Blackcap Blog

Published at 19:21 on 13 April 2012

This is the weekend which, if everything goes as planned, I will get all my stuff back. I’m heading down to Portland to have the movers empty out my storage unit and move its contents up here to my new apartment in Seattle. Then comes the process of winnowing things down until everything fits easily; I’m assuming there will a stack of boxes in my bedroom (and maybe random boxes in other spots, too) for at least a month or two until that process is finished.

Possessions always seem to expand until there’s more of them than can fit easily in one’s home, and I’ve basically determined that a one-bedroom apartment is about as much space as it’s ethical for a single person to demand in this world of dwindling resources.

I’d probably feel differently about that if I lived in a small rural town, where 1-bedroom apartments are not common, venues outside one’s home are limited, and real estate is inexpensive. But as it stands, if it’s too much stuff to fit in a 1-bedroom apartment, it’s too much stuff.

All in all, it’s an attitude that’s a healthy middle ground between being the junior partner in a shared house (and having extremely limited personal space), and having a whole detached single-family house (or most of one) to oneself.

Published at 00:13 on 7 April 2012

Having just received one as a generous and unexpected gift (witness previous entry), I’m trying to puzzle that out for myself.

It’s significantly bulkier and heavier than my Slingshot Organizer or the scraps of paper I write shopping lists on, so I cannot see it replacing either.

It’s also significantly heavier than my paper journal book, though it ties it in bulk. However, typing on a “keyboard” that appears on a touch screen is every bit as slow and error-prone as it always seemed to me it would be, so it’s of limited utility as a journal-entering device. A keyboard would rectify this (and they are available), but then the result would be both heavier and bulkier than what it replaces.

It’s also much heavier and bulkier than my MP3 player, and it’s an awkward form factor to use as a camera.

That leaves a device suited primarily to the consumption of information in digital form, be it in the form of Web pages or e-books, one which can be pressed into service for entering text if that need should arise. It is definitely less heavy and bulky than the alternative of a laptop computer.

If you purchase an adapter, it also possible to download images from a digital camera into an iPad. The same advantages of less weight and bulk (compared to a laptop) apply in this case, too.

So, it’s a nice gift that will at times come in handy, but I also don’t expect to be carrying it with me routinely; the things it does better than the existing alternatives tend not to be things I do all that frequently away from home.

Published at 14:50 on 6 April 2012

Test of creating a post from new iPad. Well, this confirms what I’ve always thought about touchscreen “keyboards”: they won’t ever put mechanical ones out of business.

Published at 20:40 on 3 April 2012

Very tired after a long day of moving, because even if I didn’t do most of the lifting, I did enough of it in the unpacking I did and moving the particularly fragile and valuable stuff myself. Even got the Internet connected on the same day.

I’m also glad that I decided not to schedule the cleanout of the Portland storage locker for this weekend. That would have simply been too much, too fast.

Published at 19:40 on 2 April 2012

One last quick post before I pack up my computer. The next time I use it, I will be in my new apartment.

I was going to post a longer entry on how I’ve been surprised by how quickly things have been changing, but that will have to wait. On second thought, perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise:

• Everything was basically waiting on finding a job, and I found one.
• It’s spring, the easiest time of year to find a new home. Last time I looked for an apartment in Seattle, it was the winter holiday season, the absolute worst time of year.
• This time I adjusted my apartment-search strategy based on my knowledge of how difficult it is to find a decent apartment in Seattle. (What I did was to cease focusing on a particular neighborhood, and instead be willing to rent anything in a suitably close-in neighborhood that was reasonably close to a good natural food co-op.)

And with that, farewell until I sign on from my new home.

Published at 12:09 on 1 April 2012

In principle, it’s something I like, because I have found that living by myself can be unduly lonely at times.

In practice, I do not think it is for me, because a variety of factors intersect in my life, and the end result of this intersection is that there really are not many suitable shared housing opportunities out there.

The first factor is that I’m nearly fifty years old, and like most people my age, I’ve managed to accumulate a set of personal possessions that reflect both my interests and my life history. It’s not an excessive set of possessions by any means (I haven’t filled up an entire house with them), but it’s more than can fit in a single bedroom.

The second factor is that with one exception, shared-housing opportunities tend to involve but a single bedroom; in other words: just not enough space for me and my possessions. What I’ve done the past two years is to cram about half of my stuff into a storage locker, but I’m starting to miss having access to some of that stuff. The exception is if one is the senior partner, i.e. a homeowner looking to rent out a room. The senior partner is expected to come with a house full of things, and only offer an empty room to the junior one.

The problem with being a senior partner is that I have no desire to become a homeowner: I don’t like Seattle enough to be willing to make such a commitment to staying here long-term. Seattle works well for me right now because I’ve found a job that seems to be a good match. However, if that job vanishes, and I find work in someplace more to my liking such as Bellingham, I want to have the freedom to pack up and leave town.

The third factor relates to collective houses, i.e. properties owned by a collective where I would be an equal partner, not a junior or a senior one. There’s actually one which is a very good match for me here in Seattle, all things considered. But I’d still get merely a room, and the location of that property leaves much to be desired, because it’s surrounded on three sides by freeways. Not only is that an aesthetic downer, experience has taught me that excess exposure to tire dust and other traffic-related toxins makes me significantly less healthy (the dirtier the air, the more often I get colds, and the longer it takes to get rid of them).

At this stage, collective living ends up being very much like living in the city of Portland: it’s something which is very appealing in the general case, and not very suitable for me once one brings the particulars of my life into it. So it’s back to living in a single-person household for me, at least for a while.

Published at 22:20 on 28 March 2012

I never realized how completely they were until I started studying the things. I mean, sure, they’re a racket because those of us with relatively more money can more easily defer present consumption in the name of savings than those who spend all their income on essentials. They’re classist, in other words. But it goes beyond that.

My new employer offers them as an option, and I thought they might be useful for the things that insurance does not cover. That is, I thought they might be useful until I started reading the fine print: once they have your money, you will never get it back. You either spend it on health care within an appointed period of time (no rollover allowed), or you lose it. Entirely.

You thought the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition were pure TV fantasy? Think again. Ferengi Rule No. 1: Once you have their money, never give it back. Sound familiar?

To that bit of nastiness we can add how there are multiple health-care savings plans, all complex, and all differing in complex ways. It’s as awful as health insurance plans themselves: those offering the plans deliberately make them complex so as to make it impossible to hold all the details in one’s mind at once and make a proper comparison between different options.

Published at 15:41 on 25 March 2012

I’ve been missing having all my things accessible (about half of them are crammed into a storage unit in Portland), plus I’m really not all that compatible with my current housemate, plus the neighborhood I’m currently in has gone downhill since I moved here (rowdy partiers moved into the house next door).

I was racking my brain for strategies for addressing at least the final problem (I hate not having peace and quiet at night) while at the same time having to cope with being unemployed in an expensive city. Suddenly, I’m employed again. I don’t have to rack my brain: I just have to sign a lease on an apartment of my own and sign a check. Problem solved.

I’m definitely not looking forward to the whole moving process again, but I am looking forward to settling into my new place for at least a few years. As much as I find things to dislike about Seattle, it’s not all that bad a place when compared to the average big city in the USA, and it is in the ecoregion I’ve bonded with and consider myself part of.

Moreover, while not perfect (is any place?), the apartment I’ve found does have enough of the things on my rather lengthy list of wants and needs (some of which are difficult to satisfy in Seattle) that I feel comfortable signing a lease and bringing an unexpectedly early end to the search for a new home.

Published at 14:19 on 21 March 2012

Nearly a year after I began it in earnest, my search for employment in the Seattle area is finally over. It is a position that reinforces my desire to leave Portland: salary and benefits are significantly better than any Portland job I have ever had, and management appears to be significantly more competent than at any Portland workplace I’ve been at as well.

For openers, they’ve already asked me not only what hardware I prefer for my workstation (and totally understood my preference for a Macintosh, because it is shared by many developers there), they also asked me what model of keyboard I preferred.

Plus, of course, there will be no elephant in the living room (grass pollen allergy hell) in Seattle. Sure, there’s still a grass pollen season here, and it’s certainly no fun. But Seattle’s pollen levels are much lower and do not turn me into a boy in the bubble who dashes from one air-conditioned space to another like happens in Portland.

Published at 18:31 on 17 March 2012

Today was the day of M. Dennis “Marvelous” Moore’s memorial service. Marvelous Marvin was little-known but influential figure in the struggle for LGBT rights in the State of Oregon. His satirical arguments published in the Oregon Voter’s Pamphlet are far better known than the man behind the pen of those same writings.

He passed away last week after a prolonged struggle with a rare genetic illness, and I was privileged to be one of the last people to visit him before he passed.