DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

(By popular demand, I’ve fashioned another story out of our recent septic tank pumping, an experience rich enough in sensation to spawn entire philosophies. Coming up with a measly journal entry was, you could say, a piece of cake.)

As soon as the “wastewater removal” guy opened the tank, a cloud of foul-smelling air rose up to envelop us both, and indeed all of West Sonoma County. I wanted to ask, “do you ever get used to the smell?” (a Fletch reference, I just realized) but I was too horrified to speak, as the guy had dipped down into the tank with his “stir stick” to break up the floating mass of, err, byproducts. Immediately I realized that Manning The Septic Stir Stick is the worst job in the world, narrowly passing Hot Dog On A Stick Employee, the previous record-holder for stick-wielding professions.

The pumper was talkative, perhaps taking advantage of the fact that he was breathing through his mouth. He delivered an impromptu lecture on the origins and composition of the thin layer of funk coating the inside of the tank. Subsequent research indicates that his explanation was completely incorrect, but at the time, even if I’d known, I would not have challenged him, for he still held the evil Stir Stick.

The actual pumping process is not one you’d have to study long to master. Given my physical proximity to the world headquarters of O’Reilly & Assoc., I feel okay about providing this “Nutshell” reference to septic tank pumping:

1. Don HEPA air filter or oxygen mask if available (optional)
2. Apply the Stick: break up any large floating mass. If you spot anything you can identify, civility demands that you not mention it to the homeowner.
3. Lower a vacuum hose into the soup.
4. Suck the tank dry.

You’ve just earned $330 — enough to invest in rubbing alcohol, boot covers, gloves, leather aprons, autoclave… a coliform containment system so you don’t contaminate your truck’s interior, your pants, shoes, arms, face, and hands with other people’s feces.

Or, like the guy who pumped my tank, you could disregard the need for cleanup and pocket the full payment, blissfully ignorant of the virulent germs running freely over your entire being. I realized that my pump guy belonged in this category when I saw that he had not marked the “up” end of the stir stick. Think that through.

The worst part was still to come. After the pumper had coiled up his hoses and driven away, I realized that having the septic tank open on a breezy day creates an unfortunate air channel: the pipe that feeds the septic tank terminates, at its far end, in my kitchen sink.

Air moves at the slightest provocation, like, even from the wind. This seems especially true when malodors are present. When I returned to the house, having withstood and, to some extent, habituated the great stink in the back yard, I was bowled over by the far greater stink in my kitchen. I guess that was a little going-away present from the pumper, a virtual prepayment for any future tales told at his expense. (As if I would ever do that!)

Contrary to what I told all the folks I was hoping would help me move, I really do have a lot of junk. It was not a light move in any sense. We’d purged beforehand, shredding years of old credit-card statements and tax returns, and driving two carloads of useful but unloved furniture and clothes to Goodwill and the Salvation Army, but even so we were left with a house full of stuff.

Can a pack rat learn feng shui? A friend opines that by accumulating junk, one is expressing doubt that the universe will provide that which is needed, when it is needed. It seems to me if there’s anyone you don’t want to offend, it’s the universe, and so I immediately pledged to offload a large percentage of my accumulations. That was last December.

I still pledge to do that. Really. Erm, do I have to do it right away?

It’s at this point I tend to use a phrase that makes my pragmatic German relations laugh: I like the idea of keeping only the things I currently use… I’m just having trouble with the implementation. I think I don’t have a ton of certifiably useless junk stored away, but I probably do have a ton of stuff I’m fond of but won’t actually ever use. And hey, my new house has a garage. Maybe this is the universe’s way of telling me it’s OK to keep those 10 cubic yards of chattel.

Somewhere, in three of those boxes, are about 250 old science fiction paperbacks from the 1980s… Heinlein, Harrison, Asimov, Adams and so on. All my life I’ve lugged these books along, from apartment to apartment and house to house, with the idea that I’d eventually have a library where I’d display the collection. I find it ironic that, now that I have a room for such a library, I also have a new design sense, or perhaps a lack of design sense, or maybe it’s a sense of a lack of design. In a word, I demand austerity. I want unadorned space. I don’t want empty shelves — I don’t want the shelves in the first place. So I’m pretty sure I don’t want a room lined with the entire Tor catalog, 1981-1985.

I had never seen the word impedimenta before writing this piece, but it’s so wholly appropriate I may actually go re-label all the boxes in my garage.

I rented a big truck on the day we moved across town. You’ve seen them, lumbering inexpertly around wide turns, packed wall-to-wall with boxes and furniture and potted plants, driven by stressed-out and dirty and exhausted people who have apparently piloted one of these things about twice before in their lives. It isn’t just the tentative way they change lanes, it’s the way they stop traffic, set out pylons, and call in for airborne support when they have to back into a driveway. New drivers of big trucks need a football field to execute a three-point turn.

None of this is true of me, of course.

So I sit down in the truck, fire up the motor, pull the handle to release the parking brake, shift into drive, and lurch halfway across the driveway. The acrid smell of unhappy brake pads rises immediately. “What a maroon,” I think, “the previous renter must have tried to drive with the parking brake on.” And then I realize that the hood isn’t latched, and yes, I did put two and two together shortly after that.

I stood on my deck, eating an apple picked from my yard. When I finished, I threw the apple core as far as I could. And it landed on my property.

Sure, you could say, you’re a computer nerd, and you throw like a girl. You’d be right. Still — it’s a big yard.

The move went pretty well. I am indebted to the hardy souls who donated a day of their lives and worked tirelessly without complaint to haul my stuff: Patti, Bim, Chuck, and Pete. Thank you!

The crew put in about six hours of difficult labor. Then my wife and I put in about six more… we cleaned the old house, and packed the car (twice) with the handful of items that hadn’t fit onto the truck. Then we began the project for this month, unpacking. This house has more storage space, but it’s all different, and we’re having to find new ways and places to hide all our junk.

I was excited to realize I’ve been socking away all manner of useless electronic crap that I can now donate to the CRC. For example: an external ZIP drive that works great but requires a computer with an external SCSI-2 port. Or: two CueCats, never used, still in their original boxes from Wired. Or, from the scary tangle of wire that filled four boxes: seven ADB cables, thirteen RJ-11 phone cords, fifteen power cords, and a selection of unidentified ribbon cables. It will be refreshing to downsize my collection.

If you can read this, I congratulate you! You have braved the rough DNS waters to surf to my server’s new home.

I spent nearly five hours today standing around while a series (and, many times, a parallel) of Pac*Bell and PBI technicians tried to make my new DSL work. The first tech tried a router and 3 modems. All showed synch, but none passed traffic.

The installation tech had to leave (PBI folks are forbidden from working overtime) but they dispatched someone else, apparently missing the message that something in the central office was broken. The second tech confirmed that the first tech was correct in diagnosing a problem “elsewhere,” and then he went and sat in his truck for 90 minutes waiting for P*B to change hardware in the CO. The hardware apparently got changed, but no one thought to call me or him to say so.

Finally, after 6:00 PM, the line came up. And then about 11:00 PM I got my server installed and configured. And then by about 12:30 AM some of the DNS and whois changes began to take effect.

I think this site actually showed less than 1 hour’s downtime, although individual client experiences vary with the performance of their local DNS caches. I saw traffic coming it shortly after booting up the server, though, so that was gratifying. All in all it was the least painful server-and-DNS relocation I’ve ever done.