finally ready to get started on finishing my discography

did it really take two weeks to finish scripting and installing and organizing my recording pc? well, it's something i had put off. now's a good a time as any to finally do it. and it's finally done.

and i've been thinking.

i spent so long trying to scheme up a way to get myself in a position where i can basically just do what i want that, now that it's here, i'm sort of dumbfounded by it. how long is this going to last for? how long  will it take to recreate these conditions if the shit hits the fan at some point?

i think i'm safe for at least a year, anyways. after that, i don't know. i'd better make the most of it.

it's strange that all this feeling of something new has given way to focusing on the end. morbid as always, jess. you get a new start on life and you're just obsessed with preparing for your own death. congratulations on missing the point. really.

....but the blunt truth is that i'm not going to get a third chance to get my recordings finished. if or when i end up back on the street again, there's not going to be anywhere to store my belongings. nor am i likely to find a way to repurchase them.

so, i'm finding myself in the mental state of absolutely needing to get all of the things i was supposed to do one day done *now*, as though there is no future left to plan for to do them in.

i've got a year of nothing but time, let's see what i can get done.

there's just so many half finished things. i'm going to start from the beginning. so, first up? listening to demos i recorded when i was fifteen and laughing at myself....

i'm supposed to be mad at teksavvy, but i'm seeing through it and am pissed at cogeco - double for trying to get me pissed at teksavvy.

basically, cogeco just didn't respond to the request for a hookup. so i got stuck at the end of the queue. this has been happening to other people. it's a conscious attempt by the companies that own the lines to coerce customers back into their arms.

the telecommunications situation in canada is pretty awful and i think just about everybody realizes it. the predictable response is for greater markets. more competition. well, if it wasn't for these other companies, i wouldn't be getting a better deal, right? i'd be stuck overpaying cogeco for shitty access, right? hooray for markets, right? let's open it up further. more competition will bring the price down...

ugh. idiots.

i think we can all agree that the problem is the oligopoly that exists, but what seems to fly over people's heads is that the problem is rooted in private ownership of the lines. you can open up the market forever, create infinitely many service providers, but if the lines remain under the ownership of a single company then there's nothing that can be done to resolve the price gouging. the infrastructure is inherently monopolistic.

i don't need to go very far left to get a reasonable answer. none other than that paragon of liberal free market theory, adam smith, was well aware that some services cannot operate under a market. forget about whether or not markets work (of course, they don't). markets in certain things are impossible. roads, for example. liberals once included power generation and phone lines in this list. you can add cable lines in. there's going to be a monopoly, whether market fundamentalists like it or not. the choice is between a public and a private monopoly.

we should really be thinking of cable lines the same way we think of roads. they should be publicly owned and administered through taxation. this would actually succeed in bringing the price down by cutting out the profit motive.

so, i'm hereby calling for the nationalization of the cable system.

Re: [Ticket#2013090510064962] Payment instructions

From: Accounting Department <accounting@teksavvy.com>
To: death.to.koalas@gmail.com

Hello,

Unfortunately with the Roger's technicians if the call is not answered they do not show up to the appointment. You will need to advise your grandmother of the date of install and advise her to answer any call that comes in on that day or provide us with an alternate number you will be reached at.

Thanks for choosing TekSavvy and please don't hesitate to email us back or give us a call at the number below!

Re: [Ticket#2013090510064962] Payment instructions

From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: Accounting Department <accounting@teksavvy.com>

hi.

the hookup should happen tomorrow. i just reviewed the email that was sent, and it notes that somebody has to answer the phone. i don't actually currently have a phone that i can be reached it in real time. the number that was given is my grandmother's number in ottawa, which is where i was staying before i recently moved to windsor. i gave that number because you required one. certainly, she can email if you leave her a message, but i can't guarantee that she'll answer the phone when somebody calls. however, i can guarantee that i will be on location, waiting for the hookup person.

jessica

TekSavvy Order Confirmation

From: <support@teksavvy.com>
To: <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>

Thank you for choosing TekSavvy for your Internet needs!

TekSavvy Solutions, Inc. : Account Information

Your preferred language: English
Your preferred daytime contact telephone number:

On the date of activation we require that someone be onsite, and able to answer the technicians confirmation call to the telephone number above (typically approximately 30 minutes before arrival). Failure to answer this call may result in your order being rescheduled. Someone 18 years or older must be present at your location for the dispatch.

Please be advised that TekSavvy and/or Cogeco are not responsible for any wiring past your cable jack/wall outlet.

Your first bill was processed today, and your monthly prepaid billing date from now on will be on the 20 of each month, starting in October.  Please see below for a detailed list of the first month charges.

Your TekSavvy Cable 6 Lite service is set to be tentatively activated on 25-09-2013.  Please note that your activation date could be delayed up to 10 business days due to unanticipated circumstances. You should expect a follow-up email confirming the appointment time.  If you have not received this email 48 hours prior to your first appointment choice, please contact us as soon as possible so that we may investigate.

You have 75 GB of data transfer (bandwidth) included with your account.  This includes both upload and download.

Please save this order confirmation email. If you see something incorrect and need to make a change, please contact our customer service department at 1-877-779-1575 immediately. Failure to advise us of the corrections 2 business days prior to the activation date may result in delays or additional fees.

Your Account # is:

Total charges for the first month

Shipping - Canada Post: $10.00
Activation Discount: -$20.00
Activation fee: $44.95
Modem: $99.00
Cable 6 Lite: $24.95
Subtotal: $158.90
ON HST:$20.66
Total: $179.56

We would appreciate if you could verify the information on this order by clicking below. You will be redirected to our confirmation system. Once your order is confirmed we will not need to contact you and as such if you have any problems or concerns you will need to communicate with us to make us aware of the problem.

Click To Confirm

ok, so i've been going to the same handful of places for a month, and i'm starting to notice people eyeing me. i've had a few interesting responses from men. here's one...

"hey sweetheart can i borrow your.....oh, sorry dude, i thought you were a chick. haha. can i borrow your lighter, man?"
"actually, you were sort of..."
"sorry about that. can't believe i thought you were a chick, hahaha."

ugh.

that, i can sort of shrug off. ultimately, i don't really care. more annoying is getting the eye from women. on the one hand, i'm sort of used to that. on the other, i feel the need to say something.

trans people come in all different types. the stereotype of the gay male transvestite, though, is largely...well, i suppose it applies ok to gay men that like to dress up "like women" at bars, as though they're going to a costume party. it doesn't, however, apply well to people that identify as transgendered 24/7. we come in different types, but the statistical norm for trans-women is actually a very socially submissive personality type that is almost the opposite of aggressive flamboyancy.

it's ok if you think a trans person is cute, but giving them the eye that you give guys at bars is actually borderline oppressive, as it asserts a gender role from a distance. it sends a message of "i see through your disguise, and think you're a cute boy and want you to come to talk to me".

again, it's ok if you think a trans person is cute, but please try to be a little more thoughtful. i'm a very friendly and approachable person, but this heteronormative eye contact shit is not a game i want to play.

screwing in the other l-brackets

screwing in the l-brackets and putting the fan up

surplus wood cut to scale for the corner

Re: Payment instructions

From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: accounting@teksavvy.com

hi, this is the confirmation number.

****************

Payment instructions

From: accounting@teksavvy.com
To: death.to.koalas@gmail.com

We have received your order; thank you for thinking of us.

As stated at time of registration, we are a prepaid service and we require confirmation of payment before we can process your order.

To make an online or telephone banking payment:

1. Add Teksavvy Solutions Inc as a new payee account to your bank
2. Add your account number:  *******
3. Total amount due: $179.56
4. After you make the payment, obtain the confirmation number from the payment
5. Call Teksavvy with the confirmation number 1-877-779-1575, or reply back to this email.

Orders are held in our system for 48 hours.  After that time the order is cancelled, and the process will need to be started over.

improvised early morning meal: peaches + chocolate soy milk

i just ordered it this morning; i have been connecting through fast food outlets for a month and will have to continue doing so until the 25th. i ended up going with 6, for $24.95, through teksavvy. it is a little odd that they have stable pricing through ontario whereas everybody else has a higher cost in the cogeco areas so i was a little skeptical last night that what they had on their web site was actually accurate. it is, indeed, a stable price across the province, though.

$25 is actually pretty cheap. and i do not like being rationed, but 75 GB is about twice what i will use in an average month, so i had to crack on that....

wow. cogeco is worse than rogers. i did not think it was possible to be worse than rogers.

one bad thing about windsor is that the internet is expensive. there may be some rumours about bad infrastructure, but i am not really buying it. it just seems to be that cogeco is charging independent isps more than rogers is for the use of their lines. of course, i insist upon an independent isp due to usage limits. i may rarely go over 35 gb, but i just resent being rationed.

some evidence: consider vmedia, which offers services in areas where both rogers and cogeco own the lines. for some reason, the cogeco areas are both substantially more expensive and substantially slower. because windsor is more affluent than toronto, i suppose. right. it just appears to be simple price gouging by cogeco for the purposes of dissuading competition. somebody send the anti-competition board after the fuckers...

it appears like i am going to have to resort to a dsl line at under 10 mbps. of course, reality is that 98% of web pages only let you download at a fraction of that, anyways. nowadays, download speed is determined more by the server you are downloading from than it is by your connection speed. you are rarely going to get even close to 500 K, let alone 750, from much of anywhere except google and netflix. torrent speed only comes close to that when downloading top 40 shit. so, 8 or even 6 mbps is more than sufficient for most people. unless you happen to be connecting to game servers, or you want to watch tv online, or are renting out the service to everybody on your block, there is little reason to pay for more than that, anyways. the entire pricing scheme they have set up is really just a scam to take advantage of people. i mean, they have a plan at 300 mbps. lol. come on. who do you think you are downloading from at that speed....

still, the obvious gouging is obvious and i am sort of irked.

the real reason they push these absurd speeds that nobody can really ever use is to sucker people into their lower speeds, which are really no less ridiculous. if you tell somebody that they have the option between 10, 20, 25, and 50 then people will tend to go with 20 or 25 because it is the goldilocks option. they may not need the fastest, but they do not want to settle for the lowest. if you add 100, 150, 200 and 300, people will go with 50 or 100. of course, most of these people will not need more than 10 - 20 would be overpaying in most cases. but by adding more expensive items in and providing more options you can bill them twice as much at no higher of a business cost.

the root problem here is that people just do not understand what it is that they are paying for.

 it would be nice if that drove the lower speeds down in price, but there goes market theory not working once again. instead, they will slowly creep up - you can get 50 instead of 25 for *only* an extra $4 per month! well, until those options disappear altogether and the price just shifts up.

conclusion: fuck pointless advances in technology. higher costs at no real advantage. i would rather we stagnate a bit, thanks.

new facecloth holder

new kitchen items

well, it took a month for the finality of the shift to really assert itself, but it's finally sinking in. i am now living in windsor, ten hours from....

...well, from what, exactly? memories, most of them not so good.

i'm an introvert. i suppose not all introverts have strong social problems, but i'm one of the ones that does. in the months leading up to my departure, i was behaving in a way that was unusually social. i've been through multiple brief periods of existing within a social group, but it's definitely not the norm for me. the norm for me has been having one or two close friends and no acquaintances except the friends of those friends, really often even having nobody i could call a friend, and going through periods of weeks or even months without engaging in any kind of social interaction, or even engaging in any kind of actual conversation with anybody except my father. my real friends have usually been books, cds and names that exist only on a computer screen.

i remember one period around '09 or so when my dad and i weren't talking. i was in school at the time. i went in to talk to a prof and was stuttering so hard he asked me if i was

"on drugs...or..."

*brief pause*

"...do you have MS?".

in actuality, i just hadn't spoken a word to anybody in something like three weeks and was having difficulty with my vocal muscles. i'm expecting the stutter to return over the next few months...

i've posted a ton of pictures of things i'm doing in my place, but what's windsor actually like? from the perspective of an outcast by choice, a hermit, windsor is really not a lot different than ottawa. i kind of feel like i'm living off bronson, because the sewers are being replaced on wyandotte. oddly, the next major street running parallel is the italian district - preston. and i'm surrounded by arabic and east asian businesses.

when i need to take the bus somewhere, i take the 2. fancy that.

so, life actually hasn't changed much at all. really, it's the similarities that are more jarring than the differences.

there's a large river a few blocks north, a bike path that runs across it and a city with a different culture on the other side of it. i haven't been over yet.

a lot of the shops are boarded up along a few of the main streets. but, really the only businesses that exist are restaurants, pawn shops, beauty salons (there's an absurd amount of them) and speciality grocery stores. all of the bigger stores are located in the suburbs. like, there's no mall downtown sort of thing. right now, that's been annoying as i've needed things like coffee makers and had to take the bus way out to get them, but as i settle in i think i'll get used to that. i'm not a mall person, anyways.

almost everybody under 40 is either a hip-hop kid or a punk, so i look a little out of place (although i'm not actually). the frequency of large, attack type dogs is a little unsettling.....but i suppose it's connected to a deficit of pigs, so maybe i shouldn't complain. scooters and bicycles are both very popular here, which gives the city a sort of a late 50s feel. how much that may be connected to the area's punk, garage, mod legacy? i don't know. it's quite normal to walk down the street and experience the smell of marijuana coming from several different houses at the same time.

safety? i think i'm ok. there's one house a few blocks up that i got some gross stares from, but then their parents came home and that stopped. kids that think violence is cool can and does happen anywhere. where i grew up, there was a street where average annual income jumped abut $150,000 and it was the rich kids that were more dangerous than the poor ones.

here's an interesting quote: "can you answer me a question? why is it that you sound like a man, and look like a sexy woman?". i was getting trolled, actually.

so, those are the differences.

from where i'm going to be spending the vast majority of my time, though, it doesn't matter very much. to me, the only substantial difference is the cost of rent.

with that, i'll stop posting about the move. well, i have a lot of little things to build, still. but i feel the transition period is over.

...and in more than one way. the last month has seen the end of two years of no fixed address, two years of my dad fighting cancer and two years of occupy-related correspondence.

today is also three years on hormones.

it all ended just as abruptly as it started. i'll probably look back on this period as the worst period of my life, but also as a sort of a portal from one phase of existence to another.

tomorrow starts right now.