Blessed by the Potato

I saw this short story and had to share. Originally found via Boing Boing.

Also, found a smashed pumpkin in my parking lot today. What the hell is wrong with people? (Our lot is a dead-end off the alley, so it’s not even like people would be walking through and accidentally drop a pumpkin… that thing was brought/thrown in and smashed there). Plus it’s December! Who has a pumpkin?

So we’re moving first thing in the morning to our new [rental] house! Almost everything has been packed, and it’s been an intense process, but it’s amazing how much is left. 3 computers and a network to dismantle, the TV and its jumble of wires, plus all the dishes and cutlery. Doesn’t sound like much, but since the movers come at 9 am and it’s pushing 11 pm now this could get interesting. And that’s not even counting all the cleaning to be done (plus removing curtains and picture holders) which we plan to come back on Monday for.

Oddly enough, my Green Party lawn sign was stolen/removed less than 24 hours after I put it up on my new lawn. My landlord did visit that day, so it’s possible she took it, but if she did she didn’t mention anything about it. A bunch of others have gone missing in the neighbourhood, so something fishy may be afoot.

Anyhow, the site will go down for a bit during the move, but I hope to be back up late Monday night, or possibly as late as Tuesday evening.

I’ve been so pissed off at the LED christmas lights they’ve had out recently. LEDs have the potential to make great christmas lights since they’re efficient and can be all small and twinkly, so it was such a shame that most of the lights were those giant gaudy faceted ones. Today, however, I found some at Canadian Tire that have really small white lights with no crazy facets or anything. They’re perfect! They only came in the long strings of 100, but that works for me… and if they’re efficient enough, I might even use them to light my room after Christmas :)

Wayfare’s done an incredible amount of packing over the last few weeks, and I’m glad we got the early start. I’ve been really dragging my feet on my room: I threw out a bunch of junk on my desk that I don’t need anymore, but have only packed one box worth of stuff so far. There are bits of my thesis everywhere (even under my dresser!), and over half the closet is filled with Wayfare’s stuff (most of which is, conveniently, already boxed).

Last night the girls upstairs were making an ungodly amount of noise: stomping, music, scraping furniture across the floor. Usually that really gets under my skin, but I was just like “screw you bitches, I’m outta here in a week!” Same with the garbage people leave in the elevators, or the broken exhaust fans in the parking garage. Actually, that last one kinda scared me a little.

I’ve been watching a lot of TV lately, largely because shows are new again in the fall. It took a while for it to hit me, but I suddenly realized that reality shows are finally in a severe decline. There was a point, not too long ago, where if a show had writers and actors, pretty much no matter the quality, I’d watch it. But this season has a couple of good shows (Lost is looking like it’s flagging… really time to start dishing some answers there). Heroes is really coming around, and I’m getting past the terrible narration (mostly because now I focus on the cool integration of the titles into the scenes while he talks). House is still good, but I’m disappointed that they let him get healthy and clean for the beginning of the show only to take it away so very quickly (and I loved the “now I can do this” moment). Much like the Star Wars prequel trilogy, I think I’m genetically programmed to love Battlestar Galactica even if it is getting a little strange now (or rather, has been for a long time). I was really hoping they’d get control of that abandoned Base Star though. It would have made a nice replacement for the Pegasus :( Much like Lost, I think they need to start dishing some answers to long-standing questions. Beyond those shows that I’m actually watching, most of the commercials I’m seeing are actually for real shows, too. I can’t wait for Futurama to come back, and then it’ll be like the last half decade or so never happened.

My landlord did the move-out pre-inspection today. She was astonished at the great shape our place is in. I know we’ve been very careful to keep the place clean and in good shape, but it wasn’t in great shape when I moved in (peeling paint and a pre-stained carpet), so to be so astonished is kind of weird. Must be very telling as to how the undergraduate hordes have been treating their places (and we know how poorly some of them are from the smell).

An interesting point: she commented on how hot my apartment is. I said “yes, and I don’t even have the heat on!” and she gave me this look of horror. “Oh no no no no no.” she said “You’ve got to turn the heat on! If it gets too hot, just open a window, but the radiators will break if you don’t turn them on, and it’s a flow-through system, so if your heat isn’t on then your neighbour’s can’t get any.”

That sounds very wasteful and dumb, and I also have to wonder a bit if it’s even true. Yes, leaving it off could let air pockets build up in the radiators, which would cause some cavitation banging and whatnot if and when we do eventually turn them on, but I have to wonder if the building designers (even the building designers of the 50’s) would really use straight-through radiator plumbing. Surely they had wagered on somebody turning their heat off, or at least the heat gradient that would inevitably arise as the water progressively cooled from the person closest to the boiler to the person at the end of the loop.

Anyway, the heat’s only been turned on for about 3 weeks total out of the 4 years I’ve lived here, so leaving it off until I move out isn’t going to kill it.