It's "> ", not '>'. It's the same convention used on mailing lists.

I didn't mean the quote characters. I meant the space after the '>'.

Bob Keane said (and I quote) "I think I prefer manual quoting. Yes you did." (unquote)

Fixed. After I changed Web servers I held off on setting up Apache because I wanted to run a Java server. That hasn't really happened yet and so my Web site has been down for like 2 months... I have had acc.js on the server, but at an improvised location.

What made matters worse was that I had two diverging development trees that weren't merging happily and so I just left them for like two months. In any case, I finally merged them (hopefully gracefully) and have quick-fixed the site for these scripts.

There are occasions when my server goes down though (either at my hands, TF's, or the host's ) so you basically have to choose between:

• Pulling from my server and accepting occasional downtime, which drastically slows down A.cc while the browser's request for my script time's out; but getting automatic updates as I consider them stable.

• Copying the source directly into your custom JS settings, which avoids downtime, but requires manual updates.

Note that there's currently no minified version as I don't have the closure compiler installed right now.

Apparently the super expects my apartment to be finished on Wednesday. So I might be able to get the keys either Wednesday or Thursday.

I'm paying a half month (which still means that I'm paying for ~3 days that I won't even have the keys, but it's negligible). Additionally, I pay for my last month up front, so all together it's CAD$975 for my first payment, but will be CAD$650 after that.

Leverton, since you're so loaded, you should slip me a couple bucks for being an allegro.cc content provider.

Today I showed up to pay rent (early, to get it out of the way) and the super was completely surprised. It seems that she was under the impression that I would be coming in next Saturday to pay, which is also still when the apartment will be ready (instead of Wednesday/Thursday, which was the last I heard from my brother). Additionally, instead of CAD$975, it was only ~CAD$500. Don't ask me how, as I thought it was supposed to be first and last month's rent, the last month's rent being presumably CAD$650 all by itself, but I wasn't going to argue with her...

So the good news is that I still have $500 of my money that I thought was gone, but the bad news is that I have to wait 3 more days than I expected (and I'm not really sure about the whole last month's rent thing...). I will have to talk to my brother tomorrow to see if he can make sense of it...

Today I went shopping with my mom's help and bought most of the essentials. Kitchenware, shower and bathroom accessories, etc... I still need more, but this was the most of it, I think. That came to almost CAD$600 though... Shopping with my brother probably would have been nicer to my wallet, but I can't say for sure what the sacrifice would be... Shame my mom was with me as the Walmart cashier was pretty cute.

I have officially moved into the apartment^[1]. Unfortunately, all of the various things that you "need" for a place of your own is costing quite a bit... I've nearly cut my savings in half and it's only been 2 days. I hope that pattern stops or I won't make it.

I still have a few odd things to get, but otherwise I should be done shopping, which is a relief. Unfortunately, I still have to go grocery shopping, and I'm not looking forward to it.

The entertainment stand that I bought sucks ass. It was really hard to assemble (3 people) and in the end got a hole punched through it while trying to join two pieces. Apparently it was hollow inside. So now it has a hole in the side which happens to face the door (due to the poor location of the phone/cable jacks). I might be tempted to try to return it or replace that piece, but it literally took us like 7 hours to assemble (we haven't even assembled the drawers yet...) and all of the doweling has been glued so it isn't coming apart gracefully. It's also a large and heavy SOB so I'm not really anxious to carry it out of the apartment. I think I'll just live with the hole, which should be mostly cosmetic (it's currently supporting its own weight, plus my 40" LCD TV, PS3, PS2, and HD PVR). I'm not at all happy about it, but I think going to the trouble of replacing it would only make me even more miserable (not to mention, if we have to assemble another one then it might break too).

I also broke my microwave stand in a mostly cosmetic way, but it's far less noticeable. It seems that everything that they make these days is garbage (albeit, that microwave stand was a lot cheaper than the rest).

I'm pretty satisfied with the computer desk that I chose. I wanted an L-shape, but my brother convinced me that it would take up too much space in such a small apartment (especially if I want to fit a BowFlex in it someday). The desk I got is still pretty large, which was what I wanted so there would be space for my huge mouse pad, keyboard, monitor, a phone, and probably a computer or two on it all at the same time without being a cluttered mess. It was a lot easier to assemble and aside from a little asymmetrical snafu, assembly of that went well.

Neither of my parents has come to see it yet. I'm a little bit regretful for spending so much money so quickly, especially on the garbage that broke, but hopefully it all works out in the end. My bed should be delivered tomorrow (the most expensive single purchase so hopefully that one works out OK).

I'm still a ways away from needing credit^[1] and should be pretty well done spending significant sums of money for a while (I hope). Now I just need to figure out my monthly expenses and try to budget my income to satisfy them with some savings left over... I imagine that will be nontrivial for somebody new to living on their own.

Today I got my router working. The "cable guy" was confused that it wasn't working... Turns out it was configured for PPPoE, which didn't care much for my cable Internet... I'm not sure what cable uses so I just set it to "DHCP automatic". I then got wireless working again and setup my PC. Then I cleared a path to the bedroom and cleared the bedroom in anticipation of my new bed scheduled for delivery tomorrow. That means I shouldn't have to sleep on this busted ass-couch any longer.

Currently I have to run an Ethernet cable across the floor to reach my PC, which is rather annoying. I'm not sure whether it is worthwhile to get a wireless NIC for my PC. Doing a wireless speed test on my netbook earlier I got something like 19 mbps down and 0.9 mbps up [append:] with a 100 ms lag. Doing a wired speed test with my PC got me something like 25 mbps down and 0.7 mbps up [append:] with a 70 ms lag. I'm sure it varies somewhat dramatically with cable, but the speed loss over wireless doesn't seem so dramatic that it should affect gaming (append: after all, I used to play over DSL). So I guess that I could get a wireless NIC for my PC and not have to worry about running Ethernet around the apartment... It wouldn't be a problem if the modem and router could be on an outside wall, but for some stupid reason all of the communication lines are fed into the central wall of the apartment on the outside of the kitchen wall...

Oh well. My computer desk is looking pretty sweet and slowly the place is taking shape. Maybe I'll be able to find a digital camera around to take some pictures soon.

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I pay 260€/month (+ 32€/mo for water, heat and electricity and 10€ for a parking spot) for a studio apartment in this wonderful soviet-style block and it's too much for the following reasons:

• The apartment has no balcony

• The apartment looks the same as it was when it was built in 1975, i.e. horrible colors in the kitchen with black inset plastic door handles, toxic green bathroom with green plastic wallpapers, horrible ugly plastic flooring etc.

• The apartment is cold in the winter and hot in the summer. The windows face south but they also leak.

In a bigger town that would be a reasonable rate, hell, down in the centre of this one it would be reasonable but not in a soviet-style mass produced concrete mass housing unit at the outskirts of the town. But because of the shortage of small apartments apparent everywhere with less than 30 minutes of commute to major cities, nobody's in a hurry to make these concrete block rent cells more humanely habitable.