Sep. 27th, 2003

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That's one less thing to worry about.

The left front one was not only leaky but had developed a disturbing lump in the sidewall. They were all getting on in years, except for the one that had been changed a couple of years ago when its predecessor went flat, and that one had some foreign object sticking out of it near the tread that I just noticed today. They all had to go. It's better to have identical tires on the same axle anyway.
mmcirvin: (Default)
The cable company couldn't send the reauthorization signal to our box because of the piece-of-crap 3-way splitter I had stuck in the coax.
mmcirvin: (Default)

Actually, tires have previously been a source of anxiety for me. I recently read that a popular cold-reading technique for a fake psychic, especially one working a crowd, is to mention various things that often have emotional resonance for people, and one of those things is "appliances that don't work but haven't been discarded." For me it was a bicycle with a flat rear tire.

I had bought this bicycle my first year of graduate school and had a bit of fun riding it around, though riding a bike in Boston and Cambridge has its dangers. It was a pretty nice, almost-new blue mountain bike that I had gotten for a good price.

In my second year, not long after I had moved into a tiny apartment, the rear tire went flat. It doesn't take that much expertise or effort to replace the rear tire of a bicycle, but it took more knowledge than I had, and I was too busy with other things to figure out the situation. Gradually, for some reason I can't quite fathom, this crippled upside-down bike sitting on the floor of my apartment became a symbol in my mind for everything I hadn't gotten around to dealing with-- my failed attempts at dating; the seemingly insurmountable task of getting a good research topic and working on my dissertation; the fact that I lived in a tiny hole in the ground smaller than some people's bathrooms, albeit one with an excellent location. The bicycle became associated with shame, the shame of being such a doofus that I couldn't do something so simple as fixing a flat bicycle tire over the course of several years, to such an extent that I couldn't even bear thinking about fixing it.

Eventually, things got better for me. I met Sam, finished my degree, got a job. We moved in together to a much nicer apartment in Arlington. But I still couldn't face the feelings of shame that were somehow associated with that bicycle. I couldn't throw it away, sell it, or fix it. In the basement of the apartment building, in a room mostly filled with the building's furnace, people had stashed various things (to the chagrin of the building management), including a pile of bicycles leaning on one another in a disorganized fashion. I added the bicycle to the pile-- there was nothing to lock it to, but I locked the front wheel so it couldn't be ridden even if the rear tire hadn't been perpetually flat-- and I tried not to think about it.

The second bicycle in the pile belonged to a friendly and talkative building resident who, evidently, resented the fact that somebody else's bike had been piled on top of hers. Frequently she'd engage me in conversation about the subject, speaking of the revenge she would one day visit on the jerk who had put that topmost bike there. I grinned and tried to look unconcerned. The shame of the bicycle had gained an additional component.

One day, my bicycle disappeared from the basement. Presumably somebody stole it. Somehow, I felt a sense of relief, one that I felt too ashamed to explain fully.

But some time after, my neighbor met me in the cellar laundry room adjoining the furnace room, and continued haranguing me about the injustice that that unknown resident had done to her, by piling another bicycle, now vanished, on top of hers. And, listening to her, beneath the sound of her voice, I heard another sound: a muffled honk, like the call of a goose wrapped in cotton. Could she hear it? Was this merely the product of my nervous exhaustion, of the strange enhancement of the senses that had befallen me since my days in graduate school?

The honking grew louder. Surely, surely she could hear it! The heat of the furnace seemed unbearably hot; sweat and tears rolled down my face. Yet on my neighbor prattled, pretending not to know my shame, pretending not to know that the honking of the bicycle's horn betrayed my crime! Could she torture me so? It must be! The echoing of the hideous honking filled the room, drowned out her voice, made it impossible to hear all else! And I cried out: "Villainess! Dissemble no more! Do you not hear the bicycle, the bicycle with which I have committed my crime, the bicycle that once leaned on top of your own in the chamber adjoining? The sound, the sound! It is the honking of its hideous horn!!!"

mmcirvin: (Default)
SSH tunnelling, mail and news seem to be completely functioning again (and I didn't realize this, but the POP server actually does support SSL; it's just the SMTP server for outgoing mail that doesn't).

But DNS still seems to have strange malfunctions from the shell. Some things work and some don't. It's a mystery.

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