when i found my apartment two years ago, it was a pretty good deal. since then, i’ve seen friends and coworkers find better apartments in the same neighborhood for less money.

so, when my friend julintip dropped out of law school and moved back to new york, looking for something in the columbia area for not too much money, we decided we’d pool our resources and look for a two bedroom place together.

we spent about two weeks scouring the columbia off-campus housing database, papers, and craigslist. we checked out a whole bunch of places and dealt with a bunch of slimy real-estate brokers in our search. we even put in an application for one halfway decent apartment. fortunately, while we were waiting for paperwork to go through on that one, i spotted an interesting listing on craigslist and went and checked it out. the apartment was beyond all my expectations and we acted quickly.

on 110th and central park west in a doorman building with a fenced in courtyard, laundry rooms, bike room, elevators, and a trash chute. the apartment is large, attractive, has a nice southern view with a lot of light, 1 and 1/2 baths, a dishwasher and air conditioners. it even came partially furnished. and my half of the rent (with gas and electric included) is about $250 less than what i was paying for my old apartment. there was no broker involved, so no enormous broker’s fee either.

signed the lease last friday and moved in on saturday. well, kinda…

i decided that since i now have furniture and i wasn’t going to have to pay a broker’s fee like i expected, that i might as well hire movers to do the move for me. i figured that it would make things less complex.

wrong.

the new place has restrictions on when deliveries can be made and when movers can operate. they only allow movers in between 9am and 5pm (although, they’re reasonably flexible and moving before 6 really wouldn’t be much of a problem). this should have been ok. the moving company i hired was scheduled to show up at my old place at 4pm. with an hour to load the truck, they would make it in without too much trouble.

at 4:30 the movers call me to let me know that they’re going to be a little late. i go talk to the doorman in the new building and tell him that they’ll be coming later than expected. he says that it shouldn’t be a problem.

the movers finally show up at 7pm. 3 hours late. lovely. they load the truck pretty quickly and we’re over at the new place by around 8pm. the doorman asks if we’re going to need to pad the elevator, i say, “yeah, i guess so”. he calls the super to send someone down to pad the elevator. the super says “nope. can’t move in this late. absolutely no way. come back between 9 and 5.”

there i am with absolutely everything i own from my bed all the way to my toothbrush on a truck and i can’t get it into my apartment. eventually we decide to just store it on the truck overnight and move it in first thing in the morning. being labor day weekend, the movers are booked solid, so they’re going to have to squeeze it in to an already filled schedule. and there will, of course, be extra fees involved.

saturday night i do not sleep a wink. everything i own is in limbo in the back of a truck parked god knows where. you wouldn’t sleep either.

sunday morning they show up with the truck right at 9. they start to bring things into the lobby and the doorman on duty stops us. apparently moves are actually only allowed on saturdays and wednesdays. shit. if we can’t unload the stuff right then, we’re all screwed. i don’t have anywhere else to put it since the lease is up on my old apartment. the movers are screwed because they’re already late for the next move they’re scheduled for and their truck is full of my stuff.

the super shows up and we talk to him for a while explaining the situation. finally, he shakes his head, says, “fine. just do it quickly.” and lets us in. he starts to call someone down to pad the elevator for us but then looks at my pile of stuff and decides that none of it is big enough to need that.

so 30 minute later, my stuff is all safely in my new apartment and i can finally exhale.

what i learned from this experience is that i really am a control freak. what bothered me most about the whole thing was not so much the general pain of it all, but that everything that was going wrong was completely out of my control. if i’d been moving things myself i could have made <em>sure</em> not to be late. but there was no way i could make the movers be on time.

now i am in my new apartment though. it is lovely indeed and the unpacking is going well. hopefully we will have a broadband connection up soon.

Terje Bess has <a href=”http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator/2003Aug/0105.html”>announced</a> a new <a href=”http://validator.w3.org:8001/“>beta version</a> of the venerable <a href=”http://validator.w3.org/“>w3c validator</a>.

the main improvements include more understandable, verbose error messages, and a ‘fussy mode’ that will warn about things that, while strictly legal, are known to cause problems in common browsers.

both are pretty cool. the improved error messages are <em>very</em> cool. the <a href=”http://www.webstandards.org/“>WaSP</a> is currently focusing on developer education about standards. one of the big hurdles developers have faced when trying to move to standards based markup is that you had to already be an HTML expert before some of the validator’s error messages made any sense. this change should go a long way toward fixing that and making it easier for developers to get started with standards.

if you have some free time, go <a href=”http://validator.w3.org:8001/“>test it out</a> or submit suggestions for further improvements to the error messages.

like probably most 20 something new yorkers, i went to the Björk concert on Coney Island last night.

it was fantastic.

it was actually my first time in a stadium. not being much of a sports fan, i've never been to a baseball game or anything. and with Björk being about as mainstream as my musical tastes go, i've never been to a big concert like that before. when i ordered the tickets back in may, it didn't occur to me that there would be anything besides General Admission and that that would really be preferable to seats way back in the stands. so i just selected 'best available' and took whatever ticketmaster gave me (which, of course, was way up in the stands).

luckily, keyspan park is pretty small as far as stadiums go. so even up in the stands wasn't too bad. we couldn't really make out much detail on the stage, but we could see Björk well enough to see her funny little dance moves. plus, i got to purchase a $5 budweiser in a plastic "anti-hooligan style" bottle.

the sound was ok too. not tremendously loud, but clear and well mixed.

Sigur Ros opened and they were good. i’d never heard them before; just knew that they were mellow and vaguely radiohead-esque and sing in a made up language. sure enough, they do sound quite a bit like recent radiohead though they have a couple songs that rock quite solidly.

immediately before Björk's set started, we were treated to a massive fireworks display. it was seriously impressive on its own. bigger than most 4th of july shows that i've seen. Björk was just spectacular. her voice sounded great live and she seemed to really be having fun performing. she played a lot of newer material off vespertine, selma songs, etc. throughout the show, there were more fireworks, timed to accent dramatic points in the songs. there were also two rows of torches along the front of the stage that would shoot out 5 or 6 foot jets of flame in synch with certain parts. i figured that with those in place, she would have no problems with stagedivers.

after the show, we all met up with jP and blair outside. that was kind of tricky because the sheer number of people with cell phones in such a small area was overwhelming the cell network and no one could really make any calls. luckily, SMS seemed to be unaffected. yay for SMS!

then six of us all piled ourselves into blair’s little VW Golf (four skinny-ass people in the back seat) and drove off.

So I decided to switch to linux from windows knowing absolutely nothing. I decided to keep a <a href=”http://www.livejournal.com/users/new_usr”>journal on my progress</a> so that computer geeks can either laugh at me or perhaps offer some insight or maybe even inspire some improvements.

lani and the <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/gerbils/“>gerbils</a> are safely in Austin. i’m back in nyc, and i assume tuck is back in new hampshire by now.

all in all, a fantastic road trip. it would take me hours to cover the whole thing, so you’ll have to settle for the abridged version here.

we packed up the car, picked up tuck’s visa downtown and left nyc around 13:00 on tuesday. after a brief stop at a waffle house for dinner, we got to anthony and heather’s place in chapel hill around 23:00. there we <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0430.jpg.html”>drank</a>, talked, and drank some more late into the night.

on wednesday, we slept it off until <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/“>early afternoon</a> and then hit the road again. we crossed north carolina, marvelled at the <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0438.jpg.html”>kudzu</a>, and then took a detour into the <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0439.jpg.html”>smoky mountains</a> right around <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0448.jpg.html”>dusk</a> . by the time we got across to Gatlinburg, TN, it was night. <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0458.jpg.html”>Dollywood</a> was closed so we could only drive by it.

lani’s friend <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0469.jpg.html”>Amy</a> lives in the remote little town of Elgin, TN, so we drove up there to crash at her place that night. again, we stayed up <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0472.jpg.html”>late</a> drinking, <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0470.jpg.html”>setting off fireworks</a>, and <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0473.jpg.html”>playing with her puppy</a>. in the <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0478.jpg.html”>morning</a>, we <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0481.jpg.html”>hit the post office</a> and then the road. soon, we found ourselves <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0482.jpg.html”>crossing</a> into the Central Time Zone.

we stopped off in <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0489.jpg.html”>nashville</a> long enough to get some lunch, check out the <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0487.jpg.html”>grand ole opry house</a>, and see the replica of the <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0495.jpg.html”>parthanon</a> that they have for some reason.

reached memphis that night. got a room in the Graceland Days Inn (100 yards from graceland). apparently august 16th is the anniversary of elvis dying on the toilet, so memphis was overrun by <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0500.jpg.html”>fans</a> and <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0498.jpg.html”>impersonators</a>. we went <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0501.jpg.html”>downtown</a>, got some grub, and walked down to <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0505.jpg.html”>the river</a>.

friday we drove through mississippi down to new orleans. mississippi is pretty unremarkable. flat. hot, and not much to see from the highway.

new orleans is fantastic though. beautiful architecture, giant cypress trees, weird palm trees, delicious spicy seafood, and filled with old cemeteries and ghost stories. these days, the city seems to be designed around mardi gras. it is absolutely filled with hotels (most of which are empty during the off season) and touristy shops. it seems to be perfectly legal to walk down the street with a cup of beer (everyone does), and bourbon street is like one giant frat party. i think i’d rather have tabasco sauce ground into my eyeballs than go to new orleans during mardi gras, but any other time of the year it is beautiful.

on saturday, we drove around the garden district looking for the cemeteries. since we hadn’t actually been smart enough to find addresses beforehand, it took us awhile. we did eventually run across Lafayette Cemetery #1. but it had closed an hour before. there was a bookstore next door so we went in and bought a map. we also learned that Anne Rice’s house was right down the street. with the help of our new map, we were able to track down the St. Louis Cemetery #1, which is one of the more famous ones in the city and holds the tomb of Marie Leveaux, the ‘Voodoo Queen’. unfortunately, that one also closed about 20 minute before we got there.

somewhat discouraged, we decided to just take off and head for texas. taking a southern route through the bayou, we followed tropical storm erika west. before sunset, we took a small detour to go check out the gulf of mexico. picking a spot on the map at random, we ended up going through a bunch of sugar plantations to the little port of Louisa. there we found a small state park with a beach. some kids were fishing for saltwater catfish, and the sun was just <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0568.jpg.html”>starting to set</a>. the air was so humid you could drink it, but it was gorgeous.

at that point the one tragedy of the trip occurred. my camera was starting to get full, so i went back through the old pictures looking for ones to delete to make some space. somehow, i managed to hit the wrong combination of buttons when i wasn’t paying close attention and deleted every picture on the camera in one move. i’d copied pictures over to a laptop a couple nights before in memphis, but everything since then, including all my pictures of new orleans and the bayou, were gone.

we stopped driving that night just inside texas in the town of Beaumont. the next morning, we got up early and kept going west through <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0574.jpg.html”>houston</a> and san antonio. we decided that since tuck had never been to mexico and might not have another chance, we should make a side-trip down to a border town. laredo was only a couple hours off our path, so off we went. since we had the gerbils with us and weren’t sure if they would cause any problems with crossing the border, we decided to just park the car on the US side and walk across a <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0582.jpg.html”>bridge </a> over the <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0583.jpg.html”>rio grande</a> to the mexican side. it was about what you’d expect from a mexican border-town. filled with street vendors all trying to sell the same touristy crap and people coming up to us seeing if we were interested in cheap prescription drugs. we wandered the streets for a bit, bought some tequila and turned around. getting into mexico involved paying a 50 cent toll. getting back into the US involved paying a 25 cent toll and showing some id to demonstrate that we were american. the customs guy said that we needed to pay some small taxes on the booze, but the booth where we were supposed to pay was empty, so we just walked past.

had some really bad burritos in san antonio and were finally in austin at around midnight. unloaded the car, met lani’s new housemates, slept a couple hours, and tuck and i were off to the airport to come home.

the south is very hot. especially texas. texas, i felt, was pushing the limits of where human beings could actually live without air conditioning. when you turn off the air conditioning in the car during the day, you can instantly feel the temperature climbing and it reaches unbearable levels in about 10 seconds. i will never complain about new york being hot again. i will also be somewhat less skeptical about reports of spontaneous human combustion, especially if those reports come from texas.

billboards in the bible belt are funny. the pattern basically goes: Christian Gift Store, <a href=”http://thraxil.org/images/2003/08/south/imgp0465.jpg.html”>Fireworks Store</a>, Bible Factory Outlet, Adult World XXX Superstore, “God’s Way is the highway”, Casino (in louisiana at least), Gun and Knife Show, Adult video and book store, Bible Factory Outlet, Discount Cigarettes and Liquor.

once in a blue moon, reading the comments on slashdot actually turns up something interesting.

like this gem which points to the SEC documents filed by SCO. reading through them is quite enlightening. in the last couple weeks, the top executives seem to have dumped a lot of their stock. isn't anyone in the government paying attention?

i'm beginning to agree more and more with Michael Crawford that we should put the SCO executives in prison for stock fraud and extortion.

i actually found myself implementing Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm in some code yesterday. imagine that. actually using something learned in a data structures and algorithms class for real-life, useful code.

if i get really ambitious, maybe i’ll throw in some Floyd-Warshall or Johnson all-pairs shortest path stuff. (though for now, iterated Dijkstra appears to be more than fast enough and isn’t even remotely the bottleneck in the code)

lani has decided to give up her glamorous temp job in NYC and go to grad school at UT Austin starting this fall.

while it will be sad for me to see her go, i can at least look forward to one thing: road trip.

in mid august, we’re taking a good 5 or 6 days and driving from NYC to Austin, Texas. we’ve enlisted Tuck to come along and help out with the driving (since i don’t really drive). the plan is to take our time and explore the interesting parts of the american southeast. definite stops for us are Memphis and New Orleans.

other than that, our plans are still pretty open-ended. none of us have really spent much time in the area so we don’t know what the cool places to see are. if you know of interesting sites that are roughly between new york and austin, please suggest them. are there any scenic roads that we should try to incorporate into our route? are there any areas that we should carefully avoid? any tips for yankees making it through the deep south without experiencing Deliverance first hand?

also, since none of us are terribly wealthy at the moment, we’d like to do this as cheaply as possible. a big chunk of our expenses will probably be hotels. unless we can find couches to crash on. we know people in richmond, va, and chapel hill, nc, but other than that we have no friends in the region. so if you know people who might let us sleep on their floor for a night, let us know that too.

tim bray <a href=”http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/26/NastyNeologo”>wonders about the origin of the word ‘frick’</a>:

Perhaps its an obvious variation of frigging, but one doesnt feel the need in the English-language ecosystem for such a variation, and words dont typically get any traction unless they meet some need, if only for novelty. Admittedly, in a spoken diatribe, fricking sounds a bit more percussive; is that enough? Interestingly, frigging is almost always slurred into friggin, while in fricking the -ing is sounded out fully.

i think it’s basically ‘frigging’ pronounced with a faux scottish accent. at least in my experience, it first came into popular use in the US in the early to mid 90’s because of the SNL skit with Mike Myers about the scottish store. you know, “we have three sizes: wee, not so wee, and FRICKIN HUGE!” it seems to have had a resurgence lately, i think because of the Austin Powers movies. so i think we can safely blame Mike Myers.

found a <a href=”http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/peoplestoryA1172A.htm”>fascinating article</a> about an ex-military satellite image specialist who thinks he’s spotted a brand new oil pipeline running from the fields in southern iraq out through kuwait.

at the end of the article, he also makes a couple interesting points about the importance of the weather on the sept. 11th attacks. i do remember noticing and discussing with coworkers that the weather that day was absolutely perfect. at the time it seemed tragically ironic that something so horrible could happen on such a beautiful day. if this guy’s right, it could <em>only</em> have happened on a beautiful day.