Document bag goodness

Related to my last post, I was at Daiso some months ago and they have a wall of document boxes, folders, protectors, folios and bags.  I was looking for the ziplock variety but sadly they didn't have the right selection of those.  They did have quite a few of the zipper variety though so I bought a stack of them in various sizes. Prior to that, the only document "cases" I had were the simple plastic ones that closed with a string or velcro, and a few bigger accordian-sytle ones that closed via elastic bands.  Last year I had a lot of legal paperwork connected with immigration and buying a house, among other things, and these things came in really handy.  Early on I had used plain-ole manila folders because I had plenty of those but didn't do a great job protecting and they always got all tattered and cards and things would fall out.  I dug out some plastic ones that I had held onto for decades and started using those instead;  being enclosed, they were much easier to throw into my bag without worry and being plastic they were more robust and protected things better.  However, I never liked the string/velcro closing flap and the plastic was old and thin and had a lot of creases in them from previous use so when I saw the ones at the Japanese store, I indulged... and indulged again a couple more times.

I just realized how mindboggingly useful these are.  And I only thought to write something down about it because I really don't see all that many people (or at least non-Asians) using them.  I certainly didn't use them or something like them before all that much and when I think about it it's only because I didn't know any better and what's commonly available isn't all that good. I started using A4 and B4 sized ones to hold and transport property-related papers.  On my recent Hong Kong trip I used a set of B5 ones to hold the family passports, money, and travel docs as well as little trinket/sousvenirs/pictures I collected and A5 ones for the red-pocket-money, receipts, and other random things.  Before I would have just had them in a jacket or pant pocket, or some pocket in my backpack, bag, or suitcase... or worse, in a plastic grocery bag.  Typically things would just collect and fall to the bottom of the bag, or I'd have to fish things out or empty out the pocket completely to get what I was after.  But with these, things were just better organized and convenient and easier to access.  It was nice to look in my backpack NOT for e.g. all individual passports and papers, but for a single identifiable sleeve-bag that had everything related in it, and kept things shielded from pocket abuse.  So I ended up looking for some more while I was there since I didn't bring enough and bought a few extra because they're not readily available at stores back home.

Most of the variety I got were the zipper closures and had a thicker plastic, usually with a mesh lining for robustness and sturdiness.  I have a few mylar-type with the ziplock-style enclosure that I actually prefer but the stores didn't have the size or type I wanted.  Still I'm happy with the zipper variety; I feel they're more general purpose.  These bags are sized according to the A and B paper size conventions which is wonderfully consistent.  The downside is that the US still uses the ridiculous letter-size documents and sets of non-cohering sizes for everything else.  Luckily the bags usually accommodate them if not as elegantly.  These items are so good I've also started using them for more permanent storage and not solely for transportation needs.  I haven't worked out exactly the role they'll play in my filesystem yet.  I never liked hanging file folders and fileboxes, as practical as they are so I'm always looking for a better system.

In search of the perfect binder

Something I've never really voiced was that I HATE 3-RING BINDERS.  They are so ubiquitous and even now that I am not a student still find a need to keep at least some; loose-leaf paper is still inescapable and sometimes a file-folder is just not adequate.  Over the years I have had a LOT of them.  And nearly universally I've always been annoyed by them.

1. What I hate the most is that they don't stack cleanly.  Most binders are not filled to the maximum and therefore end up in this triangle shape.
2. Circular rings are the most common and I don't know why.  It adds to the stress around the hole, the beginning and ending pages are especially affected. How many times have you had the top and bottom papers rip out, right?  
3. They put the circular rings on the spine most of the time.  So the pages always have to slide simply by opening the binder.
4. Circular rings also cause the pages to not line up (observe the papers edges).  The D ring is better, especially when it is not on the spine (and the cover of the binder essentially wraps around it).  But why make a D when you can make an upside down U instead so that both halves of an open binder lay cleanly?
5. They're not that convenient to write in unless you have a big table.  As a student I'd just write on loose paper and put it in later.  I guess that's ok.  But viewing is still a bit annoying on those tiny student desks in the lecture halls.

Anyhow, for those reasons I got rid of almost all of my 3-ring binders.  For the orphaned contents that I wanted archived, I bound them using the comb binding system.  Not the perfect solution either but better than 3-ring binder; they stack better if you have the right comb size.

Then many years ago I came across Unikeep and they had box-binders: 3 ring binders that

• were a box, so the stacked nice and cleanly both horizontally and vertically
• since they were enclosed, you could put pens and other loose things in there without falling out.
• the rings were off-spine and rectangular

I bought a whole box of them and use them to store negatives, documents, pictures, etc in those 3-ring sleeves and sheet protectors.  By and large, I had the perfect binder.  Or so I thought.

There is one fatal flaw with the collection of binders that I bought:  They were made completely of some kind of plastic, including the "rings".  That in and of itself was not a big deal except when it came time to move and ship.  The plastic rings was the problem, many of them snapped off or came loose.  They were just not robust or sturdy.  The box itself, was ok, even when closing tab didn't line up correctly anymore.  Still the perfect binder in form, just not sturdy enough.

It's coming up on time to move again so I was considering this predicament and am pleased to see that i may have another solution.  The company I see has added a new line of the same binder with metal rings.  When I get the chance I will test some out.

UPDATE:  Horror of horrors, it looks from the picture the metal rings are round.

Teethbrush

A several years ago my sister introduced me to the Sonicare(TM) toothbrush. She gave it to me for Christmas. I was a little skeptical at first but willing to give it a try. The interesting thing about it to me was not the physics and concept of its operation (cleaning your teeth with soundwaves) but the fact that once you turn it on you can't turn it off; it keeps running until the timer runs out (about 2 minutes). The nature of the thing also requires you to keep it in your mouth while it's running unless you don't mind the high vibration device splattering your bathroom area (and face and eyes) with dots of water, spit, and toothpaste. I wouldn't be surprised if some artist somewhere tried making dot-art or wannabe airbrush pieces with this thing.

I think the designers of this toothbrush must have been extreme anti-libertarian big-government types. Sonicare knows best and what's good for you. They know how long you must brush your teeth for and by Jove you WILL use it for that long and for your own good. They've removed the temptation and ability for you to do a half-ass job.

Well, good for them, it seemed to work. Last year I got off my lazy arse and used my work dental plan for the first time since leaving Berzerkely. Surprisingly, though I did have some tooth aberrations that needed patching, the dentist was reasonably impressed at the lack of decay. I'm convinced that my consistent use of this item had a lot to do with it.

Last week I went to the dentist for a yearly checkup. No new cavities or anything, just a look see and a cleaning. Despite brushing daily, it always seems like when rinsing after a cleaning there always some solid stuff to spit out; as if the dentist goes in and chips out chunks of bone and carves out bits of flesh maybe just to seem like he's doing his job. My mouth certainly feels cleaner afterwards, in that scraped raw sense, like when my mother used to scrub me down in the tub when I was a child and my skin would take on that 2nd degree burn red look just shy of bleeding out micropores. He says it's just build up and that it wasn't that bad. The mouthwash and colored toothpaste just dyed it a nice noticeable green to make it stand out and look impressive. Obviously it was worse last year. Perhaps if I go every 6 months like they say you're supposed to, it will seem less traumatic.

I actually like my dentist. He has an office just a few minutes walk away from my place, is a likable Chinese guy with a strong accent, and has surprisingly modern equipment given the location, equipment I'd never seen nor experienced previously. He even remembered my name and who I was and mentioned that he's even considering buying a house on my block that happens to be for sale. I wish I had taken the time to look, pick, and make an appointment with him closer to when I moved out. I suppose there was that internal hesitation akin to looking for a mechanic. I kind of kept waiting for a recommendation but in the end, even with mechanics, when I find a good one it's by blind luck. At least I have a dentist now, and a decent one.

Portable audio commentary

Before I left Berkeley and moved out east I bought a Creative Nomad. It was a bit bigger than a portable CD player, had about 4Gig capacity, and cost more than it should have but probably appropriately for the time. I didn't have a stereo and I knew that I was going to be living out of a suitcase for quite a spell so I got one with the intent of using it as a portable stereo complete with most of the music I listen to. Also bought a some decent Cambridge Soundworks speakers that I still have and use. It had a clumsy interface, the software interface was atrocious (though I've seen worse), and the batteries didn't last long... but it was one of the better alternatives at the time still. It worked for a good spell, and I was quite pleased with it. But to be honest, I probably only got about a year's use out of it. After I got settled in, I found that not only did I not need it much, but I didn't like to use it anymore, even/especially on trips.

I went back to using all of my other portable devices: first cassettes, then MDs, then CDs. Cassettes went out the window pretty early but I'd been using them for so long I had a large collection of mix-tapes. I'd have to carry about 5-10 of them with me when I took a trip. CDs were better, especially once I had a computer with a CD burner on it and portable job that could read MP3 CDs. I could burn about 11 CDs worth of music on a CD and just carry that around. MD's were still better. Much smaller and definitely my favorite media type. It had awesome battery life too. I got my first one in Akihabara but bought a second one with LP4 that let me put 4-5 CD's worth of music on a disc. Now they have HI-MDs (which scregman has) but as much as I love them, I haven't gotten one for reasons I may illuminate on either here or in a separate post. Actually they all had a lot of deal-breaker features that often caused me to just not listen to anything on a trip.

I swapped back and forth between them but one thing I kind of hated was carrying around a collection of separate media. I knew one day that I would return to a more mass-storage type of device at some point but despite the plethora of models that have been out since I first got my Nomad, I refused to get one until last year. I had decided to wait until I found one that met my minimum needs, which I compile here for you now.

What I determined that I was looking for in a portable player for now:

1. Capacity: Ability to hold/play a few days worth of audio. At minimum, enough for a few cross country round-trip flights plus a mix of stuff for while I'm away. I cannot always predict what I will be in the mood to listen to so it must grant space for a wider breadth of material.
   
2. Battery life: Must last at minimum a cross-country flight including buffer time for layovers and such... say half a day at bare minimum.
   
3. Convenience: Must be quick to assemble audio onto, must have a decent interface.
4. Small: Must fit reasonably into my pocket.
5. Continuity: I must be able to resume where I left off when playing.
   

Seems simple enough, right? Yes there are other features that I would like but these are the practical ones for now. Amazingly, until last year I didn't feel like anything fit the bill. Number 5 is possibly the oddest entry. It stems from the fact that ever since the days of my driving 9 hours back and forth from San Francisco to San Diego and back, I'd grown appreciative of audio books, radio plays, and other spoken word programming. Frankly, there's just so much music one can take in a long sitting and I've grown crufty and picky in age with respect to music to boot. Well, I've always felt that music is more of a mood thing, I have to be in the right mood to correspond with what I have to play. Audio books pass the time famously and in a much more engaging fashion if the content is good.

• Cassettes - Old reliable but out of the question for obvious reasons. The sole advantages of tapes were battery life and continuity.
• CDs - Great battery life and convenient to just throw more CDs in the bag to increase the selection. But it doesn't fit in my pocket easily, require extra CDs to carry and prepping if I'm burning a playlist, and they don't have continuity. Once a CD is popped out, I have to manually remember where I left off when listening to audio book CDs.
• MDs - Great battery life, I love the media format, and they're nice and small and fit in my pocket. The new HI-MDs hold 1GB creating basically infinite carying capacity by adding more MDs. Was a serious contender but I resisted because of Sony. But practically, lack of ability to saving place after a MD is popped is the biggest hangup.
• Hard-disk based players - Astounding capacity but the deal breaker for me is battery life. They may tout 8 hours of play time but I know better (*cough* iPod). It MUST have at least half a days battery life and they don't. Seriously, this is the main thing that has kept me from getting a Nomad replacement.
  

I made due with what I had for a long long time, but were I to buy a new one it should be better and more practical than before. So later last year the Nano's came out. Fully solid state, no moving parts, and with a 4Gig variety. It's not perfect but just about meets these needs and is a pretty durn small and slick device with a great interface. After handling my downstair's neighbors one for a bit, that's what I chose. I'll write more on it later.

I have no illusions it won't last for ever but since I've decided to shift how I handle my music collection, it almost doesn't matter.

Audio commentary

Somewhere between my dad's garage and a friend's house I have a collection of vinyl records and my old record player. In a trash heap and/or somewhere south of the border is my small collection of 8-track tapes. Between my dad's garage and my room is a large collection of cassettes. Between my room and some unknown shameless thieves' possessions are some 200+ audio CDs. Also in my room are a few binders of MiniDiscs to go with my two now-retired MiniDisc recorder/players that replaced my two now-retired portable cassette players and CD-Walkman. I have purchased many many many items, as have many, in all these obsoleted formats. CDs have a lot of inertia behind them now and thankfully they are digital, but as physical media they may not last. The last batch of audio music that I bought was online directly to my PC.

That last part gave me some cause to rejoice because in a very real way I feel that my format worries are NOW FINALLY OVER. With the advent of ubiquitous PCs, the internet, (relatively) cheap hard-disk storage, and perception-based lossy compression from my very own chosen field of Digital Signal Processing, I may need never trouble myself seriously about physical media again. Thanks to CDs, nearly all available music is available digitally or will be accessible digitally in the future and at the very least convertible to digital storage. Audio buffs may whine and complain about how much better the very best of the analog devices sound, but it's all immaterial because it's good sounding enough and highly portable, highly reliable, and very malleable. When I left the west coast I didn't want to take my records and record player with me so I recorded just about everything to cassette, and later to MiniDisc. That was a verrrry long process since it had to be done real-time and I dread doing it again. Ok, I see that I will have to do it at least partly again to get some rarities from my older media and many things I REFUSE to buy again transferred onto my computer. But I'm less resistant because this *SHOULD* be my last time doing it. Once it's there it should be smooth(er) sailing and I can at least lay part of my fears to rest because so long as music is available digitally it can be almost trivially moved almost anywhere and to almost anything with a fraction of the effort.

This brings me some satisfaction and has caused me to decide to join in on something that a great many people are doing; something that I've been contemplating for a good long while since I all but stopped buying CDs (partly due to grievances with the music industry) but freshly since getting my latest in portable audio gear last year. Rather than audio CDs being the centerpiece of my music collection, it will now be a hard drive attached to a computer. CDs are no longer that convenient to me. Besides, they degrade and a friend of mine who happens to be a head honcho for the Digital Library Project asserts with high authority that CDs are NOT archival. Well, hard-discs aren't either but they can be backed up way more easily and redundantly with scant manual labor. I'm convinced that so long as I live, I will probably have a computer. And so long as I have a computer, I should need never worry about having a place to collect music that will be obsoleted by yet another recorded format. I do not want to buy the same music yet again. I think the music stores should have a deal where if you turn in a purchased item in one format you should get a replacement in the new format. Yah right.

Of course, now comes the other half of the coin. The format problem exists with a vengeance in the digital world. Ugh. A decade ago mp3's emerged on the scene as a disrupting technology that when coupled with the other major disrupting technology of the internet has reduced (or expanded depending on how you look at it) the dependence on physical audio media. Hopefully someday it will also spell the death-knell for corporate music industry too, at least in its current form. Mp3's are still pretty sweet but being one of the early popular formats, it kind of sucks too. Soon after emerged a plethora of competing formats with better compression and better sound from the major corporations and some grass-roots startups to where we now have a dozen or so popular formats, each of which is locked-to a commercial product or locked-out of the commercial market in some way. Microsoft started promoting/forcing its WMA format. Sony stuck to its proprietary ATRAC format. Apple defaults to its DRM'd AAC format. Then there are the host of mostly-computer-only formats, many of them quite impressive and wonderful. At least mp3s remain the most popular format, by inertia of course. Just about everyone has at least agreed to support it in some fashion, but it's plagued by some licensing issues and frankly it has quite a few shortcomings. I prefer it were replaced by the Ogg format but hardly anyone that makes a portable player supports it.

Still, this is a better situation than before. Being digital, the music can fairly easily be converted from one format to another, ableit with some possible loss in quality but not even close to as bad as analog dubbing. Only companies' stubbornness with proprietary formats and the introduction of digital "rights" management schemes truly interfere with the process but those seem to be overcome as quickly as they are introduced. So the choice for me now is what format I want to archive my music collection: the ever-present mp3 that refuses to die and therefore offers some security, but isn't the best? or some other format that is "better" but possibly less supported or possibly restricted. At the moment I'm strongly considering Ogg or FLAC, both of which are open-source and therefore nearly guaranteed to always be readable and decodable (unlike, say, old MS Office documents) but which require differing amounts of storage space and cost and will require the additional annoying step of trans-coding to get it onto a player that almost certainly won't support that format. But again, it's an academic annoyance compared to the physical media format problem.

Only thing that remains is to get the process started. I can't wait to chuck the boxes of cassettes I have. I have my eye on my video tapes too. It's all part of my master plan. Not sure just yet what to do with my MDs. More on that later though.

What not to underwear

A bit of a funk started this new year at a frightfully slow pace, goal-wise. I had to do something though. And I did. I started off with a measured attack on my wardrobe, intending to cull and decimate it, thereby freeing up drawer and closet space and reducing stress by only keeping things that I can and would wear. Without realising it, it was the right place to start. I read a little post hinting that if one has trouble making or implementing proposed changes for the new year, to start off by cleaning house. Nice thing about the wardrobe is that it is volumous enough to notice the change to a significant degree and feel good about the result and feel a bit inspired. A few random observations and realisations sprang forth in the process as well.

Why wasn't this taken care of before?

When I first moved out east, I had the bulk of my stuff shipped. At some point in that first year I could have sworn I had rid myself of everything that I intended to. This was not the case. I mean, I did expect some of my clothes to be obsoleted by extra bodily poundage and through wear and tear but outside of that I still find in my collection stuff that I've had for a decade or more, yet hadn't worn. Realisation 1: I had kept things that fit, not things that I liked to wear. Realisation 2: What's worse is I actually bought stuff that I don't like to wear for one reason or another. I mean, WTF was I thinking? Well, the only thing I could come up with was "I didn't know any better." Related example:

Boxers or briefs?

For a good chunk of my life I shamefully wore the "tidy whities," the perfect example of not knowing any better. That's what was bought for me when I was a wee lad growing up and what I continued to wear into adulthood. How embarrassing. I never really liked them, even the more stylish colored ones. That whole bikini type cut would often dig into my upper thighs near the singit, cutting off circulation and such. Also made for nasty wedgies. I graduated to boxers. Ah much better. More expensive but thank the maker for Costco, when I was still a member. Still, it did have the opposite shortcoming: It didn't dig in but putting on pants now became a little dance. They were loose to the point that they would bunch up all the time, especially when donning pants. I did come up with a system eventually that worked, but thankfully I found something better: boxer-briefs. Form, function, and efficiency all in one. The holy grail of male underwear... at least for me. No edges that dug in. Crotch area loose enough but not overly so. No riding thanks to the longer legging. No bunching up since it fits snug enough where it needs to. There's no going back. For a long time I kept the older versions around for emergencies, like say, I haven't done laundry in a month. But it wasn't just that, it was this guy notion of not wanting to toss perfectly good and usable clothing. There was a time I would keep even not so good and not so usable clothing, like socks with holes in them or worn thin but still kept and worn. No more though. Especially since I have the income to buy replacements.

The XX solution

So I had replaced the entirety of my underwear drawer not once but twice. And now I needed to apply that to the rest of my clothing... again. It was my seeester who helped to alleviate my anxiety on throwing away money via the clothing I bought with it. She pointed out that women go through wardrobe replacement all the time, ridding themselves of perfectly good and usable clothing that no longer makes them happy. (Except our mom who seems to keep everything, choosing instead to store it in every closet in the house and wardrobe boxes in the garage. I think she's slowly recovering though.) Makes some sense that women by and large can do this purging for sociological reasons (stronger need for fashion) and biological reasons (the shopping gene). Emilf lent a lot of support for this and, bless her, talked me through the initial process over the weekend. The only sad thing is that Realization 3: I'm probably going to have to keep doing this clothing binge/purge thing every so often; it's not a one time thing. Hopefully I can become a little smarter about what to buy, and I should probably monitor sales. My seeester is a master at sales monitoring. I now enlist her at times to do my shopping for me. She likes it.

The other sad observations

Rummaging through ones clothes necessitates trying many or most of them on. Observation 1: It would all look better on a skinnier person. Not necessarily like the mannequins in the stores but fit people can wear almost anything and have it look ok. I have items that I do like but won't wear because of my now beyond fledgling beer gut. I've decided to keep those items this time around as a future solid target. That normally doesn't work but this time I need to make an honest effort. Observation 2: I'm cursed at being on the border of sizes. With some clothes, I wear an L, others a XL, and still others M. They just aren't consistent with sizing. Scregman alluded to this. What I also hate is when something is labeled 34-36 and I'm just at the high border or just past it, making it a tad uncomfortably tight, but the next size starts at 38 and too loose. Bleh. Observation 3: What is the deal with shirts/sweatshirts that end at the waist, such that when you lift your arms over your head the end gets pulled up well above the belly button? Works good for girls where bare midrift is a popular style. But on a men's shirt? And my last observation: I have entirely too many printed tee's. Printed tee's are the ultimate evil of events, clubs, promotions, and tourism. They serve as cheap sousvenirs, free giveaways, and a braindead means of commemorating something. But they work and are effective and here I am with a large accumulation of them. Time to rid myself of at least the ones that have faded. I guess dress shirts and Italian leather shoes aren't quite as convenient as promo fodder.

One side benefit of all this is my realizing that dispite the drawers full of clothing, and in addition to having entirely too many of a few types of things, there are few things that I just don't have enough of. I once thought that I could construct a reasonable list with 3 pairs of this, 6 of that, and a half dozen of the other and make for a solid well-rounded complete and cohesive wardrobe that required no thought whatsoever other than the occasional swapping out here and there as replacements were needed. It may mean that I need to do laundry more frequently. I don't trust myself in the selection process though. I wonder if there's a kit I could buy. You know, send in my dimensions and a color photo, and some budding fashionista assembles some unique timelessly stylish, mix and match, color coordinated complete ensemble with instructions as to what goes with what and when. That might be cool, a complete starter kit for the newly actualized male that doesn't require complete humiliation in front of millions of viewers of the TLC or Bravo channel.

Knots and the lazy tongue mystery

I discovered that for the entirety of my life I've been tying my shoelaces wrong. Or at least inefficiently. I'd been tying with the un-secure granny slip-knot. I learned a very simple and trivial adjustment to turn it into a more secure reef knot. How could I have missed this all these years? A slight study of the diagram reveals the simplicity and logicality of it. Perhaps I'm the type of person who has to understand something a bit more in depth before accepting it, at least with some things. I guess I had just found ways to cope with the un-secure way for so long I didn't have much desire to think about it.

But in a fit of frustration and a bit of luck, I have my answer. I have a pair of Timberlands with round slippery laces that tend to become undone constantly, causing me to double knot them. While on a trip, dear friend emilf tried to show me a more secure knot, but I didn't pay much attention to the difference. Well the difference was subtle and she did it quickly in my defense (plus maybe just a little I was too embarrassed to ask for a repeat demonstration). Even though in self-defensive denial I internally half-way balked, she was indeed correct. But no more! I have learned my lesson. 3 cheers for the reef knot lifehack. I have one less stress in my life. I can walk around in secure comfort that I will not be trodding on my laces (much) every again.

And on a related topic... does this happen to anyone?

With many of my laced shoes the tongue on my right foot tends to stay perfectly aligned in the toe to heel direction. But with my left shoe the tongue is always creeping towards the side. Even when I run my laces through the little sewn on fitting, ostensibly to help keep the tongue in its place, the tongue still moves to the side. But only on the left shoe.

My feet look fairly symetrical. My left foot is not oddly shaped. I wonder, does it have anything to do with this wive's tale that one of everyone's feet is a half size smaller than the other? I thought the shoe manufacturer's already took that into account. Maybe it's a universal prank by the shoe makers. (Again with the conspiracy.) This sounds like a question for Al Bundy.

I still insist my foot looks normal.

Grrr... no backup

So, I come to look at my page and it's all gibberish. I check the settings and template and all of my little tweaks and edits are gone and the template doesn't work. You'd think after decade(s) of computer using I'd learn to back up everything, especially stuff that I customize. Even in this case where I didn't expect it and perhaps didn't deem the template important enough to backup, I did have a mind to make some more tweaks which would have caused me to make a backup. Well, it's not a hard thing to recover as I didn't do too much, but I am annoyed.

Flat Woe #4

So I figure I may as well generate my LAST post on the topic of my gripes with my flat (as if my masculinity was not already irreparably damaged). This is something that came up again when I was hanging out front with one of my first floor neighbors on Monday. She was talking about possibly having another party sometime between now and the end of the year; she and her roommate had one a couple months ago which was quite fun. Their flat is perfect for having parties. It has two common areas separated by double sliding doors that connect them into one large open space. Perfect for holding a nice amount of people as well as modest furnishings. And to boot, the connecting kitchen is right in line and also quite spacious. The second floor has virtually the same layout, wide connecting common areas with kitchen and two smallish but adequate rooms. The only difference is the location of the bathroom.

My flat SHOULD have had the same general floorplans as the bottom two floors. The only potential obstructions are some pillars that must go through due to the downstairs chimneys. However, the locations of these things would not have interfered too much since, when you think about it logically, the actual floor area should be a perfect match as we share all the walls and the flats are right on top of each other. Instead, and in addition to the absolutely ridiculous walls added to seal off the slants in the ceiling, they re-arranged the locations of the rooms in a dreadful configuration. I don't have the nice large connected common areas, they are separated into completely individual rooms, one being a bedroom, the other being a bedroom OR a living room. The kitchen, instead of being in the back is on the side, not enclosed, and away from back stairwell door. This creates an awkward L-shaped living area joined with the kitchen, with a hide-the-slant-closet at the joint. The back door is the piece de resistance: A mini corridor with a door connecting to the back stairwell juts out into the small living-room-ish space creating two awkward alcoves. Trust me, it's worse to see than what I describe. If at least the kitchen were in the back, those alcoves could have served as pantries or one of them as a kitchenette and the side of the house could have been a nice functional open area appropriate for creature comforts and guests. Right now I'm almost embarrassed about the layout (even too ashamed to post a pic). I don't have many guests, much less a party. Of course I'm more embarrassed that I'm actually bugged about this. But maybe one of the good folks from TLC will see this and take pity.

Moooltipass

After reading an article I was reminded that not only do I need to renew my passport, since it expires next year, but that I should plan on renewing it sooner than later. Seems our government aims to have all newly issued passports contain RFID devices containing a number of personal identification tidbits. There's a lot of brouhaha regarding these devices, mostly concerned with security, invasion of privacy, and big-brother type stuff. When it comes to the other uses for RFID that companies and such have planned, I don't care enough to comment. I can imagine some nice uses for them... inventory and whatnot. But there is one point about putting it in my passport that I find a bit disturbing: the idea that someone with the proper equipment can aim an antenna at me and read my personal information and probably without my knowing; or as a corollary, scan the vicinity (like my neighborhood) and know I'm there. I'm sure the information would be encrypted somehow (or am I that sure?) but even then it's nearly guaranteed that it will be cracked at some point or even leaked out. No. I think it's a bad idea right now.

For some reason I'm actually not completely looking forward to getting a new passport. I mean, I need to, it's practically full, I hate the picture in it, and it's a bit frayed causing some extra inspection by pass control officers at times. But, I like my collection of stamps, visa's, and work permits. I've carried this current one with me to about 13 countries. Somehow I want to keep adding to it and not have to start over with a blank one. Silly I know. Oh well, no choice in the matter. Just as well I retire it now since I don't do all that much traveling anymore; at least not anywhere new.

Flat woe #2 and #3

Many of the houses out here in NE, and in fact pretty much everywhere, have slanted roofs. I think they tend to be a bit more slanted in places that have snowfall. Makes sense. Don't want to have snow accumulating up there too much. The upshot of this is many of the top floor flats in such houses have slanted walls. I actually think this is fine and adds a little charm to a place.

... except in my case. Somewhere down the line someone decided they didn't like slanted walls and so they decided to reduce the usable space of this flat by adding walls whose sole purpose was to hide said slanted walls. This causes a strange sense of boxing within my flat as yet more walls and vertices were placed within. It seals the place in a bit and I prefer the more open area, even with the slanted walls. It at least would give more usable floor space.

Someone must have thought about that just a little too, because in addition to sealing off the slanted walls they opted to add closet doors to these walls. Well one of them didn't have doors but rather a waist-high opening. (I find this one the most puzzling and the most unsightly of all. I just don't get it.) These closets are barely usable. You cannot stack much in the way of boxes in them due to the irregular shape. You definitely can't hang clothes in there. It simply is a cosmetic thing to make it look like you have a closet when if fact you really don't. And it unnecessarily clutters the look of the space.

Which leads to my next woe which is actually the main woe of this post: lack of functional closets. Every once in a while I get way behind on my laundry and I end up doing nearly the whole of my functional wardrobe in a single day, such as yesterday. There is only one closet in this flat worthy of being called a closet, and one which is more of a coat closet that I use as a main closet due to its location. It's rather small. After doing most of my laundry I realised once again that I do not have enough closet space to hang all of my garments.

If this were mine to remodel, I'd knock down all of those shameful walls and even what closets there were. I'd much rather get a nice set of armoire's in an open room. Can't rightly do that now due to the presense of the walls and pseudo-closets since they'd subtract too much additional room space. I surprise myself a little thinking about such things as apartment aesthetics but in this case the complaints are rooted in functionality and I feel justified.

But alas, there's nothing I can do about it other than maybe make another round of clothing donations.

Flat woe #1

I do like my flat, especially the location. Can't complain having at least 5 pubs within a 3 minute walk. But it is in a rather old house (well, old by my Californian standards). It does have it's charm but somewhere either as they originally built it or at some point when they remodeled it a bit, to divy each floor up into it's own flat, someone decided to install radiator heating. This by itself is fine but rather than the rectangular compact ribbed box-shaped radiators you sometimes see in older apartments and dorms, someone chose to use these long floor integrated ones that span the length of wall floors. They basically line the perimeter of the flat. Their presense makes it so that you cannot put anything flush up against their respective walls. It greatly eliminates the number of places that I can put bookcases, desks, and whatnot and it means the little area that doesn't have the floor heaters is artificially valuable apartment real-estate.

I just recently had to contend with this because I (finally) bought a new computer. This time I got a monster kickin desktop machine. I also had to get a new desk to accomodate it; the old one was fine for my laptop but not this thing and I wanted a hutch as well. Once I got the computer desk home, I realised that I couldn't put it where my old desk was because of these floor heaters. No way am I having my new souped up machine (as well as the power strip and cables and such) sitting on the floor next to a heater. Curses! I had depopulate, disconnect, clear, move, and restock a wall of bookcases to accomodate my new acquisitions.

The thing is, I cannot understand why they did this in the first place. I don't think it's that much more efficient heating-wise. It makes carpeting or installing flooring a pain. They're hard to maintain. They're easier to bang up and rust. It's more to clean. They're hard to clean under. More things are prone to touch them (e.g. long curtains, bedding, plugs, chords, power strips, dresser and cabinet legs) and they can get quite hot. And as an added insult, a single thermostat controls the entire flat, which means I cannot just heat one room... something you can do with the other type of radiator because they usually have knobs to control the hot water piping through them.

I'm sure someone thought these things are less unsightly than the box radiators but I don't think the tradeoff is justified one bit.