So I’m sitting here in Starbucks in Harvard Square drinking tea (and coffee) and hooking up various services for my new apartment. It’s on Harvard Street, just off Central Square. I ended up going for a 2 bed place because I wanted the space and because I got a pretty good deal – and because there’s a super cool courtyard view out of the window that helped me fall in love with the place. So, in summary, I like it, just a little bit.
The apartment is completely empty (well, except for minimal essentials I picked up in a 24 hour CVS down the street) and I don’t yet even have a bed to sleep on. Fortunately, davej was kind enough to let me crash with him for a few days while I figure that out. Yesterday, I took the commuter rail service out to Stoughton to visit Ikea and order a bed (should be delivered tomorrow). $1000 bucks later and I have something I like, but I wasn’t happy with the way they handled the delivery – they won’t deliver regular “warehouse” purchases, just furniture.
Ikea furniture goes out from a depot in the store right behind where I was standing with bedding, pillows, a quilt, and other crap that I then had to take on the train/T back to the apartment. Thanks Ikea, thanks a lot. Thanks for charging me $100 bucks for delivery and not delivering my other crap at the same time. Oh, and thanks for telling me twice on the phone that you could deliver this stuff before I turned up at the store – thanks. And yes, I did have words with store management, but it won’t make any difference.
Plan for the next week is to get hooked up with more than gas/electric. On Monday, I need to get some High Speed net access. I’m probably going to go with Comcast in the end because their business package is around the same cost as going with the high-end Speakeasy DSL option and I already have the cable in the place. But I might accept a higher charge and go with Speakeasy if I again have to explain to the Comcast technical support folks how to setup up reverse DNS entries… I’m not looking forward to trying to get them to combine business and residential packages for me either, but I’ll try.
I’ve got some photos of the apartment that I’ll upload in due course and I’ve also got a bunch of other things that I probably could comment upon on this blog, but first, I must get myself sorted out. I’m back in the UK for a week from next weekend and then I’ll get back to buying crap for my apartment ahead of my shipped junk turning up in a few weeks (well, here’s hoping). If you get board, you can call my new US cellphone:
+1-617-759-1337.
Jon.