August 28, 2008
Renovations
Over the past couple months I've had to put up with renovations to my apartment. I think they are finally done all they are going to do while I'm living there, although they continue with renovations in the building. Over the 9 month span from October 2, 2007 to June 12, 2008 there were 33 days of renovation work on my apartment which ranged from inspection to demolition. Over the course of it I've had to put up with short notices (often less than the required 24 hours), loss of use of kitchen and bathroom facilities and appliances, noise and early wake-ups, dust, dirt and extra cleaning, packing and moving belongings, loss of electrical power, hiding valuables, free roaming contractors, unlocked doors and faulty work. It's hard to gauge whether it was all worth it. It certainly wasn't my choice. The good, an updated kitchen thats more functional with more counter space, a new stove and the addition of a dishwasher. The bathroom got gutted and replaced with new fixtures and cabinets and especially a toilet that works and a nice large mirror. New flooring through the kitchen, bathroom and entry way and updated paint in those areas. New light fixtures, plugs and switches through out. A new A/C units thats more powerful. The bad, those new kitchen cabinets aren't exactly ideally placed or sized, there is much less usable storage space. The new stove heats up much more slowly. The shower curtain rod was hung in the wrong spot and the shower head is the worse I've ever used. The paint is uneven and there are spots that didn't adhere. The carpet they didn't replace, but will after I move out, has a horrible patch in it that was improperly installed and has a permanent stain. Last year they repainted the balcony railings, that paint job has already started to peel.
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August 26, 2008
Music Acquisition
I've never quite jumped on board the online music bandwagon. It all just seems too complicated to me. The DRM and Terms of Service alone leave me with no idea if I own the music or for how long. Let alone where, when or how I may be able to play it in the future. The failure and closure of many music services recently makes my point that you never really own music purchased this way. The other big problem is that I now need to store and keep track of many bits of music data. I don't trust myself to be able to do that, computers are just too flaky. A series of disk failures, data corruption and backups that don't seem to want to restore pushed me over the edge. I've started buying a lot more CDs recently. But it sure has become much harder, CDs seem to have gone out of style, stock is down, prices are up, secondary markets are all but non-existent. I always preferred the tangible to the intangible anyway.
Rush Hour
It's simply amazing how the traffic patterns change with time. If you are traveling somewhere during the morning or evening rush hour, the traffic tends to move swiftly and smoothly along, even though it is quite a bit more congested than other times. If you travel between the two rushes, during the middle of the day, quite the contrary happens, traffic moves slowly and unpredictably. There are a couple things I attribute it to. First, commuters tend to know exactly where they are going and how they are getting there, they are efficient and expedient and feel competent enough to drive every day to work. In contrast, those folks who are driving during the mid-day are much less likely to know where they are going or how to get there, they are also more likely to be the less competent drivers in our society.
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