Countdown to Condo

This Thursday, Brandi and I hope to celebrate the next milestone in our ongoing steps towards maturity: land ownership. If all goes well in the next few days - and we've heard so many stories of just the opposite - we'll get keys to our very first piece of owned Chicago real estate. Mostly. As with most everyone in the middle class, we will own the property only so long as we make timely mortgage payments to our lender, since we didn't have the price of the unit laying around in our couch cushions. Also, since it is a condominium, we are in the curious position of owning a property and still paying rent, which everyone insists on calling assessments because, hey, why use one syllable when three will do. As near as I can understand, even though we own the unit, since it's on the second floor and would crash to the ground if the unit below it and the building holding both were to instantaneously disappear, we must pay homage the building in order to make sure it doesn't. It seems a lot like idol worship to me, but I say that about everything.*

At any rate, there are about a million details to attend to, which can add a lot of wear and tear to an already stressful holiday season. Friday, we tried to take advantage of Black Friday deals for gifts and managed to walk away with everything except the LCD TV and the set of cordless phones we decided we didn't care for. We set the alarm for 4:15 and managed to get up on first snooze, but it still wasn't enough to snag the $99 (after rebate) Meijer LCD TV, nor the pricier but larger 32" deal advertised at Micro Center. This may not be a popular opinion, but I blame the rest of Chicago, if not the world, for taking up the retailers on their deals before I've had my chance to suck them dry like a cash vampire. We have to schedule a walkthrough Tuesday to make sure the owners haven't made off with anything vital like toilets or furnaces since we first saw the condo. This would be far more relevant if the owners were a) crooks or b) living there now and moving out, possibly scratching up the walls in the process. Since we never heard cackling and the dry-twig-like rasping of evil palms rubbed together in glee at our deception, and since the owner was already moved out when we first saw the place, we think we're nearly in the clear there. For our first night of occupancy, we packed several bins of supplies, including bedding, toilet paper and candles and matches just in case something goes horribly wrong with Commonwealth Edison and our electricity doesn't go through. Between Thanksgiving and cleaning out the Superfund site that was my office, we threw out seven bags of garbage this weekend, including the turkey carcass, irrelevant leftovers, electronics too old to use or install Linux on, and shredded receipts and credit card offers that had somehow shoved themselves in every free nook in my office shelving. Though the rats may feast, they will not learn my social security number!

It seems odd that this week is the last week in November because we've been living most of the last two months at the start of December. As much as remains to be done around the apartment to turn us over to the condo, it looks like most of the heavy intellectual work is done, making room for the brute force, time plus muscles plus the occasional inclined plane and fulcrum approach. I look forward to it. I am thankful for the opportunity and the vacation time to handle it. I am grateful to have a wonderful, hard working wife to support our dream and share in it.

* This week's idol worship includes: video games, teleconferencing, corporate logos, bars, skinnydipping, bowling, status reports, chrome fenders, bowling bars, NASA, peanut butter and anything other than jelly, Rogaine, green bowling balls, lay ups, Amish furniture, red bowling balls, bowling shoes worn outside the alley, juggling more than three items of varying weight and geometry, TMX Elmo, and video game bowling. I should add LCD TVs and Black Friday, but like professional wrestling I love them too much to condemn them.

World's Worst / World's Best

World's Worst Cobbler:
"Two left shoes... and the work is shoddy."

World's Best Cobbler:
"Two shoes left... and the world is shod."

Hard Drive Failure

It happened again last week. Like a horror movie, sometimes you know it's coming, the shadow of a claw reaching around the corner, a haunting melody repeated through a chorus of children's voices, Linda Blair spitting pea soup at the camera. One of my coworkers reported a blue screen on his computer last week. It was all over by the time I got to his office. The hard drive had begun to fail sometime over the weekend. I wasn't even around to back it up before it died. When I tried to restart the computer, hoping against hope that some crucial system hive file had been damaged at an inopportune moment, the worst was confirmed: error, no hard drive present. The hard drive had died.

It happens. It's happened to me more than once, and it's never pretty. System administrators - a group that technically includes me - always tell you to back up your data. I've even set up a fairly elaborate system of backups for the computers at my workplace, with shared folders written to a RAID 5 hard drive (three or more hard drives slaved together to think they're one, with one drive acting to check against the data against the others and if necessary restore or correct missing or corrupt data), backed up onto tape. Eventually, I wouldn't mind off-site backups. Point is, all these elaborate preparations still count on people dragging their data to the drive. I could automate it - and have, somewhat inconsistently - but it slows up the shutdown, not to mention the network. And the human element had not backed up his hard drive since May. He had lost work on his data sets, documents and particularly his dissertation. What's five months measured against eight years' school? Potentially a lifetime, especially when the degree is needed for a job, and the job is needed to pay off all those student loans from the previous lifetime. Still, if the loss is enormous, the cost to recoup it is appropriately capitalistic, meaning the companies that will recover your data, probably, will bleed you dry to do so. Fees go anywhere between $50 (unlikely) to $1,000 or more (how bad do you want your data?). My heart breaks when a hard drive dies. Even if the user backed up a minute before, something went down, and it's probably important.

Sometime before the turn of the millennium was my first hard drive failure. Unlike my coworker, I can almost certainly trace its death to my hands. At the time, I had a Mac clone, a Power Computing machine with something less than a gigabyte of hard disk and a processor that would be more at home in my Treo than in something attached to a monitor. How did we do it back then? The unit was a pizza box that I had set on its side to clear up desk space. One night, in an explosive fit of ire, I hit the box. Nothing happened, of course, and certainly whatever had gone wrong on screen or in system had not gone right because I was boxing the packaging. I hulked out a little, pounding the bottom of the box. Suddenly, the monitor went blank. I had killed my computer. Whatever my problem was at the time, it wouldn't bother me again. Then again... I brought out the toolbox, unscrewed the top of the machine looking for... What? A circuit breaker, now set to "off"? A tiny vial of kryptonite accidentally broken open next to a miniaturized Superman on a hamster wheel? A component sit-in?

As it turns out, that's kind of what I found, as I found the processor lying loose, popped off the motherboard. Apparently, I'd hit it in just the right direction to send it flying. I re-seated it, turned on the computer and crossed my fingers. It worked!

A few weeks later, the computer started making grinding noises. Naturally, having dealt with the innards of the machine, I ignored them until the computer would not start up. Then I called tech support. They sent out a guy who told me, nope, there's no fixing that; the delicate arm that reads the platters on your hard drive and hovers, mere atoms above it, has crashed into the platter, scratching the data it's trying to read. It's like trying to read a book by the light of the page you've just set on fire. Had anything happened to the computer recently, any sudden impact?

I told him I had no idea what he was talking about. Strictly for the warrantly, mind you, not my pride. Not my pride.

So the data was lost forever, although the fact that the technician who replaced the drive had a CD of illicitly copied programs to replace or update those consigned to binary paradise did soften the blow. I managed to recover a small portion of the data a few years later when I stumbled across a small cache of 3.5" disks I had forgotten to wipe clean. Still, it's strange when a part of your life develops amnesia, and exactly like the intersection of real life and the movies, hitting yourself on the head again will not bring it all back.

World's Best / World's Worst

World's Worst Veterinarian:
"Bad news, I'm afraid. I killed your pet rock."

World's Best Veterinarian:
"The good news is, I fixed your dog... and your transmission... with the same set of tools!"

Sunday Feast!

I made chicken parmesan yesterday, six chicken breasts pounded flat as papyrus, slathered in egg whites, powdered with Italian seasoning bread crumbs, gently placed on a thin bed of Ragu sauce in Pyrex dishes, then covered with shredded cheese, more Ragu with Italian seasoning, garlic powder, fresh diced onion and home grown sliced tomatoes ripened on the windowsill. The dinner took somewhere between three hours and six months, depending on your "go" time - the pounding of the chicken or the planting of the seeds - and was quite a lot better or at least more to our taste than restaurant chicken parmesan. We accompanied the meal with sparkling white zinfandel repurposed from the Kleinerts' thirtieth anniversary celebration, and afterwards I felt very, very tired but too awake to nap. I think I read, but it's all a little hazy. For desert, Brandi made a nifty Cherios-Krispie treat. Basically, you substitute Cheerios for Rice Krispies, melt marshmallows and butter and glom the mass into a pan. I hinted strongly that the aluminum heart pan would symbolize our love. I further hinted that frosting our treat would be a great symbol of the sweet cement that binds us, but that may have been a bridge too far, since the treat was a little too Krispie and needed a little warming up to more easily parse with my elderly mid-thirties teeth. Brandi liked it as-is, but she is very kind.

I enjoy this kind of hard work on days when I don't have too many projects going on. I also appreciate the patience all my relatives, friends, ex-roommates and ex-girlfriends had with my food experiments, sometimes layering starch-on-starch in bewildering ways that tested the patience as well as the palate. Thank goodness I passed out of my ramen phase ages ago. Or did I? We still have some in the cabinet, in case I feel like making mom's broccoli slaw, but the urge to chomp on it raw is strong, even in the face of a feast.

Sunday Feast!

I made chicken parmesan yesterday, six chicken breasts pounded flat as papyrus, slathered in egg whites, powdered with Italian seasoning bread crumbs, gently placed on a thin bed of Ragu sauce in Pyrex dishes, then covered with shredded cheese, more Ragu with Italian seasoning, garlic powder, fresh diced onion and home grown sliced tomatoes ripened on the windowsill. The dinner took somewhere between three hours and six months, depending on your "go" time - the pounding of the chicken or the planting of the seeds - and was quite a lot better or at least more to our taste than restaurant chicken parmesan. We accompanied the meal with sparkling white zinfandel repurposed from the Kleinerts' thirtieth anniversary celebration, and afterwards I felt very, very tired but too awake to nap. I think I read, but it's all a little hazy. For desert, Brandi made a nifty Cherios-Krispie treat. Basically, you substitute Cheerios for Rice Krispies, melt marshmallows and butter and glom
the mass into a pan. I hinted strongly that the aluminum heart pan would symbolize our love. I further hinted that frosting our treat would be a great symbol of the sweet cement that binds us, but that may have been a bridge too far, since the treat was a little too Krispie and needed a little warming up to more easily parse with my elderly mid-thirties teeth. Brandi liked it as-is, but she is very kind.

I enjoy this kind of hard work on days when I don't have too many projects going on. I also appreciate the patience all my relatives, friends, ex-roommates and ex-girlfriends had with my food experiments, sometimes layering starch-on-starch in bewildering ways that tested the patience as well as the palate. Thank goodness I passed out of my ramen phase ages ago. Or did I? We still have some in the cabinet, in case I feel like making mom's broccoli slaw, but the urge to chomp on it raw is strong, even in the face of a feast.

World's Worst / World's Best

World's Worst Painter:
"You'll find this portrait really brings you to life with just one shade of gray."

World's Best Painter:
"You'll find this portrait really brings you to life, Mr. Dorian Gray."

Thirty cents over and two dimes shy

On the way home tonight, I had an experience with a vending machine I want to relate.

I left work late tonight. Chicagoland was dark as it ever gets. Downtown looked like a Milky Way of square starry windows. I was thirsty and stopped by the vending room of the Student Center where I spend half of my time. I had a one, a five and a twenty, but 20 oz. Diet Pepsis cost a buck and a quarter. I would have to pass. Wait, though, the change machine accepts ones and fives. I tried it. It was broken. In fact it was so broken that the light that indicated it was broken was broken. It didn't even blink at me and when I shoved my five in its bill slot, it just stared at me like a one-eyed toddler offered creamed spinach for the first time. I would have to move on.

I had another chance at the Blue Line station. I realized that I had a tiny amount of change at the bottom of my mesh pocket in my backpack, enough for the $1.25 Diet Coke. I'm brand-agnostic. I put my dollar in. It whirred at me. A little background may help: Chicago Transit Authority builds its stations in such a way so that they're never entirely weatherproof. Great steel and glass structures wrap pierced by multiple tracks always have, by some curious law of CTA contractors, at least one face ripped away so that bitter winter winds may howl through the station, mitigated only partly by heating lamps they have installed in 0.10% of the station. Anyone who wants to remain warm must get in early and not mind getting squeezed to the back while several hundred people try to cram themselves into the same 10' x 10' area. It sounds like a frat joke, but it's the Chicago way. In the midst of this, the CTA has installed two vending machines, one advertising Diet Coke and the other Dasani, a flavor of Diet Coke without caffeine, sugar, artificial colors or sweeteners, flavor, or effervescence, although, through clever processing the Coca-Cola corporation did manage to add a cancer-causing agent to mitigate any possible health benefits one might glean from drinking the water.

It's clear the autumn has been unkind to the Diet Coke machine. After rejecting my dollar, the machine continued to whir as though to say, "No chance, sucker, move on." Not so easily daunted, I considered a cool drink of water. Water is for wimps. I put my dollar in the Dasani machine, not to give up my quest, but because I'd had a better idea. Some vending machines give you the paper back when you hit the "Coin Return" button; others dispense coins. Assuming the latter, I might bypass the whirring Black Knight of the Diet Coke money input and score myself the Holy Grail of my soda experience. I hit "Coin Return".

Perhaps the Coca-Cola Corporation had got wind of my plan, or, in the relative drought - forgive the pun - of Dasani vending machine purveyors of late, did not have good change to give, but the machine gave back not four quarters but, for reasons of its own, one quarter, one nickel and seven dimes. Yes, it adds up to a dollar, or so I hoped. Something sat uneasy in me about the non-quarter change, though the biggest problem I could think of at the time was that machines sometimes reject it.

I dropped the quarter in. The red LED lit up: $0.25. Not a bad start. Dimes followed. A few slipped through without tripping the LED, but I assumed they went to the change return slot and could be fed through again. I was wrong. The counter sat at $1.05 and I had put in all my change, including the extra quarter and dime I had found in my backpack. Some demonic entity unknown to me had rendered three of my dimes entirely moot.

At this point, I could have just pressed the "Coin Return" button and considered myself suitably chastised. After all, thirty cents is not too much to pay for wisdom. But I would have done so thirstily. I went into a frenzy. I started pressing buttons. I searched through my backpack. Could I maybe have missed one quarter? Four nickels? We knew what had happened with the dimes but I was willing to chance it if at the end of the day I might hold a Diet Coke in my hands. Maybe if I hit the machine at just the right angle, whatever supermagnetic force (a combination of science and the supernatural?) might release its hold on my dimes. I looked at it crossly. It just whirred at me. Sometimes, as though to taunt me, it would change the direction of the whir, sucking instead of rejecting. If I still had my dollar bill... I stopped short of kicking the beast. Also, I had seen enough violent pictograms representing hapless stick figures trapped under vending machines to know that only evil could come of my rocking it.

In the end, the train came and I had to give up the entire enterprise. I had to console myself with happy memories of vending machines gone wrong in the past. Like the one in college that kept rejecting my change but adding it to the tally. Or the one at the other end of the platform that dispensed two Diet Cokes in quick succession where I'd only put in the cash for one. Instant karma, indeed.