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Blogging's going to be scarce until after mid-December, because I'm about to move house. The removals firm are turning up on Wednesday to start on things, and I should be installed in the new place and with internet access restored by Friday next week. It's a big move, by my standards, because we've been in this flat for eleven years and two months: stuff accumulates, to the tune of roughly 5000 books. And while we're not moving very far — about half a kilometre across town and three floors up — when you get down to it, the only difference between moving half a kilometre and half a thousand kilometres is the fuel in the truck's tank.

Of course, this is the modern age, and I will not be totally offline: I have a smartphone with 3G broadband, email, and a decent web browser, so even while we're without a cable connection I'll be in touch via email. But I hope you'll appreciate I have higher priorities than writing long blog entries ...

16 Comments

1:

Goodluck, and may it not rain on your cardboard boxes.

2:

Actually, I think it's easier to move half a thousand miles (sorry, I'm a yank), since you know, up front, that you're doing it all at once and so you can plan appropriately. When I recently moved four blocks, I had the movers come for the furniture, and then I managed to spend a week cleaning out everything else and moving it myself, cause I kept saying "Oh, I can wait and get that tomorrow."

3:

Charlie,

Good luck with the move. Don't worry about us, we'll keep ourselves amused for a few days with the polonium thread.

4:

Good luck in the move!

5:

After helping my brother move 150m and 3 flights recently, rest assured that it's the 3 flights that are the difficult part. Mainly because we did all the moving ourselves. Getting a sofa stuck going round a corner on the stairs at just the moment when several of his new neighbours wanted to go up and down was definitely a bonding experience.

6:

Sympathy and empathy and good wishes with your move.

As to "after mid-December" I found myself involuntarily thinking: "Beware the Ides of December!"

Wondering, after the "bonding experience" posting, about mashups of Shakespeare, Lovecraft, and James Bond. "the name is Bond," he said, oozing eldritch ichor and whipping out his blue-steel Walther PPK, "Shakespeare Bond..."

Well, Poul Anderson wrote the great Shakespeare's planet stories and novel...

7:

Nope, Shakespeare's Planet can be laid at the door of Clifford Simak.

Through I'm certain Poul Anderson would have made a good fist of such a book... :-)

-- Andrew

8:

Okay, Andrew, now that I'm completely middled. Is this below a correct correction or a disinformational pseudocorrection?

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003693.html

[Chris Christensen points out that negative connotations come as well as go, via the quote attributed to S.M. Stirling:

"Words mean what they're generally believed to mean. When Charles II saw Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral for the first time, he called it 'awful, pompous, and artificial.' Meaning roughly: Awesome, majestic, and ingenious."

[Update 10/23/2006 -- Dave Lebling writes:

"Chris Christenson's quote on "awful, pompous and artificial" is not from S. M. Stirling, but rather an earlier science fiction writer, Poul Anderson, in his short story 'A Tragedy of Errors.'"

"My recollection is that the story revolves around a planet where the word 'friend' has come to mean pirate/terrorist/bad-guy due to raids by bad guys who call themselves 'friends.'"

9:

"I should be installed in the new place and with internet access restored by Friday next week"

Good luck with that. It took a month from moving in to getting a live internet connection for our new flat:

Eighteen days for BT to send an engineer to install the phone socket (the letting agent assured us that the phone socket was there - as was the case for practically everything he did in relation to this transaction, he was in error) plus seven working days for Nildram to test the line and reactivate our account.

Regards Luke

10:

Good luck and lots of duct tape for the boxes (that way, if it rains you've still got a chance)

5000 books? Have you had your joists tested?

11:

Luke: I use Telewest for broadband. They take moving house as a customer retention issue -- I could defect to a BT reseller like that -- so I expect it'll be working fairly fast (especially as the cable and socket is definitely there and working). Also, if there are any hitches, I have a 3G mobile phone with a huge data tariff. I just have to get the laptop talking to the phone in order to have a wireless modem feed. 3G may be a bit hard, but I've got an older GPRS-capable phone that is pretty easy to hook up.

Martyn: nope, I haven't had the joists tested. But I'm not going to put them all in one room ... let alone one pile ...

As the new flat's been standing since 1830 and is structurally sound, I'm not too worried.

12:

Is it CESG-rated for GREEN? We wouldn't want to lose Stross when it all kicks off.

13:

Best of luck in the move and may you have joy in your new home, Charlie and Feorag.

I'll look forward to wheedling a visit and a coffee when I finally get back to Scotland (maybe next year?).

Regards, Cernig

14:

Charles, try using 'movers' rather than 'removers', because you want them to put the stuff into your new place, and not just pull it out and leave it in the street (says the clueless American, who then drives away, wondering why there's so much oncoming traffic in his lane).

15:

Having finally just unpacked the last box m'self Charlie - my little god of unfair packing tricks is now bounding your way (Who puts my reading light in with my DIY tools I ask you? And where the hell is the pen for my tablet PC?...). But I hope all goes well.

However this now means I have finally sat down to read TJM (In between studying Maths for the degree - F'tagn!). Now normally I'll just give you a S'good this, or Nicely done; however this time I have to specifically say. P 37 paragraph 2.(I think).

The comment that goes something like "Fuck, it's Nyaratholep, Run". Laughing so hard at 11:30 that I awoke my wife, and now have to read in the study.

Bugger it.

16:

Good luck on the move.

I just finished The Jennifer Morgue and loved it. I really identify with Bob- I work as a sysad for a huge government agency... my building is a monster post-WWII warehouse the size of a city block, subdivided into rooms which are then broken into rat-mazes of cube-farms... everything is the same. Except for the Cthuloids and daemons and such.

Anyway, it was a great read. And I was even MORE into "Pimpf" as I am currently hacking my way through Neverwinter Nights 2.

"Fuck, it's Nyaratholep, Run".

Classic. Love it.

Thanks for another great one. Keep on writing, I'll keep on buying.

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This page contains a single entry by Charlie Stross published on December 4, 2006 5:18 PM.

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