— So we’ll deliver [your couch] on Thursday between 8am and noon. Is that alright with you?

— Well… I’d rather it was an afternoon?

— Ah, sorry Sir, but in your district it’s only mornings.

WTF.

Message personnel : je ne sais pas qui a insisté pour me joindre hier soir avant de finalement se décider à laisser un message sur mon répondeur, parce que le numéro n’était pas dans mon répertoire et le message est inaudible.

I don’t know what I really have in terms of bandwidth, but I know it does work.

I’ve got TV again! How amazing the twentieth century was.

P.S. Considering how it makes the iMac’s fans spin, I’m afraid of what’ll happen when I try to make VLC run on the Mac mini so I can watch and record TV on the other screen.

Colis en instance à La Poste, destinataire avisé disposant de 15 jours pour aller le retirer.

Tiens, c’est marrant, je n’ai pas bougé de chez moi, et je n’ai pas entendu frapper. Ils doivent vraiment être trop timides, leurs livreurs.

P.S. Je suis con, moi, j’y croyais. Bien sûr, il n’y a pas d’avis de passage dans la boîte aux lettres, et d’après Mme La Poste ils le recevront demain. Mais les promesses d’ivrogne, on sait ce qu’elles valent. (Ah, et la Poste ferme à midi le samedi, évidemment.)

According to Mr. Post Office, my DSL modem did leave the suburbs warehouse this morning, came to my place, knocked the door, got all disappointed that I didn’t answer, and decided to go back to the suburbs rather than wait at the counter right by the street.

Now I have to wonder — do I put a “Knock. Hard. Hammer at the door, even.” Post-It on my door in case it comes back tomorrow, or are the delivery guys just driving around Paris, never bothering to climb any stairs, and I’d look like a naive, provincial doofus if I did that?

I’m braving the polar temperatures (my kunckles are bleeding) and viruses (what kind of internet café has vulnerable computers?) to keep you posted: no, I still haven’t got the net. Either there’s a subtlety I missed in the router’s setup (which is quite possible considering the number of subtleties there), or it’s just impossible, or the line isn’t quite open yet. Either way, I’m screwed. Damnit.

“6. Your connection is activated.”

Aaaaaaaaaaaaarghh. (Still haven’t received the proprietary modem.)

When I got back home yesterday, after I put down my new vacuums cleaner’s dripping cardboard box (it did resist the downpour pretty well, hurray for modern packing technology), I was really surprised that no blog was talking about the woman I’d seen thrown into the air by a Smart car on Boulevard de Sébastopol. I mean, come on, a person may be dead there, why isn’t anyone interested? Ah, those bloggers, as soon as it’s not about them they just couldn’t care less…

What do you mean, it’s up to me to blog it, and nobody else could do it for me? Well, okay then, there you go: if you’re looking for a vacuum cleaner for a small Paris apartment, I can recommend the Daewoo RC 4008 B, 80€ at Conforama; I’ll certainly have to empty the container or change the bag (you can use it both ways) often, because it looks rather small, but it’s really silent. And considering how physically close I am to my neighbors, that’s a pretty good thing.

Votre dossier ayant été validé, nous avons le plaisir de vous confirmer que votre souscription au forfait Free Haut Débit - un nombre illimité d’heures de connexion à haut débit pour seulement 29,99 euros TTC par mois - est bien prise en compte par nos services.

La mise en place des équipements nécessaires à l’ouverture du service FreeBox est en cours d’installation (DSLAM). Dès que l’installation sera effective le dégroupage de votre ligne sera lancé. Merci pour votre patience.

There! Well, I think. It may depend on your ISP, but chances are the new blog’s domain name is now operational (because, there it is, I’ve got money on my bank account, and I’ve got to spend it fast before it’s all gone, and boy is it hard to spend money, you’ve got to make choices, I hate making choices).

If you’re interested in technology, computers, the internet, blogs, gadgets Macs, or if you’re just… using a computer, well, you’ve got good reasons to read my blog dedicated to these topics: #FF00AA. (It’s pronounced… uh… “pink-garoo”, I suppose. Or… “fwaah” if you prefer.) It’s still bilingual, it’s both prettier and uglier than garoo.net, and it has the amazing innovation that I write drafts. Ooh, spooky concept that means I take the time to think before I publish my posts.

The other good news is, if you’re really not interested in the modern world, hate using a computer and are quite satisfied with your virus- and spyware-laden Windows setup, you can forget about the new blog and keep reading this one, and you won’t be disturbed by those pesky technology matters anymore here. Only movies, TV and my life. Yay.

Now I’ve got to find a convertible sofa.

[01/15] I lost and found back the whole blog’s contents, but it’ll take some time to put it all back and translate it again, so I’ll get to it tomorrow. Let’s say the blog officially opens on Monday afternoon.

[01/16] It’s all fixed, and I could take advantage of the opportunity to clean my post tags a bit.

En parallèle de votre inscription à Free Haut Débit, vous devez prévenir votre établissement bancaire et/ou postal de la mise en place du prélèvement automatique qui sera intitulé “Free Haut Débit”. Faute de quoi, vous vous exposez à des problèmes de prélèvements qui peuvent conduire à une suspension de l’abonnement.

Euh… ils disent ça au cas où, pour ceux qui ont des banques ou des comptes bizarres, ou ils ont une façon de faire les prélèvements tellement spéciale qu’on doit effectivement prévenir sa banque ?

iTunes Meme

Seen on RobotJohnny.com:

17735 items, 52.4 days, 96.86 GB (and, yes, browsing the library becomes sluggish at this point).

Sort by song title: From !@$%# (Fisherspooner, two stars) to Zoum zoum zoum (Dalida, unrated).

Sort by time: From Ghost track (Queen, Made In Heaven, unrated, 4 seconds) to A Thousand Years (Sting, two stars, one hour twenty-seven minutes, not sure whether it’s a bug or really the piece’s length).

Sort by artist: From 2 Unlimited (No Limit, three stars) to ZZ Top (Gimme All Your Lovin’, three stars).

Sort by album: From …And Justice For All (Metallica, one star on average) to Zooropa (U2, unrated).

Top 5 most played songs: the whole Requiem For A Dream soundtrack, seventy times

First song that plays on shuffle: T’en va pas (Elsa, three stars)

Songs with ‘sex’ in the title: 61

Songs with ‘love’ in the title: 622

Songs with ‘death’ in the title: 19

Songs with ‘fart’ in the title: 0

My iMac makes a cricket sound. But how can I know if that’s new or just noticeable because there isn’t a single noise in the whole building?

Laundry day: one sock down.

Beside a big spinning grinder designed to shred the, uh… waste, a saniflo system also includes a big pump that’ll push the, uh… waste all the way up from a house’s basement to the septic tank, for instance.

In layman’s terms, that means when the evacuation pipe blows off because the plumbers didn’t fasten it tight enough, it makes a fountain. With… waste.

The suspicion is confirmed, my neighbors are weird: as I had just pulled the door, going out, right at the moment the horror dawned on me that I had locked myself out because I’d worn dirty jeans yesterday and my keys weren’t in the pocket they were supposed to, I heard a voice (a female, thirty-ish voice, not a little girl’s) from behind the next door’s spyhole:

…it’s the next-door neighbor… I don’t know him…

I would have answered, through the door, “well, how about introducing ourselves now!” but for some odd reason I wasn’t quiet in the mood right then. Go figure.

Well, that’s done.