Just Like (a) Human

Oh, hello! I didn’t see you there.

I’ve been having some issues with wireless around the house lately.
The roomie has resorted to running a Cat5 cable from the router in the living room to his room so he can actually connect, because he’s that frustrated with the lack of performance — his drops are worse and more frequent than mine, it appears.

I’ve noticed that my connection will vary: It’ll drop to dog slow and unusable, with horrible ping times while the roomie can’t connect wirelessly or it’s like business as usual.

Since he’s gone to the Cat5 solution, he’s been pretty damn stable. I’m considering doing the same thing, but I don’t really like the appearance of Cat5 strewn across the floor (an issue I noted in season 1 of Furnish Our Apartment), which might cost me my geek license in some circles. It could be because I tend to stumble over it, though.

I’d like to run as little cable as I can to get the job done, so I did a little snooping.

We’ve got coaxial cable run around the apartment (thanks to the previous tenants, I’d dare say), which should allow me to move the modem. However, I remember that the last time the modem was more than a short throw away from its wall mounted jack, I had problems with the modem itself getting and keeping a signal.

The router, on the other hand, would be free to move.

Therefore, it appears that my best option to fix the connectivity issues in the apartment would be as follows:
Leave the modem alone. Pick up 50 feet of Cat5 and a power extension cable. Run it as neatly as possible from where the modem is to one of the closets. From there, move my IRC terminal (a WYSE Winterm WT9455XL running Ubuntu headless) and the router to this new location. Get them spun up and ready to go. Once I’m sure the two work by poking them from the wireless, then I’ll re-run my roomie’s Cat5 cable to his room to eliminate the extended run, and run a Cat5 for myself from the router to my room.

Part of me wants to put holes in the wall for this, but it’s an apartment. I should ask my landlord what I can do with regard to the wiring, and see if he has a problem with us redoing some of it to be neater than it currently is (since some of it is really tacky and abysmal — holes punched in walls without plates covering the deal, and placed in a bad position). Maybe knock a little off the rent for a month to let us redo the wiring, or something…

Since we moved, Steve and I came up with a brilliant idea for a site that I’ve spent the last week getting up and running.

I still need to work on a theme for it, but it’s up and running at least: http://furnishourapartment.com/ - Our site to raise funds for real furniture for our apartment. Feel free to take a look.

— Since I’ve moved, I’ve started cooking again. I pulled out my little crock pot yesterday and took some beef that I had laying around, cut it up in smaller, mostly bite sized pieces, and put those in.

To that, I added white potatoes with their skin, after tossing them in garlic oil, garlic powder, and thyme, and set the pot in motion. Once it had started cooking, I added a can of whole kernel corn, and let it continue.

Added a half-teaspoon of  salt to draw out any flavors hiding, and just let it cook until the potatoes became softer, and quite tasty. For an impromptu gig, it came out quite well, really.

Of course, preparing ahead is always a good idea when you don’t have all day to cook, so taking the rest of the meat and seasoning it up for a random entree  (including some rum in the bag – not much, mind you, but just a little) can be good. Now all I have to do is toss this in some flour, put it to a hot skillet with some oil, and make with the om-nom-noms.

So, here I am, first week in an apartment with one roomie, and I’m enjoying the hell out of it.

I don’t have to wear headphones to listen to my music. I don’t come home to people watching sports and not willing to give up the TV so I can have a little [adult swim] time. I can (wow!) have a beer after work when I’m feeling out of sorts. I can walk into my room and lock the door, if I so choose to be alone. I don’t have to listen to anyone but myself snore (and I don’t snore ), because there’s a wall between my room and Steve’s room.

I don’t have to worry so much about my stuff being stolen, unless someone breaks into the apartment through its front door, which means they broke the deadbolt, too. I can even own a hookah, when the time is right to buy one.

I still need to look into furniture and transportation, though, and in that order, simply because it wouldn’t do to have house guests over and nowhere for them to sit or eat, and I would love to abandon bus during the week in favor of a scooter or car.

I guess that I’m going to have to look into one of the local rent to own / lease purchase stores to see what they offer to people like me, and hope they deliver, too, since I just don’t have any kit to get furniture home and in. I would rather buy it outright, but Steve offered some sage commentary: “Yes, you would obviously rather buy it outright, since it’s cheaper, but for the larger purchases where you need to split the amount over several payments, it’s your only option right now.”

With that said, once Steve gets back, I’ll get up and find the nearest rent to pwn location.

For those of you who were not aware of this, I was in the process of making a move from the Salvation Army’s Transitional Housing program to an apartment with only a friend to stay with.

As of yesterday, I am the proud renter of an apartment in North Tampa, and I have one roomie (a friend, Steve, who has been mentioned here before). I’m a little skint, but to be honest, this is so, so worth it.  Having almost utter privacy at a moment’s notice, and knowing the fact that my stuff will be in the fridge if I put it there is so, so hot.

If I could have anything for Christmas, it’d be gift cards for buying things we could use around the house, like a TV that doesn’t blow my back out to move it around, or a TV stand of some sort to get the one we do have off the floor, a little furniture like a sofa or futon (and the big burly guys to lug it up the stairs to put it in, hee <3), a kitchen table…

For a guy who spent almost two years as a homeless man, living in a homeless shelter, I dare say I’ve grown a little, and should continue to grow over the coming months and years.

But, before I do any growing, I need to get rid of this full body ache of mine. I hurt so bad that my wrists hurt from just the slightest movement I make, and I have to walk around for a minute between calls to keep from becoming painfully stiff.

I’m eagerly awaiting my apartment, so that I can finally get in the kitchen and cook like I’ve never eaten before.

I’m fairly sure that Steve and I will eat like kings the first week we’re in, but the question is, “Just what the hell will we eat?”

I’m thinking that we might have a steak at one point, but given that we’d just be getting our kitchen online, we would be down a few cool kitchen tools, like a good blender, a beater, etc. I just want to bake a yellow cake, like my mom used to when I was a kid, and would give me a slice without putting frosting on it.

Right now, though, I’m definitely open to suggestions for simple, delicious things to eat that are budget conscious.

I’m just not telling Steve about the suggestions until it’s too late.

World, it’s been a long trip since early 2007, but I’m finally starting to move forward again. This leaves me feeling quite excited, a bit nervous, a bit nauseous, among things, but it’s like stage fright, really.

Steve and I are moving out of the Salvation Army into an apartment together very shortly, as long as everything is approved. I’m excited by the idea, because it means I only have to contend with one person’s snoring and bad habits, not a house full of men doing the same thing.

Right now, I only have one minor dilemma, and that is getting a vehicle so that I can commute on my own back and forth. I don’t mind if it’s a beater, as long as it gets me to the parking lot at work with at least 10 minutes to spare each day. I just want to get started on the buying process by the time I move, so that my work commute isn’t a pain in the thigh (where my wallet sits).  I also wouldn’t mind a scooter, but I can’t afford to pay the lump sum at once — a couple of thousand is a bit of a stretch, which is why a payment plan would be made of awesome here.

One thing I’ve noticed in this country, which is depressing, is that if you make a mistake as a teenager, you spend a very long time making up and paying for those mistakes, with so few willing to work with you on that road forward. It’d be nice if I were wrong about that, though.