More About Moving

Dec 16 18:12 UTC 1994

(Hm... I thought there already was an item to talk about moving, but
I'm not finding it.  Maybe it was in an old edition of the coop conference.
Who knows....)  Anyway:

Last weekend, Carl organized himself, mdw, scg, kentn, and me to finish
the electrical work in the Dungeon, Grex's future new home.  MANY thanks to
Carl and everybody who showed up to help out.

Carl talked to Ian, the carpenter who is building the room Grex will live
in, and to Steve Weiss, who e-mailed me a message saying this:


Ian will be putting up the drywall, but has commitments for the next few
weeks.  Thus the plan now is to have drywall put up on January 8th.

The drywall will be ready for painting the following weekend, and
we are planning on putting a prime coat on the 14th (sat) and the final coat
on the 15th.  If all proceeds on schedule, the phone lines and Grex itself
could be moved on January 21.

I know it is frustrating to look at 6 more weeks of waiting for this,
but at least we have a schedule now, and we have more reason than ever before
to believe we can stick to it.  I want to express my personal thanks to all
of the people who got us past this obstacle.

We promised Ian that he will have a couple of helpers for the drywall on the
8th.  We'll need some volunteers to meet him at noon on Sunday, 8 Jan.
We don't need a lot of people for this, only about 2.

The following weekend is your opportunity (if you're in Ann Arbor) to pitch
in.  We'll need several painting crews on both Saturday on Sunday.

It is too early to make arrangements with Ameritech, but the target date
for the move is the 21st, and we should keep in mind the lead time they need
to be ready to do this move for us on that date.

response 2 of 76:

Dec 16 20:50 UTC 1994

I will gladly help with the painting, and anything else I am
capable of helping with, assuming I can get transportation.

(Funny, all of a sudden the Move seems to be the least of
Grex's worries.)

response 4 of 76:

Dec 16 22:21 UTC 1994

And that's the weekend my sister gets married, which means I can't
help with the move *or* go to ConFusion.  >8(

response 6 of 76:

Dec 17 03:20 UTC 1994

Do we also need volunteers for the actual move?

response 8 of 76:

Dec 17 06:03 UTC 1994

   We'll need one Minivan with *good* shocks.  If we have that and can
take the seats out we'll be fine.  There will be many things that we won't
need to move out of the warehouse to the dungeon; if it turns out that
we don't want the desk, and whoever originally bought it doesn't want it,
Ken could use it.

   Coordinating with Ameritech is the hard part here.  In order to get
onto a Centrex system we're going to be unavailable for at least four
hours.  Then we should pop back up but at the dungeon.  Since we have
to work around them, we need to find a date that they can pretty much
garunte(sp?) having it up on.

   And, since we're dealing with a company, the move needs to happen
on a business day between 8a - 5p.  Of course.

response 10 of 76:

Dec 17 08:50 UTC 1994

I coud probably use my parents' minivan for tis.  It's a '94 Dodge Caravan
with the sport suspension, and rides fairly smoothly.

response 12 of 76:

Dec 17 12:35 UTC 1994

Glad the electrical stuff is done.

response 14 of 76:

Dec 17 22:45 UTC 1994

I doubt we can get Ameritech to change over the lines on a Saturday.
I will check on it, though.  If they can't do it on the 21st, what 
shall I tell them?

response 16 of 76:

Dec 18 02:38 UTC 1994

Or Monday the 23rd.  That way if Bell messes up, they have another weekday
the next day to fix the problem.  Also, if the phone lines cut over on
a Friday, there's pressure to move as fast as we can, to get the system
running again.  If we move on a Sunday and the phone lines don't cut over
'til Monday, then there's time Sunday evening to check and double check
that the hardware was set up correctly.

response 18 of 76:

Dec 18 04:49 UTC 1994

   Valerie is right.  Monday's give us time to scream (Remember M-Net's
problem with moving their phone lines?).
   In *theory*, we can start moving in the morning: load the van, move
the stuff, unload, and in theory have things ready in four to five hours
later for the lines to turn on.  In theory.  Dans comments are probably
closer to the mark though, based on three other moves I know about.
Ameritech has screwed up in each of those cases.  The good part was once
the right person heard about the problem things got fixed.

response 20 of 76:

Dec 18 22:09 UTC 1994

I suggest then that we actually plan to move Grex on Sunday the 22nd and
get it reconnected to the world the 23rd.  The extra time on Sunday would
give Steve or whoever more time to make sure that Grex will come up on
demand when the phones are plugged in.  I think we might be grateful for
the extra security the delay would make.

By the way, I will be glad to help with the move itself, and with the
painting, if you have no aesthetic hangups aabout a blind person painting.
 <smile>

response 22 of 76:

Dec 19 00:04 UTC 1994

   Gosh, I was hoping we'd be able to have someone paint a pattern of
boulders on one of the walls...

response 24 of 76:

Dec 19 07:43 UTC 1994

What do you think, would it be a good idea to shut down and move a day early?
We could get any hardware problems resolved beforehand and would only have
the modems to hook up on Monday. Maybe we could convince Ameritech to put
us first on their workload for Monday so we get switched over as early
as possible.