Worst case, it could be eight weeks before we have cable / internet access. Other houses in the development have cable access, but our house is the first on a small side street, and we're too far from the closest cable box to get a connection from it. So, the cable company has to lay some lines, add some repeaters, whatever. But to do that, they need to get permission from the developer to dig the trench. And when I called him Monday, he said he has no problem giving that permission. Cool. But why didn't the developer go ahead and get this set up when we started our house... back in March? Nobody knows.
The guy building the house next door (the owner, not his Builder, who is different from my Builder) said he tried to get cable access and learned about the distance issue (which is how I learned about it). But, apparently due to some ill-will between him and the developer (who is also my Builder), he needed me to call the cable company, then call the developer and get them talking. Shit is fucked up, yo.
iPhone
Here's a picture of the house painters driving across our front yard. They wanted to come and do some paint touch ups on the stairs while the movers were carrying our stuff in. We're all like "Do you see that fucking truck in our driveway? I know you see it, because you drove across our fucking yard to avoid it. We are moving in, eh! Got no time for this! Don't go setting up that ladder right in front of the staircase!" Everybody who worked on the house still treats it as a work in progress - they come and go as they please. They let themselves in, drive where they want, etc.. This has to stop immediately, mostly because we don't want some idiot letting the cats out. I'm contemplating changing all the locks.
Cats are very confused. They're on high alert and everything is very interesting and scary. The stairs are wood, here, not carpeted as in the last house. So the cats are learning the hard way about how running on these stairs is a bad idea. They're really digging the balcony/landing, though. They get to perch up on the second floor and oversee all the activity below. But once they're up there, it seems like they don't understand how to get back down - turn around, walk down the stairs! They haven't quite figured out the subtle geometry of the house, yet.
iPhone
Here, Tricksey and Pepper have discovered a huge daddy-long-legs crawling around on a pile of packing paper. They're both afraid to step on the paper, so the critter is safe as long as he stays there. But the cats aren't afraid to nervously swat at him, and so he runs from edge to edge to avoid their paws; and the cats follow him. I left before I saw how that game ended.
They're very excited about the woods out the windows. We didn't have anything like this at the old house - just other houses. Here, trees as far as the eye can see. Except for the house growing next door, that is. Need to plant some shrubs over there, ASAP.
Moving took ten hours. Four moving guys, a huge truck. The two of us. It was 45 and gently raining. They knocked a decent hole in the wall of the old house, which needs to be fixed before we can start showing again. We also have to clean it up. It's a disaster right now.
New house is a disaster, too. So many boxes.
“Everybody who worked on the house still treats it as a work in progress – they come and go as they please. They let themselves in, drive where they want, etc.. ”
I have a vague recollection of this when my parents put an addition on the house some 25 years (or more) ago. Contractors just walking in like they owned the place. I had the same reaction you do (though I was ~13 at the time), GTFO!
But… you’re almost done!
Take a deep breath – every day will get better and better.
No Internet access kind of sucks though. What’s the 3G signal like on your phone? Can you use a Wi-Fi hotspot?
yeah, we’re currently trying to get our iPhones to act as wifi hotspots.
maybe i’ll go set up our home network as planned, but with my iPhone sitting next to the router, instead of the cable modem i was expecting to have there :)
bandwidth? hah!
did i mention no cable?
that means no TV.
so we’ve left our cable at the old house on, with the DVR recording as usual. we’ll zip over and grab it this weekend, then watch all that we can. then we’ll take it back and let it record some more next week :)
ah ha!
searching through some old archeology texts, i heard word of a device the ancients once used to pull TV signals out of the æther. some called it an “antenna”, because of its resemblance to an insect’s antenna, i presume.
and so, digging around in a dark, unfrequented section of an aisle in a local Home Depot, i found one of these devices.
after much waving of the antennae, i did manage to secure reception of a single television signal: a local NBC affiliate that was apparently unaware that it had left its transmitter running. (i hope they’re not reading this! (odds are good) ). so, we have TV! just one channel. but… TV!