The never-ceasing movement of cars along Booth Street, right outside my bedroom window, is far and away the biggest problem with my present dwelling. Whenever I am not wearing earplugs or headphones, it is a constant annoyance. Almost every morning, I wake up around 6:00am with one earplug fallen out (see previous). I catch myself idly wondering about ways to sabotage the road or direct the vehicles to another route.
All told, the flat is quite a good one. The location is good (near work, though a bit far from most interesting parts of town), the apartment itself is nice and of a good size, the inclusion of a private washer and dryer is very convenient, and the landlord is a nice guy. Even so, I suspect that car noise is going to set me apartment hunting as the end of my lease approaches next summer.
I catch myself idly wondering about ways to sabotage the road or direct the vehicles to another route.
There is little hope of that on an arterial road like Booth St. There is really very little you can do.
Here is a cipher for you:
I suggest you commit a violent crime every evening somewhere along the street. That way, everything will be taped up and police cars will do the job of preventing traffic from coming through. The stain of blood upon your soul may well be worth the extra hours sleep!
I suggest you commit a violent crime every evening somewhere along the street. That way, everything will be taped up and police cars will do the job of preventing traffic from coming through. The stain of blood upon your soul may well be worth the extra hours sleep!
I doubt this plan will prove to be very sustainable. I can only outwit teams of hard-nosed detectives for so long… Especially in my own neighbourhood.
@Anonymous
I don’t think that is a real encrypted message.
1) The frequency distribution of letters looks random.
2) Same goes for two and three letter groups.
3) Twenty character strings are exactly what random.org churns out.
“We adapt. Right now I’m a guy without a Nobel prize. I’m kind of used to it. If I got a Nobel prize I’d be a guy with a Nobel prize. I’d be happy but then I’d kind of get used to that too. And if I got a second one, “whoa, two!” but then I’d just get used to that too. You get used to things. You get used to bad things.
Now, I don’t want to overstate this. There are some very interesting exceptions. So for instance, we don’t get used to noise. A lot of research suggests that if your environment is noisy, they’re doing construction around you, you can’t get used to it. Your happiness drops and it doesn’t come back up. Your system cannot habituate to continued noise. We adapt to good things, winning the lottery, winning a prize, getting an “A ” in a course. We adapt, we get used to it, also with some surprising exceptions. One of the big–one of the other surprises from happiness research is the effects of cosmetic surgery like breast enhancement and breast reduction. One of the big surprises is it makes people happier and then they stay happier. And one explanation for this is how we look is very important. It’s very important for how other people see us and how we see ourselves, and you never get used to looking in a certain way. So, if you look better it just makes you happier all the time.”