"can i get a pizza?"
"sure. it's $8.00."
"a large one?"
"yup."

*pause*

"is it on sale?"
"you don't watch much tv, do you?"

so, i don't know if my mail dude was trying to do me a favour or trying to piss me off and i'm consequently torn as to how to react. the package got here, but through a difficult route - and unsigned, when i was supposed to sign. that works out to my benefit, but it's more future packages i'm concerned about.

right now, i'm almost afraid to open it.

i'm going to probably walk down to the post office and ask them if they can automatically hold items to this address. there's no way anybody can contact me down here without prior consent, which is on purpose and not going to change. i'd rather they hold items there to begin with, and just send me an email to get me to pick it up. it removes a set of hands from the chain.

so, here's the story...

first, the crux of this is that i've made myself difficult to contact on purpose for many years - as long as i've lived on my own, basically. people coming to my old apartment would complain i was unlisted and they had to use their cell, but this was no accident. what a lot of them didn't realize was that i wasn't just unlisted; the buzzer actually wasn't set up. there was literally no way for anybody to contact me from the intercom.

and who uses the intercom? jehovah's witnesses. rogers. vacuum cleaner salespeople. mary kay. politicians. kids with fundraisers. people i don't want to talk to...

there's no intercom here. yet, when i moved down here, i took the doorbell out. it's for the same reasons: i do not want random people to be able to bother me.

you can agree with me by emulating me. it might get rid of some of the door-to-door type if more people adopted this method.

pretty much the one casualty of this is the mail dude, who drops off packages from time to time. yet, it's generally far too infrequently for it to justify being annoyed by children and religious idiots. i'm perfectly happy with going down to the post office and getting it myself. as mentioned, that prevents the unnecessary risk stemming from the mail dude handling it.

however, i happened to encounter him on my front step a few weeks ago and he wasn't very happy with my attitude. he asked if there was another bell to ring, because mine didn't work - i had to tell him i don't want it to work. so, he asked me for a phone number. right, like i want to give a random stranger my phone number (and i actually don't have one, anyways). i told him i'd rather he just leave the slip in the box. he was both confused and upset...

see, the mail people in canada are coming up against some possible extreme layoffs. looking at the government's plan, it almost seems like a scheme to make the mailboxes smaller and force more expensive courier options; what they're doing isn't going to eliminate carriers, it's just going to make the process more expensive. private carriers win, everybody else loses. no surprises, here - it's been the trajectory of government for decades.

however, i happen to be the type of ("real") anarchist that is opposed to frivolous work, and i'm not sure how anybody could argue that delivering mail is less frivolous than working a cash register. it's a job i don't think should exist; it squanders resources i think could be better applied elsewhere. if i can walk to the post office, why can't everybody else? so, i wouldn't be particularly upset about layoffs, and am not particularly empathetic to this guy's snarky reaction to my request to leave it in the box.

the key question: did he pick up that i didn't care about his job?

i had a package arrive this morning that required a signature. strangely, it ended up down the street, left without a signature. i only know this because of the kindness of the neighbour who brought it to me, and was able to contact me by knocking on my landlord's door.

on first glance, it seems obvious that the mail dude is being an ass, here.

however, given that he knew i don't answer the door, he may have thought he was saving me a trip.

i actually don't appreciate that. but i'd rather talk it through than write him up. well, unless he's looking for severance, i guess. but i can't reasonably make any of these assumptions.

so, i think the best thing to do is determine if i can get the post office to hold items and email me for pickup when they come in.

the device is apparently undamaged. and, in truth, with the way it was packaged, it would have been hard to damage it.

oddly, the canada post tracking site continues to state that the item is "out for delivery". i'm going to let this run through the system and see what happens. if it works properly, i should get a refund. and maybe i deserve one. i'll give it a few days....

wooo!

2014/04/14 23:36 MISSISSAUGA Item processed

so, i'm thinking tomorrow or the next day.

meaning that i may not end up getting any work done on this old laptop, after all. but it's now fully loaded.

including this neat, fairly new little trick regarding playing direct into midi. always wanted something like that...

(i knew this was going to happen, btw. lol.)

actually, i took advantage of the snow by going for a long, brisk walk. 'twas nice.

i just took a hot shower. it seems to have warmed up the whole apartment. let's see how long it lasts.

of course, it warmed me up too!

but the heat went up a few tenths of a degree and turned itself off. that's measurable.

if i'm understanding what's happening properly, the air should suck that extra heat and moisture up and out. eventually...

yeah. heat's back on, and that cold, dry air is back. hour, tops.

i can't really complain about the air upstairs today. it's almost 30 outside, with the humidex. and, yes, we have a humidex, which is weird this time of year, even if not coming out of a brutal winter. so, it's reasonable to have the air on.

but maybe not so high. it's more than a bit odd to have it be 25 degrees outside and have my heaters (set to 21) on. not a bit, but half-blast. that's independent corroboration, really. what it demonstrates is that the air conditioning is making the basement colder than room temperature. otherwise, the heat wouldn't be kicking in. but what's worthwhile is that that's an objective standard - lower than 21 is lower than normal, and justification to push back.

it's partly because it's early in the year, though. i remember the thermostat reading 26 when i moved in. it'll warm up over the summer. for now, i've just got the windows open.
see, even if it does warm up, though, that doesn't mean i'm going to want to keep the windows closed. it's not just the temperature, it's also the air quality. air conditioning makes the air so unnaturally dry. i really prefer that hot, moist natural summer air. a natural breeze is infinitely superior to a machine vortex (on a different floor at that).

but i'm a little worried about how that's actually going to work. it's going to rain sometimes. i'm in a basement (also note - i haven't seen any ants since the first week i moved in, but an open window is an invitation), so i'm going to have to close it sometimes. if i keep the window open and let the breeze run through, is that going to put the air upstairs on higher power? i mean, that it's working at all down here suggests it's sucking up air through the floor. is it just going to turn itself up higher to suck more? if it does, it could just make it worse in the end, especially in rain situations.

on that note, my best tactic may be to try and crash it. that happens, right? it overheats, or something? if i just blare all the heat i can muster, i could conceivably overdrive it...

i'm not really considering that right now, it's just an idea. a last resort. i get that the guy upstairs would be in considerable discomfort if i were to crash his air (he's a big guy). right now, it's just a combination of unusual factors. i'm going to assume things will right themselves as the basement slowly warms up.

there's probably some kind of equilibrium point, where very small amounts of heat will warm it up a little bit, a little more may actually make it colder in here, and large amounts will overpower. i'd probably have to get that information empirically.

i didn't realize that my bus pirate was being shipped from asia. i'm pretty sure that the website was registered to chicago. i would have picked somewhere closer, if i realized that.

as far as i can tell, it's sitting in a boat off the coast of singapore, waiting to be filled up with mail.
and it could be there for weeks...

so, i'm considering converting the laptop, which is what i'll have to do if the bus pirate doesn't work anyways. i'm going to do some reading and decide in a few days.

i don't see any rational reason that this couldn't handle a firewire device. i just really don't like the idea of mixing with a laptop sound card. ugh...

but, at least if i get the tracks down, i can remix it later.

well, i got the ram updated in my old pc from 640mb to 1gb, which cost me $12. 1 gb is the max the board can take (this thing is ooooold). i haven't re-installed my sleek image yet, but it's definitely faster just browsing through the desktop. i have a usb 2.0 card (yes, the ports are 1.1, it's that old) coming for $10. i'll eventually have to replace the hard drive (mechanical parts, *will* eventually die), but this old clunker is otherwise absolutely maxed out.

the guy that sold it to me jerked out, though. he said he'd sell the 256 sticks for $4 each or give me 5 for $12. well, it's no brainer. i was expecting at least one of them wouldn't work, and sure enough one of them doesn't. but, within the 5 sticks are 2 64s. so, i got 2 working 256s, a broken 256 and two working 64s. well, i would have paid $6 a stick (that's still stupidly cheap), but if you're going to sell them at $4 a piece (and having one that doesn't work is a reasonable chance one takes when buying 15 year old ram from kijiji), why bother basically giving me two 64s for free? why not just tell me you only had 3 in the first place?

i'm going to hope he made an honest error on that, cause it doesn't otherwise make sense to me.

...not like i have any use for two sticks of 64-mb sdram.