Well, we're finally moved. (More or less; there's about three carloads of stuff back in Tampa that still have to be shuttled, but we're out of the house.)

I've got to say, moving is a whole lot easier when you don't care whether or not you get your security deposit back. But we did — a thousand dollars was at stake, and that's a whole month's buffer zone on rent and utility bills. So we scrubbed and wiped and mopped and cleaned until ten at night. The kitchen took the longest, but we left it sparkling.

As an aside, ever since we moved into the house, we struggled with the stove; the burners wouldn't stay level, and half of them didn't work. Because I didn't really want to scrub the burner trays clean when we moved out, I spent $11 on a new set. And discovered that when you have trays that actually fit the stove, the burners stay level and they all work.

Once finished, Karen wanted to drive the four and a half hours to Tallahassee, even though she'd gotten up at 3:30 AM and worked the whole day through. I eventually convinced her to take advantage of Sev & Lisa's offer to let us crash at their place. Hooray Sev & Lisa!

A final breakfast with our friends, and we were on our way. Which was full of blinding rain practically the entire time. But we finally made it, lugged stuff in and then went to bed. Or at least Karen did; since our VCR was a casualty of the move (a container of cat food opened in the trunk, and got inside the tape slot), I couldn't tape Farscape and managed to stay up long enough to watch it.

Today we went shopping for essential things, mainly ways to increase our storage space, such as shelving units. I also bought some wall hooks for the guitars, since they take up a lot of room on floor stands. Unfortunately, the hooks aren't long enough to hang the lutes as well.

Tomorrow, back to Tampa to pick up a carload of stuff. I still don't know where we're going to put everything...

Yup, it's official. The drive is corrupted. Hosed. FUBAR.

The only bright point is that my secondary drive, upon which I stored all my audio data, is still intact. So I haven't lost the recordings we did for the Consort's second CD. Everything else, though — documents, emails, 3D models, Finale scores — is toast. I've got a demo version of some data recovery software running, to see what the full version will be able to reclaim, but from the number of data sectors returning unreadable, I'm not going to get 100%. Hopefully, since the problem sectors seem to be near the beginning of the disk, it's just Windows programs that'll be unrecoverable. But I'm not counting on it.

I do have some backups, but they're not terribly recent.

I'd been meaning to get a larger hard drive, clear off some unused applications and reorganize my directory structure, but this isn't really the way I'd wanted to go about it...

"I thought if I kept doing something you didn't like, you'd eventually like it."

Wouldn't it be ironic if we managed to move up here with a minimum of damage to our possessions (a cracked glass in a picture frame and a VCR filled with dry cat food), and then they all got wiped out by one of the two hurricanes headed straight for us?

As the Mutant Enemy would say, "Grr. Arrgh."

Yesterday, I put a guitar on layaway. I know I shouldn't have, at least until I've found employment, but I didn't want it to walk away with someone else. It's an Ibanez 7-string electric, in fantastic condition, for only $320. (If I remembered the model number correctly, it sold new for $1299.) Plus, it matches my black 5-string bass. Now all I need is a decent 6-string acoustic, preferably with a wide neck and pickups built in, and I think I can keep my Guitar Acquisition Syndrome under control for a few more years. At least until I'm good enough on the classical guitar that I feel I deserve a really decent one.

Fortunately, I've got a very understanding wife who wants to see me realize my dreams. In fact, she's the one who suggested I put it on layaway so that nobody else would get it. I have the best wife in the world.

When I do have a job, I'm definitely going to build my portable studio machine. I'll probably buy the parts from here; they've got the Mini-ITX mainboards and the silent power converters. At today's prices, I could build one for $456 (mainboard, power converter, AC adapter and 250 GB hard drive). It should all fit into an ammo box. At 1 GHz, it's a little underpowered for today's games, so when I travel down to Tampa for Nerdvana, I'll still have to lug a full-sized computer with me. After the Great Hard Drive Crash of '04, I'm a little leery of bringing my primary machine back and forth, so I may have to upgrade the game machine for the purpose.

Gah. It's obvious I didn't inherit the tightwad frugality gene from the rest of my family...

[Edit] Oops, I forgot, I'll need to buy Windows XP for the audio machine, as SONAR requires NT2K or XP. So that's another $90 or so.

One of these days I'll get around to signing off the Trimarian Heralds' list. But then I'll miss gems like this (names and titles redacted to protect the guilty):

________, by by the benefice of Laurel Queen of Arms, named _____ Herald, by the munificence of the Crown of Meridies granted the title _______, and by the grace of the Coronet of ______ ______, heir to _______ Herald wishes health, peace, joy, love, long-suffering and mercy unto the members of the College of Arms, Heralds, Pursuivants, as wll as all and sundry brothers, sisters and cousins in heraldry who by these letters do come.

As brevity is the soul of wit, I shall not ere long state my purpose by this missive. [...]

After a salutation like that, worrying about brevity is like closing the barn door after a tornado's already ripped away the rest of the barn. And apart from the irony of paying lip service to brevity after an unnecessarily loquacious opening, there wasn't actually an attempt at wit in the rest of the message — just an equally wordy announcement of a revamped Web site, delivered with all the pomp and gravitas of a royal decree.

I never really fit in as an SCA herald; I couldn't manage to muster the appropriate sense of self-importance.

Karen and I finally went to see Kill Bill, both volumes played back-to-back at the student union. She got to see them free, I had to pay a whopping $4. It was worth it.

I couldn't help laughing at the Pythonesque geysers of blood — the carnage somehow seemed unhorrifying by its over-the-top exaggeration — but the scenes with Pai Mei had me in stitches. And the music cues had me laughing as well, especially the recurring Ironside theme.

Very impressed with the actors' linguistic achievements. I hope there's not an "all English" soundtrack on the DVDs to cater to people who don't like to read subtitles.

Back when I was a kid, movie tie-in merchandising generally had some connection between the movie and the merchandise its name and characters appeared on. Oh, sure, there were exceptions — a box of cereal, for example, might be festooned with a character's face despite the fact that he or she was never shown eating it in the film. But in general, there was some logic behind it.

Not any more. Case in point: Spider-Man 2. Spidey is the whore of movie merchandising; he's showing up on basball bases, Super Soakers, "night-vision communicators", flashlights, LEGO sets... you name it.

But the zenith of Spidey Fever idiocy? Spider-Man 2 Pampers. Like infants in diapers have any clue who Spider-Man is and insist that their parents buy them the Spidey Nappies.

Turns out it's pretty inconvenient to use only a cellphone for communications to the world. It doesn't ring loudly enough to be heard at the other end of the house, and reception here is much worse than in Tampa. For example, we have to stay in the front of the house in order to use it; if we're in the back (where the computers are), it'll spontaneously lose connection. Which is a little bit inconvenient, if you ask me.

So, after reading Squelch's post about getting voice-over-IP, and asking him a few questions about how it worked, we decided to sign up for it. Using our high-speed Internet connection, we can get local and long-distance phone service (using real phones from any existing jack in the house, not just sitting in front of the computer) for only a fraction of what we were paying the phone company. And by "a fraction", I mean less than a tenth of what we were paying every month.

Unfortunately, they were out of Tallahassee-area phone numbers, so we'll be using an 813 area code (so all our friends back in Tampa can call us as though we were local), and for $5 extra per month, I got a second, toll-free number so we're not a long-distance call for someone living next door to us. (When an 850 area code number frees up, I'll probably do some shuffling.) If we lose our Internet connection, it'll automatically forward calls to our cellphone.

Pretty nifty. (At least until the phone companies lobby Congress to put a stop to this flagrant lack of price-gouging.) Now to wait until the equipment arrives, to see how well it works.

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

— Barry Goldwater,
July 16,1964

Fellow Republicans, it is the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people. And, so help us God, that is exactly what a Republican president will do with the help of a Republican Congress.

— ibid.

We must not see malice in honest differences of opinion, and no matter how great, so long as they are not inconsistent with the pledges we have given to each other in and through our Constitution. Our Republican cause is not to level out the world or make its people conform in computer regimented sameness. Our Republican cause is to free our people and light the way for liberty throughout the world.

— ibid.

President George W. Bush said on The Today Show yesterday that John Kerry was "more heroic", and that he thinks "that we ought to move beyond the past. [...] The real question is who best to lead us forward."

The timing makes it pretty obvious why he's now saying this, when for weeks he was content to let the press focus on the past. In the past couple of weeks, Naval records have surfaced, refuting the Swift Boat Veterans' claim that Kerry was not under fire; Bob Dole's denunciation of Kerry's Purple Hearts as not having been merited was undercut by his own admission about his first Purple Heart; two people from Bush's campaign have had to resign because they worked with the Swift Boat Veterans (Ken Cordier, who appears in one of the ads, was on Bush's veterans' steering committee; and Benjamin Ginsburg, the Bush campaign's chief outside counsel, gave legal advice to the Swift Boat Veterans); and now a poll shows that more and more Americans are believing that the Bush campaign is behind the Swift Boat Veterans.

Now, one might wonder why Bush didn't say these things when the ad first started running, if he really feels that way. But, of course, the answer's obvious: principles have no place in modern American politics. If something is helping you in the polls — or, more importantly, diverting media attention away from something that's hurting you — you don't denounce it. You leave it alone as long as it continues to help you. But once the tide turns the other way, denounce it and try to shift attention to something else.

It's just practical. Not very admirable, but practical.