Back online

ADSL is up and running, via a moderately hideous USB modem, some genuinely shudder-worthy shenanigans with WinXP Internet Connection Sharing, more network tricks than I knew I knew, and so many layers of firewalls and intrusion detection systems, I really don’t know if I’ll be able to find them all myself if I ever want to turn them off again.

I have 196 unread messages, 1456 junk mails (barring a few false positives that have doubtless sneaked in), 1034 unread headlines in NetNewsWire, and hosting requests totalling three blogs and one photo gallery.

Much more importantly, I have a kitchen with a wonderful walk-in fridge, a lounge (a lounge!) with sofas and my first non-crap TV, curtains in the bedroom, a blind in the study, and very very little stuff still in other peoples’ flats.

Mind you, I also have a mountain of cardboard that’s substantially bigger than my car.

Normal service and so on and so forth.

11 thoughts on “Back online”

  1. …Walk-
    ….in
    …fridge
    …?
    Any particular shade of envious green you prefer I should turn?
    And – and!! a lounge?!
    Okay, given I’m currently of SDF status, every stop on the color wheel between yellow and blue is probably appropriate.
    Again, congrats.

  2. I think, possibly, my assessment of the fridge’s size is skewed by my prior exposure to traditional UK-style fridges. Which is to say: small, noisy, not very cold, and requiring of one extreme contortions to explore the back of the shelves.
    Mind you, a ‘pantry’ would constitute a genuine walk-in fridge, no?
    But I don’t have a pantry.

  3. I understand the concept of walk-in fridge perfectly. Having moved from the UK to the US, I’ve been hit upside the head repeatedly on the issue of scale.
    “But,” you say, “everything’s bigger in the US!” Well, yes. But every so often there are examples which catch you off-guard.
    Like the first time I experienced the “Cub” grocery store. When most people think of a “cub” they think of small, cute, fluffy. Not me. Nuh-uh, not any more. The first time I walked into a Cub was back in 1994, first trip to the US. I was accompanied my my good and large friend, Hans. We’d been driven there by my then girlfriend’s mother (now mother-in-law) to buy snacks to gnaw on while we watched TV. We approached the outer doors. They slid open. We crossed the antechamber (wider than a street in many UK towns). We approached the inner doors. The slid open. We entered. We stopped dead in our tracks. We stared. We looked left… we looked right… we looked waaaay up. Then we looked ahead again.
    “Um, Hans?”
    “…”
    “Can you see the back of the shop?”
    “Um, no.”
    “Wibble”
    Imagine my surprise, then, the first time I visited my girlfriend’s grandparents, opened the fridge to get something, and experienced the same bloody thing. This fridge was HUGE. Seriously massive. I don’t believe it would have fitted in my “room” at the ENDZ. You could easily have fitted even a large UK fridge inside it, packed the contents of the UK fridge around the *outside*, and STILL had space. This for a nice, quiet, retired couple living in the boonies of Indiana. This was just… ‘normal.’
    Except of course that they had two. 😉

  4. Hm. You mean to say that everyone doesn’t own a 22 cu ft chest freezer? In addition to the 26 cu ft fridge + freezer? 🙂
    And when you say you’re back online, you mean with a vengence. I thought to myself, “Self, let’s take a look at what Jonathan’s been up to recently” to be met with many many long posts. *sigh*

  5. Uhh… well, I suppose that’s ‘many’ if you count ‘One… two… many!’ yes. [shrug]
    And Richard – I will drop you a line, promise. Sorry I’ve been missing. Damned sand gets everywhere, I tell you.

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