Time to look at hosting again. This looks good, and so does the hosting provider’s detail page. Sadly, though, no MT listed (sensible enough, I suppose). What’sthe scoop over at the support site for the provider? Well, nothing, in a word.

Well, Google to the rescue, with this cached entry originally recorded as found here.

Dated October, 2003:

So, ah, no, not them, I’d say.

I guess I’ll look here and possibly here (found here).

You know what? I wish gmail and Outlook would let me do the down-arrow to scan content and right arrow to open in-window tab, just like NetNewWire. Man, I sure do wish that, lazy, lazyweb.

I spoke with the patriarch of the family that owns our building. The family bought it from Fred Anhalt, the architect (in the creative sense) and builder of the place, when he went bust subsequent to the Depression in the late nineteen-twenties. At least one, possibly two generations of this family have grown up in this apartment building. However, my understanding is that this patriarch – a wonderfully sweet and understanding man, my favorite landlord ever – is now alone in the family in his desire to retain the building.

The prospective buyer is a real estate management company which currently owns one Anhalt, and has chosen to manage the building as Fred Anhalt would have, as a rental property. That building is among the most carefully maintained of all the Anhalts in the neighborhood. However, the care which has been lavished on that building is reflected in the rent – apartments notably smaller than ours rent for about 1.5k, quite higher than our rent.

Stay tuned.

Viv and I spent the day tear-assing around West Seattle looking at rentals. Our apartment building is for sale, and we’re already actively looking for a house to buy, so we’ve decided to move as soon as possible into a rental house. We have not had a lease here for nine years, so as soon as any sale goes through, we’re, ah, well, I’m sure you can fill in the vulgarity.

It will suck to leave this place, though. While I am sick to death of apartment dwelling, and eagerly anticipate dwelling in a place in which sunlight actually reaches the interior, I dearly love this building, and all the buildings that Fred Anhalt erected hereabouts some eighty years ago. It’s just not realistic to expect to find a place this size in another Anhalt, and while we certainly will take a look at what’s available in Anhalts, four years ago they were running a solid 20% premium over other 1920s condos. I can’t imagine that that’s changed much, as there is a solidly finite supply of Anhalt units in Seattle, and an apparently infinite demand for real estate.

Last week we looked at at least three houses that were absolutely appalling, each well under 1000 square feet in interior space, nearly collapsing, and stinky like old socks, cat feces, or other repugnant material. Each one of these houses was priced at a clearly insane $250,000.

This morning in bed, I awakened and cranked out a Filemaker database to track listings. I combed the Sunday paper and the online listings for houses that met our minimum spec, and populated the database with the listings that might fit. As I showered, Viv called and gave the listers a quick rundown designed to narrow the choices. By the time we were ready to leave, we had about twenty houses to check out.

We started in West Seattle. I self-consciously used my cell phone’s newly-hacked capability to act as a bluetooth modem for my laptop to spot each location in Google maps, and felt quite absurd on several locations as I called the rental agent from the lawn in front of the property’s sign. We saw a predictable mix, from terrible – even tragic – to spectacular and underpriced. While we did not get to second base with any of the renters, we identified two possibilities.

Man, it’s gonna be a busy month.

Success! (I think.)

Speed is better than expected – it sure seems faster than Blazer on the phone proper. Fie on thee, non-blanketed wifi coverage!

Um, apparently the problem resided in one of the USB ports, not the almost absurdly bent-up USB plug on the end of the mouse. I still welcome original Intellimice Explorers, however. Insurance! Hoarding!