Over the past six weeks or so, I’ve been playing a very long, very slow game of chess with the founder of the company I work with. He has a chessboard in his office, you see, and while I was in his office one day talking to him, I moved p-k4. He responded a few days later.
He’s not usually in Atlanta. Typically, he spends four or five days up here and the res of his time down in Florida. For the past few weeks, he’s been making a move each time he comes up for a visit, and I’ve been answering after he leaves. I’m playing a very conservative game; I have no idea how strong a player he is, but his opening defense (Sicilian) shows that at the very least he has studied the game to some extent.
I fully expect him to well and truly kick my ass; the man is brilliant, and if he’s as good at chess as he is at everything else he’s studied, he will probably be a formidable player indeed. Time will tell.
Though I didn’t come here to talk about chess. I came here to talk about moving.
Yes, I am moving. I’ve found another apartment about ten minutes from my current one, which is the same size and considerably cheaper. It’s also laid out very differently–tiny bedroom (which is totally dominated by my enormous cast-iron king-sized canopy bed), huge living room. The huge living room is a nice feature. I have a loft, and until now my computer desk has been beneath the loft. The new living room is large enough for me to put the computer desk next to the loft, which opens the possibility of doing suspension bondage beneath the loft–something that joreth has been interested in pursuing lately.
But, during this move, I violated my own prime and hard-won lesson: I rented from U-Haul.
U-haul sucks. You know U-Haul sucks. I know U-Haul sucks. But planning is not in my nature, and when I found myself with a very short time in which to procure a truck, I chose the path of least resistance (hah!) and rented a truck from U-Haul.
Now, I’m used to U-Haul’s cumbersome rental procedures, their overpriced moving supplies, and their creaky and oft poorly-maintained trucks. What I was not prepared for, however, was the accelerator cable to snap off the gas pedal while I was backing the truck into the new apartment, nor for the screw holding the gas pedal to just kind of cease to do its job. One does not, gentle reader, normally expect to step on the gas in a motor vehicle and have the gas pedal just fall off beneath one’s foot and start flopping around in the footwell.
Of course, thanks to aforementioned inability to plan my way out of a paper bag, I was doing this at roughly midnight-thirty Eastern time, when (a) U-Haul is not readily and speedily available and (b) it’s dark. Nor did I have a flashlight handy, which meant that (a) I had to fix the truck myself (b) in the dark.
It’s a good thing I rock like a rocky thing, else I’d likely still be there.
I was not able to move everything from the old place to the new, though the big stuff requiring the use of a truck was finished. That means that I am looking pretty for actually finishing the move, as I have until Wednesday to be completely cleared out of the old place.
And that brings us back to chess.
I expect the company’s founder to make a move today r tomorrow, to answer the one I recently made. The reason I expect this is that all the company’s principles will be in Atlanta tomorrow, for a very large meeting with certain Unnamed Persons upon which, I am gravely told, The Future Of The Company May Rest. This meeting requires a great deal of work on my part, as I will be doing the materials which will be presented.
“Franklin,” I was told not half an hour ago, “eat lunch late tomorrow. For the rest of the week, be prepared to be at the office until Unreasonably Late.”
Which poses a bit of a dilemma, as you might imagine. You see, among the week’s activities must be Moving The Rest Of My Shit and Cleaning Of The Old Apartment. Which I will, apparently, be able to do only between the hours of O’Fuck Thirty and O’Fuck Forty in the AM, over the next couple of days.
You know what I like about Fate?
That’s not a rhetorical question. If anyone can think of a thing I like about Fate, I’d love to hear it, ’cause I’m kinda drawing a blank here.
I slept at the new apartment last night. This morning, I got up bright (hah!) and early this morning to find that the pilot light in my gas water heater had mysteriously been snuffed out, and I had no hot water.
It’s gonna be that kind of week. I want pie.
You totally deserve pie.
I’m pretty mediocre at chess, but I can’t shake the feeling that the Sicilian is just a less aggressive little brother to Caro-Kann. *shrug*
You totally deserve pie.
I’m pretty mediocre at chess, but I can’t shake the feeling that the Sicilian is just a less aggressive little brother to Caro-Kann. *shrug*
Ah yes, the perils of moving with a rental truck! Years ago, we drove a Ryder truck – a big one – towing one of our cars all the way from Virginia to Seattle. M. was driving the truck and I was following behind in our van.
Somewhere in the middle of the night amidst the cornfields of Illinois, flames started shooting from under the truck ahead of me, and then the muffler assembly fell off and sparked across the freeway.
As we were trying to figure out what happened, our cat decided he’d had enough traveling and jumped right out of his harness and leash and tore off into the field next to the freeway! I don’t remember how we managed to get him back……
On our next scheduled stop in Minneapolis to visit family and pick up some more stored shit to bring back to Seattle, the engine caught fire as M’s dad was driving it to the storage place. Fortunately he was near a gas station and they came running out with fire extinguishers. Turns out the block was cracked.
They gave us another truck, but we had to unload and re-load it ourselves. The drive out to Seattle was a bit nerve-wracking to say the least, and we don’t rent moving vehicles anymore if we can possibly avoid it!
Ah yes, the perils of moving with a rental truck! Years ago, we drove a Ryder truck – a big one – towing one of our cars all the way from Virginia to Seattle. M. was driving the truck and I was following behind in our van.
Somewhere in the middle of the night amidst the cornfields of Illinois, flames started shooting from under the truck ahead of me, and then the muffler assembly fell off and sparked across the freeway.
As we were trying to figure out what happened, our cat decided he’d had enough traveling and jumped right out of his harness and leash and tore off into the field next to the freeway! I don’t remember how we managed to get him back……
On our next scheduled stop in Minneapolis to visit family and pick up some more stored shit to bring back to Seattle, the engine caught fire as M’s dad was driving it to the storage place. Fortunately he was near a gas station and they came running out with fire extinguishers. Turns out the block was cracked.
They gave us another truck, but we had to unload and re-load it ourselves. The drive out to Seattle was a bit nerve-wracking to say the least, and we don’t rent moving vehicles anymore if we can possibly avoid it!
You do rock, and I bet it’s not only at late-night mechanical fixes.
You do rock, and I bet it’s not only at late-night mechanical fixes.
Dude, I’d be jealous at Fate’s interest in you, but for two things:
1) He’s totally straight
and
2) I’ve had enough run-ins with fate to know that, what you got, I do not want! Fate’s attention is a bitch!
Hugs! If I wasn’t so far away, I’d offer to help (or, ya know, if I’d known yesterday…)
Best of luck with the rest of your week!
Dude, I’d be jealous at Fate’s interest in you, but for two things:
1) He’s totally straight
and
2) I’ve had enough run-ins with fate to know that, what you got, I do not want! Fate’s attention is a bitch!
Hugs! If I wasn’t so far away, I’d offer to help (or, ya know, if I’d known yesterday…)
Best of luck with the rest of your week!
Wow! That completely sucks! I’m quite glad that you haven’t inadvertently run yourself over or driven the truck into your new home.
As much as I sympathize with your suffering, I can’t help but chuckle at the telling of it.
BTW, this is. I’m posting anonymously because I’m reading LJ via one of your robot assassins. I don’t mean to dump on your already bad week, but shame on you for leaving unnecessary services running on your death machines!
Damn it! Damn it! I knew that saving maintenance and development costs by running Windows for Warlords rather than developing a custom Linux solution would come back to bite me in the ass! It looked to good to be true, but Ballmer’s PowerPoint presentations were so compelling!
Curse you, Redmond! I will have my revenge!!!
You can get everything you need in ready-to-run binaries from http://deathmachine.sourceforge.net. The utilities are great, fully scriptable, and have such a small footprint that run acceptably on anything from a 680×0 or 386 on up! I’ve
slaughtered countless unsuspecting peasantsrun many successful tests on my old beta WarDroid, and that was running a modest 486 with the gun turret controls and optics sharing a single ISA interface.On modern hardware it’s positively ruthless!
Holy Zarquon, what was I thinking giving killer robot advice to my arch-nemesis!! *sigh* Now I’ll have to scrub the internet of all traces of that sourceforge project and terminate the entire dev team. Such a waste… Ah well, by the time you read this it’ll all be gone.
At least the folks at archive.org have learned not to try to interfere with my “corrections” to their data.
Wow! That completely sucks! I’m quite glad that you haven’t inadvertently run yourself over or driven the truck into your new home.
As much as I sympathize with your suffering, I can’t help but chuckle at the telling of it.
BTW, this is. I’m posting anonymously because I’m reading LJ via one of your robot assassins. I don’t mean to dump on your already bad week, but shame on you for leaving unnecessary services running on your death machines!
U-haul sucks.
This is why, after only one experience, I broke down and bought myself a trailer. . . It’s rather disheartening to place a reservation in early July to pick up a trailer in early August, only to show up in early August and hear, “Oh, we just rented our last trailer to a walk-in. Come back tomorrow, and we might have something.”
U-haul sucks.
This is why, after only one experience, I broke down and bought myself a trailer. . . It’s rather disheartening to place a reservation in early July to pick up a trailer in early August, only to show up in early August and hear, “Oh, we just rented our last trailer to a walk-in. Come back tomorrow, and we might have something.”
go buy yourself a pie on the way to work one day.
go buy yourself a pie on the way to work one day.
Yay! Suspension bondage! *bounce bounce*
Suck about all the rest of the stuff! Sorry to hear about that sweetie š wish I could be there to help!
Yay! Suspension bondage! *bounce bounce*
Suck about all the rest of the stuff! Sorry to hear about that sweetie š wish I could be there to help!
Damn it! Damn it! I knew that saving maintenance and development costs by running Windows for Warlords rather than developing a custom Linux solution would come back to bite me in the ass! It looked to good to be true, but Ballmer’s PowerPoint presentations were so compelling!
Curse you, Redmond! I will have my revenge!!!
You can get everything you need in ready-to-run binaries from http://deathmachine.sourceforge.net. The utilities are great, fully scriptable, and have such a small footprint that run acceptably on anything from a 680×0 or 386 on up! I’ve
slaughtered countless unsuspecting peasantsrun many successful tests on my old beta WarDroid, and that was running a modest 486 with the gun turret controls and optics sharing a single ISA interface.On modern hardware it’s positively ruthless!
Holy Zarquon, what was I thinking giving killer robot advice to my arch-nemesis!! *sigh* Now I’ll have to scrub the internet of all traces of that sourceforge project and terminate the entire dev team. Such a waste… Ah well, by the time you read this it’ll all be gone.
At least the folks at archive.org have learned not to try to interfere with my “corrections” to their data.
Hi, I found your journal via the polyamory group, and friended you. Would you like to friend me back?
Anita
Howdy, and welcome aboard!
Hi, I found your journal via the polyamory group, and friended you. Would you like to friend me back?
Anita
Howdy, and welcome aboard!