Our inspection is tomorrow.

It all comes down to this - six months of site research, nine months of site search, negotiation, conflict, abandonment, restarting and leasing, a year of construction, 200 pages of documentation and roughly 4,000 hours of my life are drawing to a close. Looking at it that way, it's not too far off from a master's degree. Except I have effectively nothing to show for it, and the money we've spent so far is double what the Stark program at USC would have cost me.

And it's not like they'll say "no" and we'll have to start over. They'll say things like "the temperature at the faucets must be lower than 120 degrees but the temperature in the washing machine must be more than 120 degrees" and we'll say things like "without two separate hot water heaters there's no way to do that and you know it so we use the sanitize cycle on the washing machine STFU" and they'll say things like "we must be able to verify the temperature of the washing machine" and we'll say things like "it's a front-loader so go ahead and find your waterproof logging thermometer, ass" and they'll grumble because it's not like they wrote the rules and after all, let's not be silly.

It takes six to eight weeks from the time you sign the documents to the time you get business internet. When I pointed out that there's an empty spigot on a 5-way tap 20 feet from my rack, I actually got Comcast's regional supervisor for install and maintenance to drop by. We went on the roof together. Confidence is high that they'll actually give me f'n Internet while they trench 25 yards of hardline through my parking lot, which will take six weeks to coordinate but at least I don't have to pay for it. Plus I have the cell phone number of Comcast's regional install and maintenance supervisor. With great power comes great responsibility.

NOW I HAVE A JUMBOTRON HO HO HO

48 pixels by 144 pixels. 32k colors. THREE FEET BY EIGHT FEET. Sitting at an intersection with 80,000 cars a day. The guy who bought it (landlord) used to be an investment broker. Girl whose office it landed in is married to a former audiovisual and DSN consultant. Which means it's fallen to me to communicate with the equivalent of an annoying banner ad for your commute.

When was the last time you had to deal with COM ports and RS232? And have you tried doing it in Windows 10? Know what? It's hella easier in Win10 than it is in Win7, even when Daktronics decides to put your panel on Address 17 out of 128 for no known reason.

Speaking to a human on their phone tree, even when you have a case number, even when one of those choices is "if you are by the equipment and need support immediately, press 2", is ten layers deep.

But I got me some big fuckin' pixels to play with.

It occurred to me last night that the amount of stress this goddamn birth center has generated has caused me to gain 20 lbs over the past two years, despite running every day and biking 3,000 miles over six months. It stands to reason, then, that I can look forward to losing some weight soon.

Assuming I live in a reasonable world.