We have officially relinquished our keys to the old apartment managers which means we’re now out of the old and in to the new.

But as anyone who has moved can attest, that is only half the battle. The ceaseless work continues as we attempt to coordinate some kind of system that results in us not beginning every single conversation with the phrase, “Have you seen…?”

Not that progress hasn’t been made: The Ikea blitz has yielded plenty of usable furniture and our bedroom is more or less furnished and probably 95% unpacked (it was mostly clothes anyway which are sort of hard to go without for very long unless you belong to some sort of commune). I also was—finally—able to get the Internets piped into the new place and the important stuff like the TV, TiVo and XBox hooked up. It wasn’t easy.

Basically it required me to spend the entire afternoon yesterday on the phone with one tech support group or another, the net result of which was heightened agitation and nothing that really qualifies as “assistance.” The calls were all variations on the following theme:

Tech: Can I get your phone number to verify your account?
Me: <gives number>
Tech: That’s not pulling up your account.
Me: Can you look it up a different way?
Tech: Not really.
Me: Oh? Not even with my name and zip code? How many ‘Paul Hamiltons’ can there be in this town?
Tech: (sighing) Okay I’ll try it.
Me: <provides information>
Tech: That still doesn’t work. While I’m trying to access your account, what seems to be the problem?
Me: I’ve followed all the instructions carefully, checked my connections and read through your support docs. Can you give me some suggestions as to what I may be doing wrong?
Tech: Did you make sure the device was plugged in?
Me: Don’t start with me.
Tech: Try power cycling.
Me: What is this? Windows?
Tech: Did you power cycle the device?
Me: (sighing) Fine. Yes, I’ve power cycled it. Still nothing.
Tech: Did you try running through the automated configuration utility?
Me: Your automated configuration utility was developed by orangutans.
Tech: You may need to try running it a few times.
Me: That’s… that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
Tech: It’s step two in the troubleshooting process.
Me: Your processes were developed by plankton.
Tech: Are you running the utility now?
Me: (lying) Oh yeah. (tries something completely different involving manual configuration)
Tech: Did that work out for you?
Me: You know what? Nevermind. I just figured it out for myself.
Tech: I’m glad to have been of assistance!

Anyway, as with all my technical accomplishments, everything worked out in the end, but I literally have no idea what I did to get any of them to work. Which usually means that it will be fine… for now. Eventually I’ll need or want to make some kind of adjustment which will asplode the whole thing and I’ll go through the dance again until I blindly stumble on the correct combination of voodoo chants and animal sacrifices that make everything all better. Although, come to think of it, perhaps the self-inflicted misery of calling tech support is the trick, it just works differently than I expect. Perhaps I only need to suffer through the indignity of the calls in order to coax cooperation from my devices. Once they see the level of pain I’m willing to subject myself to in order for them to work, they relent. “He must really mean it,” they probably say in their cruel binary tongue.

But now that the technical work is (almost) out of the way, it’s time to get down with the real unpacking so this weekend should be fun long.

Back in October, for Nik’s birthday, I bought some car audio equipment from an online retailer who shall remain nameless, except for the sake of the tale we’ll provide them with the pseudonym “Dutchfield.” At the time the gear I bought, a head unit from Pioneer plus a box to enable Sirius satellite radio and an iPod adapter, was good and available for a good price. HB offered his expertise and copious car-related tools to help get it installed and the end result was quite satisfactory.

It was due to this success that when December rolled around and Christmas loomed that I went back to the retailer to acquire additional components for Nik’s car. In this case she was asking for additional “oomph” to the sound so after doing several days worth of research I felt confident in buying an amplifier and a subwoofer. The amp was a relatively inexpensive model but well-reviewed on the site and the bass speakers came in a box with two ten inch subs. Plenty of bass goodness seemed available and my thought was that eventually the amp could be connected to a new set of aftermarket speakers to complete the package. But speakers can run pretty pricey for a complete set of four (they are almost always sold in pairs and Nik’s Civic has two front door speakers and two rear deck speakers that require upgrading).

The piecemeal approach seemed to fit both my budget and the requirements Nik had for her system.

Initially I thought about imploring HB to help again, but when I researched amp installations a bit it became obvious that installing an amp cleanly often requires either removing parts of the car that I didn’t feel comfortable ripping out or trying to install into places that aren’t terribly convenient. To avoid the hassle and potential damage to the car, I made a few calls to some local car audio installers to get pricing.

The first thing I noticed during these calls was that each person I spoke to asked similar questions—not about the locations of the installed components as was my expectation but much more so about the type and brand of the equipment. Eventually someone said they would take a look at everything but it sounded to them like the amp I had would not work with the subwoofer.

This confused me so I immediately called Dutchfield and asked to speak to one of their product advisors. I spoke to a very nice fellow who evaluated my order and confirmed that yes, what I had was at best unusual and at worst not what I was hoping for. He suggested that two ten inch, powered subwoofers paired with stock speakers powered by nothing but the head unit would result in thundering, window-rattling, richter scale-moving bass… and very little else. He performed a small demonstration of what this might mean.

Dutchfield representative: “So you know how normally a song like ‘Smoke on the Water’ goes: duhn dhun duuuun, duhn duhn da-nuuuhn! Duhn duhn duuuun, duh-nuuuuuhn!”
Me: “Yes.”
Dutchfield representative: “If you put in that sub, it would sound like: Booom. Booom, boooom. Boooom boom buh-booooom!”
Me: “That’s not what I want.”

We spoke for another hour or more debating the relative merits of other equipment options. He was very considerate and patient and in the end I felt more comfortable with my understanding of car stereo components and told him I just needed to check with my wife to confirm what she wanted and I’d contact him directly to set up the order.

When I spoke to Nik, whe was mildly annoyed that the delay meant her stereo would not be ready for a bit longer, but she agreed that the thundering bass-only sound was not what she had in mind. So I arranged to have the subwoofer sent back for a refund and implored Nik to look over some of the aftermarket speaker options the rep had suggested and pick which ones she liked best. The rep had been very specific and said that the Civic had something called component speakers in the front which separate the highs from the rest of the signal with a small secondary cone called a tweeter which sits higher up on the door panel than the rest. Component speakers are pricier than regular speakers and are also more difficult to install since they typically don’t fit the stock tweeter panel holes right out of the box.

The only problem with this was that I couldn’t find the tweeters in the Civic. I know I have them in my truck, I can see them clearly. But I figured they must be hidden in the Civic in some clever Japanese tweeter-camouflage location. My recourse was to simply call the Honda dealership and ask politely where they were hidden in my car.

But sadly the call to Honda introduced more confusion into the mix. When I called them they checked my model number and the available stock parts list again and again, trying to prove that they and I weren’t crazy. To no avail: It turns out that our particular model of Civic does not come with component speakers of any kind. There are certain higher end Civic models that do, but not ours. So I tried to call the rep back with this information to clear the problem up. I got voicemail. I got voicemail a lot. I tried weekly for three or four weeks to get hold of my guy at Dutchfield, but each time I left a message requesting a call back and got nothing. Finally Nik was getting frustrated and demanded that I make some progress on the Christmas present which was now threatening to be more akin to a Valentine’s Day present, so I gave up on the direct extention and called the main number to talk to whomever might answer the phone.

The representative I spoke with indicated that contrary to my operating theory, the earlier guy had not been fired. He, of course, was not working that day, but the new rep would be happy to assist me in any way he could. I calmly explained that something must be wrong with their database because they seemed to think that all Civics had the same type of stock speakers and that was not the case. I also explained that I needed to order some speakers that would work in my car and I needed them sent out pronto.

There were two sets of speakers that I was waffling between when it came time to make the actual order: One set was a pricey pair of Blaupunkt speakers and the other was a cheaper (but still not what I would call “cheap”) pair of Polk Audio speakers on special. Both were rated and reviewed well and were supposed to be compatible with the car and the amp I had purchased previously. Initially the Dutchfield rep talked me into the more expensive Blaupunkts but realized at the last minute that they were too deep to fit into the door wells, they only worked on the back deck. It seemed like that would actually work because the Polks fit into the doors so I got one set of each: Blaupunkt for the back and Polk for the doors. Done and done. They also indicated that I’d need lots of wiring harnesses, speaker wire and other peripherals to make the installation happen, a fact that had been confirmed previously by the installation places I’d called. So I had them add all that to the now remarkably significant bill and ship it. I figured the somewhat elevated cost would maybe make up for the time it was taking to get Nik’s Christmas present fixed up.

It didn’t take long for the stuff to arrive from Dutchfield, but of course once it did I procrastinated for a week or so before Nik got grouchy and sort of kicked me into gear. I called a bunch of the same installers and told them I needed an updated quote because I was no longer doing the subwoofer, but was instead interested in getting four speakers and an amp installed. Yes, I had all the wires and everything I’d need. Today, if possible.

Eventually I kind of arbitrarily settled on a local place, also nameless except the indecipherable code name “Dustom Audio Sounds” who got the business because another place (a slightly cheaper place) bumped my appointment to make room for a friend.

When I entered Dustom, the first thing I noticed was the manager’s distracted demeanor. He had a plasma TV mounted on the wall opposite the front desk and every time I spoke with him he seemed to be far more interested in whatever bullriding tournament or BET reality show was on than in actually assisting customers. But, I figured, it hardly mattered. What I was asking for must be so common, so typical that they refer to it via shorthand, something like “Hey, this guy wants a #3.” Like ordering a value meal. Replace speakers, add an amp: Cake. Right?

I spent that afternoon wandering around downtown, amusing myself as best I could considering I had no transportation other than my own two legs and there isn’t much to actually do downtown unless you’re really into getting your hair cut. Our downtown features the following attractions: One Subway chain restaurant; one coffee shop that closes at 3:00 pm every day; One deli that closes at 4:00 pm every day except weekends when it closes at 1:00 pm; one music store staffed by angsty-looking teenagers who respond to questions like “Do you have guitar strings” with blank stares as though they were really employees of the coffee shop next door but had simply gotten lost and put on the wrong name tag; and 4,623 hair salons, barbershops, day spas and manicure/pedicure specialty salons.

When I got back to the shop they took my money and showed me the car. It sounded sublime: Clear and very loud. I allowed myself a satisfied sigh: Maybe I was a couple of months late, and maybe I even missed Valentine’s Day (not that I stiffed Nik out of a V-Day present, I just didn’t get this overdue gift squared away in time for that, either), but by gum it was done. Mission accomplished.

I drove the ten minutes home enjoying the fruits of my labor. When Nik arrived home shortly after I excitedly ushered her downstairs to check out the new gear. She listened with a grin on her face for a few minutes, nodding along to the tune. Suddenly her smile faltered. “What’s that noise?” she asked. I listened closely.

“I don’t hear anything.”

“You don’t hear that little popping sound?” she insisted.

“No,” I said. She let it drop.

A few hours later we piled into the car to go somewhere and turned on the radio. Suddenly there was an unmistakable pop and suddenly the music cut out, replaced by an electronic hum. The hum changed pitch when the accelerator was pressed. I groaned. Nik fumed. I promised to get it looked at as soon as possible.

It turned out that as soon as possible was a couple of days later and I went back to Dustom Audio to find out what the problem was. I politely explained the situation and asked that they take a look. I watched as a technician crawled around in the trunk, fiddling with this or that wire on the amp, pulling off the door panel, popping out the head unit mounting bracket. Finally he called me over and pulled out the driver’s side speaker. “This is blown,” he said dryly. I asked how that could happen and he said, “These speakers are no good. I’ve never had anything but problems with them, they’re really cheap.”

You have to understand that while those speakers weren’t top of the line (not like the ones I’d purchased for the rear deck), they weren’t by any stretch of my imagination “cheap.” Shoddy, perhaps, but not cheap. I asked what the tech recommend I do and he said he’d get some better speakers in there. He just happened to have a couple of pairs in the shop that he recommended. Naturally.

I got on the phone with Dutchfield right away. I tried to remain calm, but I was pretty steamed. I explained that I had gone over and over the configuration with the previous product tech and I had been assured that the speakers would not be in danger of being blown. The customer service rep danced around the issue, alternating his story from “that shouldn’t have happened unless they were installed wrong” to “you have to break in a pair of speakers connected to an amp by leaving the gain down low and gradually increasing it over the course of a few weeks.” I told him that it had been professionally installed, so he stuck with the break-in period line for the rest of the call. Eventually I asked if I could get a refund since they’d sent me crummy merchandise. He said he guessed he could do that.

At that point I had to decide what to do with the current configuration. As it was the driver’s side front speaker had blown and was already removed from the car. In order to send them back I had to pay the installer to remove the other front speaker. I called Nik and tried to explain. She was agitated and indicated that it didn’t matter, I just needed to fix it. I told the installer to simply disconnect the front speakers while I tried to figure out what to do. I drove home with only the back speakers working, which sounds more or less like listening to the radio from someone else’s car while you’re driving.

The speakers stayed this way for almost two weeks. Finally Nik was flat angry. She demanded that I stop messing around with her now almost St. Patrick’s Day gift and get it working. I decided to pay one more visit to Dustom Audio and see what the story was. They had offered to sell me those two good speakers, right? I’d just buy those to replace the bogus Polks. So I dropped off the car and Nik and I went to have lunch. When we got back the manager informed me—eyes never leaving the plasma screen showing NASCAR reruns—that the real problem was not just the speakers but the amp as well, which had since my last visit blown up one of the rear speakers. How did I want to proceed?

Completely frustrated, I called Dutchfield and told them I wanted to send it all back. Every bit of it. They expressed regret, and they provided me with a return order. I asked Dustom Audio how much it would cost for them to pull all the Dutchfield gear out of the car. They said they’d do it for $40. I was all set to have them go for it when Nik indicated that there was no way she was going to be completely without speakers for any length of time. Lacking any real options beyond that, I simply went and picked up the car, now operating with a single rear speaker. Nik was hostile.

We tolerated the single speaker for a solid week. During this time Nik related her tale of woe to HB, who suggested that instead of dealing with some nobodies I found in the phonebook that I should go to the place he had worked with on his truck, Car Audio Depot. So on my first day off last weekend I called them up and told them the nutshell version of my story. They said, “bring it in, we’ll take a look.”

Here is what I learned from my visit to Car Audio Depot:

• The amp was not a good match for what I was trying to accomplish. This had been suggested in not so many words by Dustom Audio, but never fully explained. Dutchfield had assured me the amp was fine.
• The speakers were both brand name and shouldn’t have blown. This had been Dutchfield’s position, disputed by Dustom Audio.
• The initial installation of the amp and speakers was horrendous. It was so bad some of the cables were shorting and could have posed a fire hazard if left unchecked.
• To fully replace everything that Dutchfield and Dustom Audio had done with new equipment and new installation would cost almost twice as much as what I had already paid.
• Even just returning to a stock configuration (no amp, re-install the stock speakers) would cost almost as much as the speakers themselves.
• Reputable car audio suppliers are hard to find. Car Audio Depot says that something like 25% of their business comes from fixing things that other people screwed up.

So. Needless to day, I was a touch displeased. I ended up having Car Audio Depot pull all the Dutchfield stuff out, undoing the miserable work Dustom Audio had done. I had CAD install four new speakers but no amp. The sound quality is better than with the stock speakers, and louder, but not exactly as mighty as I was originally hoping for.

Everything I ordered from Dutchfield is going back. Everything. I’m getting a refund. Dustom Audio is getting the lowest possible recommendation and is getting the negative review treatment to everyone I meet who might possibly consider employing their services. I already had one friend mention that he needed to get some work done on the sound system in his new boat and I warned him away from Dustom with the harshest possible prophecy of doom and despair should my advice go unheeded. They will never get another dime nor another good word from me.

Perhaps when the refund has been applied to my account I will return to Car Audio Depot (assuming their work holds up, because I’m that pessimistic about the whole industry at this point) to get some of the other components added. It may depend on how fresh the wounds still are when that time comes. But one thing is for sure, unequivocally.

Next year, I’m buying Nikki jewelery.

Remember how I mentioned that we were trying to save some money for things like house purchases and whatnot? Well, quicker than even we anticipated, developments have… er, developed.

It seems that by the end of April we will be occupying a brand new (that is, never been lived-in) condo just up the street from our current digs. It seems kind of odd, I suppose, to mention houses and then days later find yourself on the verge of once again renting something that is decidedly not a house. But it makes sense, I swear.

Part of our wishy-washy talks of moves that coincided with my new job was the element of housing price versus commute. Specifically, we pay a pretty low rent (for California and especially for Bay Area-accessible California) right now. However, I commute for about 120 miles round trip four days a week so at first we thought the obvious thing was to move closer to where I work. The problem is that places that are very close to my work are either prohibitively expensive or, for those places we looked that were in our price range, shabby and potentially usafe.

There are places in between, but the price issue becomes a bigger factor there; many of the more eastern bedroom communities are nice and relatively safe but likewise demand higher rents. The tradeoff between the increased housing costs and the commute relief was generally a wash at best.

Now there are a couple of things that we looked at as sub-motivating factors. Things like the fact that in our seven-plus years of marriage we have had our own washer and dryer exactly once, for less than a year. Also, our rent is unlikely to stay as reasonable as it is now for much longer, especially since the complex has decided to move to a for-sale model sometime in the next year or so and while our apartment is nice enough, there is no way I would ever actually want to own it. There are a couple other minor considerations such as the atrocious parking situation and the fact that one of the buildings blew up not so long ago. You know, that kind of thing.

But with the pricing and the timing and everything else, it seemed like it was never going to quite work the way we hoped. So we more or less gave up and decided we’d stay as long as we could and hopefully find a way to save up and maybe buy something old or in need of many repairs.

As is so often the case, once we stopped looking the answer sort of fell into our laps. I happened to drive by one of those dancing sign people waving an oversized arrow that pointed at some condos down a street a block or two up the road from our complex that I never would have considered investigating for that kind of housing. I mentioned it to Nik and we had a little time to kill on Saturday afternoon so we drove by to check it out.

It turns out the condos are brand new and they’re trying to get them all leased out by the middle of April. It was a hurried time table, especially for what we were looking for, but we toured a couple of the units and found them to be really nice. We discussed it a bit and agreed to go home, fill out the online application, talk about it, sleep on it and return the next afternoon with a deposit assuming we hadn’t changed our minds or there were no problems with our application. Which is exactly what we did and the next day we were still a go although Nik had begun debating our initial thought of going with the three-story, three bedroom model for the smaller two-story two bedroom. After a couple more tours we decided on the two bedroom, and handed over the holding deposit.

Maybe you’re asking why I’d move from a two bedroom, two bathroom apartment to a two bedroom one and a half bathroom condo? Here’s why: For one thing, the place is new. Our apartment is probably twenty years old and despite a couple of renovations, it pretty much feels twenty years old. The condo also has more square footage, by a little bit. Another thing is that the condo doesn’t share a ceiling with anyone else. Two walls I can handle, but I don’t really care for tiptoeing around or dealing with the bowling-alley fun of being the downstairs tenant. The condo also comes with brand new appliances and allows interior decorating that includes the option to paint the walls. I’ve been staring at white walls for seven and a half years now while I watch my friends and family members do marvelous things with their rooms. I’ve even helped them in some cases. Well, I want a piece of that action.

Oh, and there is one other little thing. The condo has a garage. Did you catch that? I’m about to have a garage. This is big for me. Huge.

On top of all the amenities and so forth, the other positive factors are that the new place is offering a special that gives you the first month rent-free. Since we’re making the move on fairly short notice it works out that we can have two places through the end of April. We’d have to give 30 days notice at our place now and pay for April’s rent anyway, but since we’re not being charged for April at the condo place we wind up basically having a month to move in, at our leisure. And once we do start paying rent on the condo, it’s less than two hundred dollar more than we pay now. Dude, I would pay $200 just to have the garage.

And then there’s the small matter of the flexibility and opportunity the condo affords us. See it turns out the owner really wanted to sell the condos. But he had the misfortune of having the development complete during one of the crappiest housing markets in years. From what I gather, everyone bought houses back a couple years ago when the interest rates were ideal and now they aren’t selling that well. To compensate, the owner decided to rent the condos for a year or two and then offer them for sale to the tenants (hopefully when the housing market is better; one thing about California, you can pretty much count on housing markets to improve eventually). But they’re also offering a sort of retroactive rent-to-own plan where a percentage of the rent you’ve already paid for that year or two will be set aside and used as part of the offer for the condo purchase. And of course it will be optional at that time.

What that means for us is that our rent won’t necessarily be wasted money, which is a concept I can completely get behind. It also means that even if it doesn’t work out, it’s not a big deal since we’re technically just doing what we’ve always done. And if it does work, we end up getting what we had almost given up hope of ever having which is something tangible that we could hopefully leverage into something bigger down the road as needs warrant.

In any case, I’m pretty excited. I know it doesn’t much address the commute issue but honestly I’ve been doing it for three or four months now and it isn’t so bad, especially with my current schedule. If there is one positive thing about the grave shifts, it’s the smooth, traffic-less drive. Besides, at this point I might as well concede that this town is where we live and while not without its flaws, it has friends and family and a certain familiarity that make it perfectly tolerable.

As a second part of our busy day we also got our taxes done. Whether good or bad, we were pleasantly surprised by how much our returns are this year. I suppose that means our W4s aren’t as optimally configured as they could be but what is done is done so now it looks like we’ll be able to do some of the furniture swapping as part of the move and still have a nice chunk to put into savings as well. The key is going to be avoiding the temptation to buy the biggest HDTV you’ve ever seen instead of stuff like a couch that doesn’t cause active humiliation whenever other humans are forced to set eyes (or worse, posteriors) upon it, but I’m sure Nik and her icy stare will help sidestep that landmine.

In fact the only bad news I can even think of is that I guess the staircase is too small to allow one to maneuver a queen-sized box spring up the stairs so you have to have one of those split boxes instead, and from what I understand they aren’t all that cheap. Granted, the one we currently have has been frustratingly used by the cat as a secondary scratching post as we’ve operated without an actual bed frame for three or more years now which puts the box spring in easy access of Dixie’s claws, but it’s hardly something I’d replace if given the choice.

This pending move has also brought about an even greater intensity with the big “stuff we no longer need” fire sale. This includes a few items added to the list:

• Computer desk. For those who’ve been to our place, this is the big black desk with hanging file cabinet, roll-out keyboard tray and overhead bookshelf. We’re going to trade down to a smaller computer desk since I no longer have or use sixteen computers simultaneously therefore the behemoth is not needed. If you’re interested, I have a truck and will just haul it to the dumps unless someone wants it so it’s going for free, and I’ll bring it to you assuming you don’t live in Utah or something. If you haven’t seen it, I should mention that it currently has a bunch of really geeky Linux stickers and junk plastered all over it, but I can try to remove them or paint over them if that’s going to be a problem.
• Entertainment center. We have a new TV stand in the living room and the old one (which was a gift from HB) probably won’t make the move with us. I kind of doubt HB wants it back so if I can pass it along, I’d be happy to. Same deal applies: I’ll bring it to you gratis if you just say the word. It’s possible HB would rather have it back than see it junked, but he gave it to me free so it would just be wrong to try and make a buck off it.
• Microwave oven. We have a white GE microwave in perfect working condition but the new place comes with an over-the-counter one included so we have no use for the standalone. If you want it, lemme know. Microwaves are pretty cheap so I’ll just give it to ya, but if you want it delivered (it fits in a Civic, I mean… how lazy are you?), I’ll do it for the gas money.
• Green leather sofa. Hahahahahahahaha! Just kidding. I wouldn’t inflict that thing on my worst enemy.

Oh, and since we get to move in fairly leisurely over the course of a month, we probably won’t need to even rent a truck much less beg our friends to waste a whole Saturday on manual labor.

I haven’t posted many link-fests in a while. Now I will rectify that.

• You may have seen some of these court transcript excerpts before, but they’re still funny.
• Kind of a fun diversion cataloging 80s food. I think some of the submitters miss the point (Corn Nuts? How are those “80s” exactly?) but they do mention Chocolate Payday candy bars, which merits a link on its own. I would literally pay up to $10 for a fresh one of those today.
• I’m sure this BBC article about US fascination with British accents is true, but count me among those who think English accents of any kind are just as cool as can be.
• At this point I’m pretty much just counting down the minutes until I get out of here so I can go home and download Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I’ve wanted to play this game for so long.
• Are they taking recommendations? Because I vote for Niki/Jessica and Nathan. Just sayin’.

Nik and I have spent some time recently examining our finances and preparing a plan for future spending and, more importantly, saving in an effort to prepare for some down-the-road life events. You know, buying an actual house and that sort of thing.

Part of this plan involves a pretty strict budget and a pre-agreed-upon set of major purchases for things we need (or actually have needed for quite some time, like a sofa that isn’t a continuous source of humiliation and bedroom furniture that isn’t broken or nearly useless) so as to avoid putting them off indefinitely. Of course that means less money on hand to purchase things that aren’t as pressing but arguably more fun to buy. I mean, for me the choice between sofa aesthetics and HDTV is really no choice at all but I recognize that our current television set is perfectly serviceable while our couch isn’t.

However, I’ve got a hankering for some equipment that isn’t included in the plans for a purpose I’ll reveal later and my only thought for affording it requires getting rid of some stuff I’m not using or don’t really want. Now, I know I’ve tried to offer stuff for sale here before to little response but since my audience is comprised almost entirely from friends and family members, I thought I’d give you a last chance to claim any of my stuff before I hunker down on eBay and try to accumulate some un-earmarked cash.

If any of this interests you, please let me know by emailing me any point before the auction starts. I plan to start listing things one at a time beginning this weekend. Everything here is first come/best offer and if you help me avoid an eBay listing I’ll ship it free assuming the shipping costs don’t eclipse the offered price.

• Comic Book Collection. I have hundreds of old comic books including lots of Iron Man, X-Men and Batman books. I’ve read them all several times over and they’re just taking up space at this point. Practically all of them are in good condition and have been kept in bags with cardboard to preserve the condition as best I could. I have a list I can dig up that catalogs the whole collection and I’ve estimated the value at somewhere north of $700, although I’ll pretty much take what I can get for them. It would be a pretty good gift for a budding geeklet/comic collector.
• iBook. My laptop is showing its age especially for the kinds of things I need it for like Photoshop and Final Cut. Also, it has a problem with the sleep feature which seems to cause the display to freak out more often than not which requires a cold reboot. I haven’t investigated how much repairs would cost but I’m guessing not that much since the display still works it just gets goofy sometimes. It’s probably a wire that gets pinched when the lid is closed. In any case, it’s a G4 PowerPC 944 MHz that has maxed out RAM (I think something odd like 640 MB) and even without repairs would probably work great with an external monitor as a nice intro machine to the world of OS X (I’ll include a fresh install of 10.4). Similar items on eBay seem to go for around $500.
• GameCube. It’s a nice system but I’ve played all the games for it that I was interested in and it’s just hogging room in the entertainment unit. I have a few games I’ll toss in as well including Zelda: Twilight Princess (which lots of people love but I didn’t care for) and I have a WaveBird wireless controller. Similar packages go for around $50 on eBay.
• Dreamcast. Yeah, I still have my Dreamcast. There are some really excellent games for this system that you can find really cheap so if you’re into the whole bargain gaming thing and don’t mind being several years behind the curve, it could offer some good times. People ask for around $50-60 on eBay; that’s too much in my opinion, but whatever. It’s your offer.
• Warhammer 40K Chaos Space Marines Army (Partially Painted). Okay, okay, this is a tough one. On one hand, I don’t want to give it up because, well, it’s cool and I put a lot of time and money into it. But several forces have conspired to make my time and desire for the game wane so I’m willing to entertain offers for it. This is a massive army (2,750 points worth at least, if you’re already familiar with the game rules) and while I confess the quality of some of the painting shows my learning curve, it is probably only in need of 6-8 hours worth of work to be tournament-ready and maybe twice that if you want to touch them up and make them look really nice (assuming you stick with the original palette). I’ve done some stripping before and it isn’t that hard if you wanted to start over. The thing is, I don’t want this to go bit by bit, it’s gotta be the whole enchilada. But I will throw in the Codex ($20-25 in stores) and some sample army lists I made plus the base color paints I special ordered from the UK because no one in the US makes the color anymore (grr). If you bought all this stuff retail it would be worth well over $1,000. Lesser pre-painted armies go on eBay for $600 or more. I won’t even indicate what would strike me as reasonable, it kind of depends, but if you’re interested let me know and I can provide specifics on what I have and the state of the painting and we’ll take it from there.
• Atari 2600 and games. I have a functioning Atari 2600 system plus a slew of great games, which are fun for some non-emulation retro fun. This kind of listing on eBay runs in the $30 range.
• Sony DVD player. I re-shuffled some entertainment center components and ended up deciding to use the XBox as the DVD player in the living room. The standalone player it replaced is less than two years old and quite good: I’ve never put anything in it that it wouldn’t play, including Video CDs and weird burned DVDs in funky formats. It isn’t region-free, but it’s probably worth $30 or so. I can get the exact model number and other specs if you need them.
• I have a copy of Dawn of War and the Winter Assault expansion for PC. I no longer have a PC available to me so they’re kind of useless. Let me know if you want ’em. I’d be willing to simply give these away to someone who wants to pay for shipping since they’re no good to me anymore.

I may have more stuff available once I start cleaning up, but these are the main items I know of right now.

Somehow in the hours between my final grave shift and my first official swing shift a decision was made behind the scenes to not change the schedule. My week concludes with a “grave shift” meeting Wednesday morning and the parting words from my supervisor were something to the effect of “Oh, and we’re not going to change the schedule after all so you’ll just work your regular graves next week.”

That’s all I’m going to say about the work part of it because I risk dangerous territory if I start talking about how that makes me feel and what I think about the way the news was delivered so I’ll neatly sidestep that.

The truth is that my room to complain is narrow because I decided to be all accommodating and easy to get along with during the interview process to try and secure a position at the company. Even since then I’ve exuded this air of nonchalance when questions of scheduling come up. Specific instances of this have typically been followed by a mental self-berating rant but intentions aside, any evaluation of my external demeanor would give no indication of how badly I despise the shift I’m on.

Not that any shift would be much preferable. Day shifts involve making the long commute in heavy traffic, swing shifts clash harshly with Nik’s schedule so we completely—completely—miss each other for several days when I work those hours and then of course there is grave which has me sleeping vampire-style. Schedule-wise the only thing my job has going for it are the ten hour days which affords me enough weekend time to partially make up for the crummy schedules.

As it is I’ve been flip-flopping my schedule from the vampire-like to the regular prey human. This means that once I wake up on Tuesday evening I don’t go back to sleep until around 9:00 Wednesday night when Nik calls it a day. Then on Saturdays I wake up like a normal person at around eight or nine in the morning but then I have to go back to bed late in the afternoon to get enough sleep to carry me through until around noon on Sunday when I finally get home.

The problem with this is twofold: 1) I stay up for at least 24 hours at least once a week and 2) If I don’t get to sleep on Saturday evenings (which isn’t uncommon because I’m rarely all that tired then) it throws me off for the rest of the week. That’s not even taking into account how tweaked it is for me to be sleeping on Saturday afternoon when most people are hanging out or running errands that are harder to handle during the week. This week for instance I wasn’t able to get more than an hour’s sleep Saturday so I dragged through work all night, had a miserable drive home and arrived cranky and only interested in getting to bed.

I don’t really have a solution for any of this nor do I expect sympathy considering my very active role in er, making the bed in which I must now sleep (if ever there were an inappropriate cliche, that was it). I just thought I should complain a bit about it.

And see? I feel a little bit better. Still tired, but better.

I guess I’m doing the bachelor thing this week since Nik is out of town until Thursday on a business trip. Normally I’d sort of welcome the opportunity to have the place to myself and shake things up a bit, but I’ve been working this lunatic shift of mine for a couple of months now in which I get home in the middle of the day and have the place to myself for hours, plus my weekends are skewed as well which means my “alone time” is maxed out at the moment so there is no novelty here.

On the bright side the end of the graveyard shifts seems nigh (as soon as next week, if all goes well) so hopefully that will make things a bit easier.

The weirdest thing about the solo living thing is not having anyone to tell my hideously boring this-is-my-life stories to. I know I used to get on ironSoap and write it down; you know, the old “I had Cap’n Crunch for breakfast and then I scratched this little itchy spot on my back” posts. I decided eventually that those were as boring to write as they were to read (ha! I’m joking of course. Put the knife down), but there is still a desire to discuss sometimes mundane things with another human. I think in retrospect it may have been appropriate to include in the wedding vows something about “in sickness and in health and through a bunch of really boring stories about work.”

When I told a guy at work about this week he immediately asked, “What are you doing?” I realize that it may be common for other guys to sort of feel like having the wife out of the house for a week is kind of like “freedom” or “party time” but it never occurred to me that I should “take advantage” of this in any way. I suppose that means I’m not feeling like my style is cramped when she’s around and come to think of it, whatever I end up doing outside of my usual around-the-house stuff like playing video games, messing around online, painting miniatures or reading and watching TV is typically initiated by Nik herself. Or at least facilitated by her. It’s kind of a running joke between HB, Gin, Nik and myself that if you want to know what’s going on, ask HB or Nik because Gin and I are always just along for the ride.

In any case I have no schemes of any sort except that I plan to get all of my boring chores and commitments out of the way today so that starting tomorrow when I get off of work I can sit on the couch and play video games/watch TV uninterrupted for like 48 hours straight. Also, I may order a pizza. Maybe chinese. It depends what I’m in the mood for.

Big plans, big plans.