so (rough guestimate) before we’re back up. Also, once we are back up, the phone number will change, so those of you that have our home phone number will need the new one. Still, at this point, we’re willing to chalk those up to minor frustrations in the grand scheme of things. I can find open WiFi points here and there that will allow me to check in every few days, and we’re looking at going with Qwest for our new service (on the assumption that it was Speakeasy giving Qwest the wrong address), who should be able to give us a faster DSL ‘net connection (3 MB downstream), the same VOIP service, and DirecTV for the same amount of money I was paying Speakeasy for 1.5 MB DSL and VOIP.
So, as has been the case, updates here are going to be few and far between until all the pieces finally fall into place. Now, at least, you know why.
Yesterday, the Stranger’s Slog posted about the number of “gorgeous old buildings” that are disappearing in the name of progress. Most of what was talked about was a building on Broadway, disappearing to make way for the light rail system, but one address caught my eye…
On Eighth Avenue and Seneca Street, the wrecking ball is halfway done leveling this old brick building….
8th and Seneca. I used to live at 8th and Seneca, in an old brick apartment building. I don’t suppose…
Yup, that’s it. The Alfaretta Apartments, formerly the Park Seneca Apartments, is going down. And to that, I say good riddance! I tried to post the following comment, but it kept running afoul of the Slog’s spam filter. Here, then, for posterity, is my reaction to the sad news of this gorgeous old building being torn down:
Oh, wow. Lots of old buildings might be worth mourning, but the Alfaretta, that building at 8th and Seneca? Just a poorly-managed shithole. During the years I lived there, I had to deal with two water shutoff notices from the city because the management hadn’t paid the water bill, an elevator that seemed to be broken more often than not, a renovation that seemed to drag on forever, with constantly shifting reports on when various services would be turned on or off, months without on-site laundry services, a few weeks surrounding the replacement of the water heater when there was little to no hot water at all in the building, and an often broken front door that had us occasionally having to have a drunk or drugged transient ‘escorted out’ after they went wandering the halls, or — once — started squatting in one of the vacant apartments.
Factor in the constant hassles from the Jensonia next door, whose residents seemed to embody all the worst stereotypes of Section Eight housing, which only stopped when the third fire in as many months finally did enough damage to condemn the building, and it’s a wonder I put up with the Alfaretta as long as I did.
That’s one old brick building I’m not at all sorry to see disappear.
So last night, about 5:30pm, as I’m working in Aperture, the power dies. Odd. Just us? Nope, the hallway lights were out too, so it was at least our whole building. I had to drop off the rent check anyway, so I grabbed it and wandered over to the manger’s office. On the way, I peeked in the front door of one of the other buildings and saw that their hallway lights were on, so it looked like it was just our building that had lost power.
When I got to the office, the on-site manager was trying to get a call in to City Light to let them know, but couldn’t get a chance, as her phone kept ringing with calls from people across the complex. These buildings are so old that they’re apparently wired semi-randomly across two city circuits, so while our entire building was out, the other buildings were half-out — one had power in the halls but not in the apartments, the one with the manager’s office had power in the office, but none in the halls, and so on. Prairie and I had actually run into this a couple years back in our original apartment here, when we lost power in half of our apartment. Weird stuff.
In any case, since they were calling City Light to figure out what was going on, I wandered back to the apartment and puttered around for a bit. I cleaned off my desk, went through my desk drawers and filled a garbage bag with old crap that I don’t need to move. Since the apartment was starting to get pretty muggy (no power means no fans), I wandered out to the pool to take a dip and cool off while waiting for the power to come back. After a while, though I was nicely waterlogged, nothing else had changed, so I got out and went to ask the managers if they had any word. “The only word you’ll get is when the power comes on,” they told me. “Is City Light even around?” I asked. “Around here? Naah. I think they’re poking around down in Lake City somewhere.” Great. Not encouraging.
Since the day was getting on, and Prairie normally e-mails me to let me know when she’s leaving work, I figured it’d be a good idea to let her know what was going on. I originally planned on walking down to the Panera at the Northgate Mall to use their WiFi, but then remembered that there was a Starbucks in the QFC a few blocks closer. I walked down there and stood outside to see if I could pick up a signal on my iPod, but while I couldn’t see one for Starbucks, there was an open network called ‘ampm’. Really? I tried to connect, but the signal was too weak. Curious, I went across the street to the AM/PM gas station, tried again…and connected! So, I sat my butt down underneath their sign, e-mailed Prairie, sent Ping.fm a note to update Twitter, LJ, and all other such things, and marveled at AM/PM having free open-access WiFi. Just in case you need to check your e-mail while you’re filling your tank, I guess. Weird. Weird, but very appreciated. On the walk home, I got caught in a thundershower — I’d been hearing occasional rumbles echoing across the sky, but just happened to be out when the rain started coming down. Big ol’ fat raindrops, too, so I as soaked as when I got out of the pool by the time I got home.
When Prairie came home, there still wasn’t power. We dug out our flashlights so they’d be ready when the evening got too dark to see and headed out to eat at Claire’s Pantry in Lake City (short review: good food, hit-and-miss service). When we got home, there were four City Light trucks in various places around our house, with at least one parked next to an open manhole cover, so it was obvious that they still hadn’t figured out what was going on. So, we lit a bunch of candles, each grabbed a book and a piece of chocolate fudge cake that we’d picked up on the way home, and had a very nice evening of dessert and reading by candlelight, listening as the thunder rolled across the sky from time to time. A bit before eleven, we decided it was time to crash. I put my book down, grabbed a flashlight, leaned over, blew out a candle…and the fan next to me spun up, the refrigerator motor kicked in, and the light in the office turned on. Just in time for bed!
What’s fascinating me is that the thunderstorm that started yesterday afternoon is still going on. I had to get up to use the restroom about forty minutes ago, and when I laid back down, there was a good sized thunderclap. A few moments later, I caught a flash of light through my eyelids, and just a few seconds later, another thunderclap hit — this one loud enough to wake Prairie up, too. She went back to sleep, but when the third thunderclap hit a few moments later, I realized that I was a bit too awake to get back to sleep (growing up in Anchorage, thunderstorms are a very rare event, so I get pretty exited by them). So here I am — it’s 6:15 in the morning, and I’m awake and blogging. Rain’s coming down outside the window, and the thunder is still coming in every couple minutes. Pretty cool.
I just hope I can get a nap before I head off to work this afternoon.
No, mine aren’t ready yet (really, I’m about to get started on them, I promise), but here’s a nice group shot of the group in the truck by generalchaos.
Pride yesterday was a lot of fun. Every other year I’ve gone, I’ve shot from the sidelines, doing my best to get an overview of the entire parade and all the different groups. This year, I decided to try something different. A few weeks ago at the Mercury, 
dizzy88 recognized me from my Flickr account and suggested I ride along with the Goth Pride float and shoot for them this year. It sounded like a good plan to me, and definitely a different vantage point than I’d had before, so I decided to take that approach.
Prairie needed a day of rest, so she stayed home while I grabbed a bus downtown in the morning. Since the Goth Pride float was towards the end of the parade, I spent some time wandering up and down the staging area, grabbing shots of the various groups as they got ready to go. Once people near our group started moving, I hopped on board the truck, and rode the parade route from there, shooting the crowds to either side of the truck as we made our way along. Much fun, especially as the brakes on the truck were “either on or off,” so any acceleration or deceleration had a tendency to throw us all stumbling from one end of the truck bed to the other. No injuries, but a lot of laughs!
I’m a bit behind in my picture processing right now (I haven’t even gone through what I shot on Memorial Day yet), but I’m hoping to get to my shots later on this week sometime. In the meantime, midnytetragedy has posted her shots, and I’m sure other people will be posting theirs before too long.
It’s official — Prairie and I have a new apartment! We’d been keeping an eye on Craigslist over the past few months as I got closer to graduation, looking for places in the Kent/Des Moines area that fit what we were looking for: two or three bedrooms, two bathrooms, reserved parking, washer and dryer, and if at all possible, a pool (we’ve gotten quite spoiled by having a pool available here during the summer months). By Friday, we had a list of four places we wanted to check out, and we headed off to see how they compared to their on-paper representations.
(I was quite proud of myself for getting us all organized: on Thursday, I’d called the places, set up appointments at each, printed out their Craigslist listings, Google Maps directions from each to the next in order, and a little sheet of questions we wanted to be sure to ask, and stapled them all together into individual packets. As anyone who knows me can attest, this is not normal behavior for me!)
The first apartment was nice, but not quite as close as we wanted; the second apartment had gorgeous grounds, but the 2-bedrooms were too small, the 3-bedrooms too expensive, and it was right off a street that was pretty seedy (think Aurora in Seattle, or Mt. View in Anchorage) and didn’t feel safe; the fourth had a gorgeous view of the Kent valley and was a huge 2-bedroom layout that would have been our pick if we hadn’t already been through the third.
The third place ended up hitting all our “gotta have it” qualifications (3 bed, 2 bath, nice layout, washer/dryer in unit, assigned parking space), our “would be nice if” qualifications (third floor corner apartment available, fireplace, deck, good storage, swimming pool in the complex, right on the bus lines), plus a bunch of other goodies that sold us (nice location next to a golf course and park with lots of bike paths to go walking/skating/riding on, right next to the Green River, about five minute drive from Prairie’s workplace and my future school, exercise room, indoor racquetball court, and a decent neighborhood). Plus, they had fresh-baked cookies still warm from the oven for us! It’s pretty hard to say no to fresh-baked cookies. Ingenious!
After looking at all four choices, we had lunch, then went back to our favorite and put in our application. They called back yesterday to confirm that we were approved, so Prairie will be running over there during her lunch break today to drop off the security deposit and get the final details (official address so I can initiate the moving process with Speakeasy, the actual move-in date, and so on).
One interesting side effect is that this means that after seven years, I’ll be moving out of Seattle. Admittedly, not very far out of Seattle — the Kent-to-Downtown-Seattle drive is only a few minutes longer than the Northgate-to-Downtown-Seattle drive — but still, I’ll no longer have a Seattle address. Something of a milestone there.
More details of the move and all will be posted as things progress, but we should be all moved over in roughly three weeks or so.
Well, it’s official (aside from actually receiving the certificate in the mail): I can now, if I wish, sign my name ‘Michael Hanscom, AA’. It’s a little silly to do so, so I’m not going to, but I can.
Short updates have been appearing semi-regularly on…well, everywhere, if you happen to be following me on the web (Twitter, Plurk, LiveJournal, and a number of others, thanks to the multi-site-update magic of Ping.com), but let’s see if I can back up a bit and fill in a few more details (photos from each day’s festivities are linked to on the day’s name).
Oh, by the way…I graduate this Friday. I’ll be marking the end of my tenure at NSCC and receiving my Associate of Arts transfer degree. My parents are driving down from Anchorage to Seattle, should be about midway through the trip by now, and are expecting to show up in Seattle sometime on Thursday or Friday morning…we think.
While this has been mentioned briefly here and there, I figured I might as well take a moment to make it explicit. I’m graduating! 
After class this morning, I wandered across the street to the bus stop. I was a little annoyed at myself for leaving my bus pass at home, but since I had a few ones, it didn’t matter too much. I got on the 75 and picked up a transfer, rode to the Northgate Transit Center, waited there for about ten minutes, and then took the 41 to our apartment. As I waited for the bus to roll to a stop, I peeked out the windows and scanned our parking lot for the car to see if Prairie was back from her morning jaunt with Hope. The car wasn’t in the lot…
…oh, wait. Crap.
I drove to school this morning.
Prairie hasn’t been able to stop giggling for the past half hour.
On the bright side, I didn’t have to catch the bus back to school, as Prairie was able to call Hope and have her drive us up to the school to rescue the car. Which I’d forgotten. Left behind.
I am such a dork.
As Prairie’s mentioned, work on moving into the new apartment continues, and we’re making progress. I’ve had to work just about every day (though I was able to get most of yesterday off to help), and Prairie and her family crew have done the lion’s share of the work so far, so in this case saying that “we” are making progress is really only strictly true for certain values of “we”. But still…progress is being made. At least I’ve got a day off tomorrow to pitch in all day long.
One side effect of all this is that both Prairie and I are going to be essentially out of touch for the next two weeks or so. As we use Speakeasy for our ‘net and our phone connection through VoIP, we need to get that transferred over to the new apartment…and, unfortunately, Speakeasy says that that can take up to two weeks. Not what I was hoping for, but pretty unavoidable, as all of this has happened so quickly.
We do have our laptop with WiFi access, so we may be able to check in from time to time, but it’s pretty much safe to assume that we probably won’t be reachable via e-mail or phone for the next two weeks, and certainly won’t be responding to messages in a timely manner. Not ideal, but that’s what it is.
As I put a six-pack of Smirnoff Ice (Raspberry Blast) into the shopping cart next to Prairie’s bottle of wine, I turned to her and asked, “So when did we last buy alcohol?”
She paused, then held up a hand and started counting backwards on her fingers. “Seven, eight…nine months?”
Not exactly doing our part to keep the booze flowin’, are we?
I just had someone ask me through my Flickr account about my photography workflow and sales experience, and I figured I might as well put my response up here for…um…posterity? Ego-stroking?
I’ve not yet started to actually try to shoot for a living (though it’s a nice dream), as school and work take up enough time that I can’t devote myself to my hobby. Still, for what it’s worth, here’s what I can tell you….
What is your photography work flow?
These days, I shoot pretty much everything RAW. I haven’t had the money to upgrade to Apple’s Aperture or Adobe’s Lightroom yet, so I use iPhoto for organization and sorting, Adobe Photoshop for RAW conversion and touchups, and then the Flickr Export plugin for iPhoto to upload everything to Flickr.
The basic process is this:
[Where] or how do you market or promote your work?
I’ve never really actively done much promotion other than uploading things to Flickr and then telling people about it. When I can, I’ll let people involved in an event know about any event photos I’ve taken (sometimes by e-mail, other times through making posts in online communities focusing on an event or artist), or if I can identify and contact the subjects of shots, I’ll try to let them know directly. Other than that, I don’t do a whole lot.
Have you had any success with online promotion or selling your work through a website, if so which ones are you using?
Nothing major here, really. I’ve experimented with some of the services that have popped up online for helping people sell their work, but as I’ve never really taken the time to actively pursue anything, I can’t really report any great sucesses (or failures, really — I may not be selling much, but I don’t see that as failure when I’m not really trying to sell anything).
What few shots I have sold or had used elsewhere have happened more or less through blind luck — people stumbling on a shot through photo searches, deciding I had something that would work for a project, and asking permission to use it.
I have started getting a few people asking me to shoot events, but it’s not something I’ve started charging for yet (while it’s very flattering to have someone ask, I’m not entirely convinced I’m “pro” enough to ask for money…though I’m certainly not going to refuse if any is offered, either!). Right now, I pretty much just chalk it up to learning experiences, with possibilities for future benefit.
And if you can think of any other ideas for a photographer that is ready to start selling his work full time (my goal). I would greatly appreciate it.
Nothing much comes to mind, mostly because I’m not quite heading that direction yet. Good luck on your quest, though!
Those of you who’ve been (for some odd reason) keeping up with my little space on the ‘net for a while should be familiar with the saga of Xebeth. The Reader’s Digest Condensed Cliffs Notes version goes as follows: old friend shows up, all is happy; friend is found to have a serious, life-threatening disease, and all is not so happy, but Prairie and I do our best to provide support; ten months of emotional rollercoasters later, we find that the entire thing was a lie, and that not only is the old friend not dying, but nearly everything else she told us was a lie also.
It’s now been fourteen months since Xebeth first contacted me to say hello (and, as it turns out, also sent me the first of many lies), and four months since we realized what was going on, confronted her, and eventually cut off all contact.
Four months later, we’re still realizing just how much this has effected us.
Each of us regularly have moments when it’s all we can do not to attempt to contact her to try to figure out why she did this to us. If we ever actually thought we’d get an answer, we might actually do it…but it’s obvious that there’s nothing she could tell us that would actually justify how she treated us — and even if she tried to explain, it hardly seems likely that we’d be able to believe what she said. This doesn’t keep us from wanting an answer, but it at least keeps us from being so foolish as to try to actually get one.
The truly distressing thing about all this is how severely it’s shaken our ability to trust other people. Over the past few months, Prairie and I have found ourselves pulling back a bit from the world around us. Admittedly, we’re not always the most social of people out there, and balancing our jobs and my school schedule take a fair amount of time — but even with those factors figured in, we’ve been more reclusive than usual. While we’ve not cut off contact entirely — I try to get out to the clubs when I can, and had fun bouncing around Norwescon; Prairie’s had a visit to see some old friends and will be off on a trip with my mom and sister-in-law in a few weeks — we’ve both found ourselves far less willing to trust that the people around us are actually worth interacting with.
Basically, people suck. We were doing what we could to be there for a friend in need, and ended up getting stomped on. Hard. Repeatedly. In an incredibly cruel fashion.
Not terribly surprising, then, is that all this has introduced some added stresses to our home life. Neither of us feel that there’s any Impending Doom as far as our relationship with each other goes, but we have been recognizing that there are some new discomforts that weren’t there before.
Much of what we did last year is colored by Xebeth’s involvement. Until now, we’ve both thoroughly enjoyed going out to the annual Pride Parade…but as that was one of the events we took Xebeth to last summer, it’s lost some of its luster, and while the photography bug might pull me out there again, Prairie isn’t looking forward to it like she used to. It’s hard for us to talk about our trip to Vegas without feeling uncomfortable, as that trip was, in large part, supposed to be something of a “last hurrah” trip before Xebeth was going to be unable to travel any more.
I’ve always been an incorrigible flirt, and, while Prairie isn’t as into the club scene as I am, she’s never had any issues sending me off to bounce around and have fun, returning home later on to tell her tales of who I ran into, which girls (or guys, this being Seattle) inquired about my kilt, and other such sillinesses. Now, when I go out, I find myself second-guessing my interactions with my friends, and the “guess what happened tonight” stories aren’t as entertaining anymore. The trust in each other is still as strong as it ever was, but the trust in other people isn’t what it once was.
Rather sad how it only takes one psychotically self-absorbed pathological liar to destroy your faith in people.
So, if there’s ever any question as to why I’m not as talkative here as I used to be, why I don’t relate as much of my life as I used to, why we don’t go out and interact with people like we used to, and why we spend so much time solely with each other — it’s simply because right now, we’re the only people we can really trust.
The next step, then — and this is a large part of why we’re making this post (I wrote it, and Prairie’s read it) and putting all of this out in the public eye — is to get past this and to start rebuilding what we’ve lost in our relationships, with each other and with other people. It’s not likely to be an easy or particularly fast process, but it’s a road we need to take. We’re starting out on our own, and the conversations we’ve had over the past days are a big step (it’s something of a cliché, but recognizing an issue really is the first step), but it’s a start.
We don’t want to hate the world. We’ve just been running out of reasons not to.
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