SansPoint

This is just insultin’. The place mentioned in the last post is nowhere near ready for moving into as a duplex. It’s heating system isn’t split, the electrical system isn’t split, and the damn place couldn’t possibly get occupancy clearance. Plus, the neighborhood is apparently more of a shithole than I thought.

I’m going to look at a place in South Philadelphia today, and Tuesday a place in the Northeast. Time is running out.

I, my associate Mr. Mike (of 30 Minutes…), and fellow associate Rob have been looking for a place to live after this semester ends. It’s been a tricky job: we need to find a place that fits our modest budget^[1], that’s reasonably close to campus, or at least effective transportation to campus, and in an area where we won’t become part of the rising number of murders in Philadelphia. This has been more of a problem than one might think. The three of us are barely employed, and attempts to find housing through legitimate and semi-legitimate sources^[2] have left us with a number of failed leads, and a lot of frustration, compounded by conflicting work schedules leaving parts of us unable to gather to see places as a trio.

We have managed to get appointments to see two locations, both in North Philadelphia. The first, a tiny, tiny, tiny 3 bedroom rowhouse near LaSalle University for $900 was snatched from beneath us before we could even fill out paperwork. Between that, and the next, we attempted to schedule appointments, had one realtor pull out on showing us a house, another simply hang up when I mentioned we were Temple students, and several not even bother to return calls. Friday, though, we seem to have found a place.

For the appointment, I was joined by Mr. Mike, and we traveled not too far from campus in a passable neighborhood occupied by mostly elderly black people. The place was a four bedroom apartment converted from the top two floors of a three story rowhouse, almost finished being renovated. It had new windows, fresh paint, a new kitchen, and – best of all – cost $850 a month. Plus, it was two minutes, by foot from a new PathMark supermarket^[3], a short walk from a new laundromat and shopping center, and stupidly close to public transit options like the R8 Regional Rail and the Broad St. Subway.

I did some breakdowns of the rent. There are two larger bedrooms, and two smaller bedrooms. If we divide rent according to room size, and our potential fourth flakes out, that splits the rent into two people paying $300 for the larger rooms, and $250 for the smaller room^[4]. If the fourth joins in, then we’re talking $225 for the large rooms, and $200 for the smaller rooms. Either way, with our current job-status, we shouldn’t have any problem affording rent.

Of course, this is all pending a credit check, and some other formalities, but the deposit (two month’s rent, or $1700) is available when needed. We still need to hear from our fourth, but whether he’s in or out, we could easily afford living there, and it’ll be ready to move in by the time Mr. Mike and I are forced to flee from our dormitories. I’m hoping it works out.

1. okay, nearly non-existant budget ↩
2. i.e. craigslist ↩
3. I’m not a fan of PathMark, having worked for them and getting screwed, but it’s better than nothing. ↩
4. the fourth could either be rented out later, or used as a studio space or something. Who knows? ↩

So, I’m a few weeks in on my two personal projects: 30 Minutes With the Lights Off (in Color), my podcast with associate Mr. Mike, and Fifty-Two Stories, which is self-explanatory. So far, I have to say they’ve been going very well.

The podcast has gotten a few subscribers, as far as I can tell. Feedburner says I have 3, or sometimes 4. I can’t tell. There’s been 377 hits on the Episode RSS feed, and about 11 RSS hits per day, so I’ll take a guess and say we have in the neighborhood of 10 listeners. More than I expected at this stage of the game, that’s for sure. I haven’t gotten any feedback yet, so I’m going to put in a request for e-mails and comments in the next episode. We’ve managed to consistently churn out episodes for the past four weeks, and they’re getting better as I learn how to pace and edit the shows. All we need to work on at this point is the content.

So far, in three and a half weeks, I’ve written three stories for my year long writing project. I’m quite proud of the most recent, Week Three. It feels very organic, and reminds me a bit of some of Kurt Vonnegut’s short stories. The idea sort of came to me as I stared at my computer screen and looked at the temporary title I’d given the document in CopyWrite. Even more impressive is that I had this story done early. The first draft was done on Wednesday, which was a neat trick. Last week’s story was churned out on a Saturday night crashing at my parents’s place for Easter, almost the last minute. Next week, I’ll probably have to bang one out early as I may be out of town that weekend.

Still, it’s so far, so good with these projects. We’ll see how things are in another month or two.

Well, perhaps. I doubt there’s a heaven, and he did too. Kurt Vonnegut passed away, and I’m broken up. As a writer, I can only dream of being as appreciated as Vonnegut, let alone writing anything reasonably close to his quality. Even though I’d only read a bare handful of his work, namely Cat’s Cradle, Welcome to the Monkey House and Bagombo Snuff Box, he amazed me. More of his books have been on my list to read for ages. Meanwhile, I can’t even finish Thomas Pynchon’s newest^[1], let alone the books I have waiting to go afterwards.

Kurt Vonnegut was a cynic, and who wouldn’t be after surviving the Dresden firebombing and being made to clear the bodies of the dead. Of course, I like to think of cynicism as just another word for realism. Vonnegut didn’t sugarcoat anything in his writing. That’s what I like the most about his work. He was matter-of-fact, direct, and gave the reader a lot to think about.

He will be missed by many.

1. If you think I’m sad about Vonnegut, when Pynchon dies, I’ll be inconsolable. I still remember how torn up I was over the death of Douglas Adams almost six years ago. ↩

A while back, I ran OnyX to clean up my desktop a bit, and got a horrifying disc error dialog. Though I have not experienced any problems, I was worried enough to get my hands on Diskwarrior, and ran it. It fixed some problems, and though I’ve yet to run OnyX again (that’ll be this weekend), it got me worried about losing all my precious data. This includes a hypermassive music collection, documents of my writing, homework, and other personal projects, and other fun things.

I figured I had one major option: shell out more money I don’t have for a second external hard drive.^[1] Hearing the horror stories of not having stuff backed up on two consecutive episodes of The Merlin Show, I realized I ought to do SOMETHING.

Turns out, Amazon offers a web-based backup service, that can hold any amount you need, and charges $.15 per gigabyte each month for storage and $.20 a month afterwards. Compared to an external backup drive, that’s cheap, and I can access it from almost anywhere with Internet access. I can backup both my mini and my iBook, and not break the bank.

So, I’m now in the process of uploading my data. It’s going to be a while, but once it’s done, I’ll feel a lot safer.

UPDATE: Since it would take 101 days at my current upload speed to put my music collection up on S3, I decided to skip that. At least my docs are safe now. I’ll have to get an external HD after all, but this is a good temporary solution.

1. I’d make sure to avoid LaCie. Though my mini Companion has served me well as a primary boot drive, I’ve heard enough horror stories to make me want to avoid trying again. It also runs kinda hot. ↩