Whoever thought that one could hunt for apartments over the Internet was wrong. You can kind of get an idea of what might, possibly, have been available sometime in the last year or two, but if I see another “Last updated June 1998”, I’m going to scream.

(Yaaaaaagh.)

But I realized something. My current place sucks.

My current apartment is on a ground floor with the bedroom up front, facing a street that has a lot of trucks on it at 6am, a block away from a major commercial strip that’s busy on clubbing nights. It has signs of attempted breakins, had the ceiling nearly collapse before the landlord got around to sending someone, once had mice, and is in a neighbourhood in which junkies are beginning to appear.

But mostly I don’t mind it here.

This suggests that I won’t have a great deal of trouble finding an acceptable apartment in Ottawa.

I’ve also observed some things about Ottawa. First, everyone has been prepared in advance what to say when asked for relocation advice:

Man, the vacancy rate is 0.2%. And stay out of Vanier.

Now I realize that this is, indeed, useful information, but it’s only useful the first time. It’d be good if the first person would tell you about the vacancy rate, the second about Vanier, the third about Britannia Park and Bayshore being good places to look, and the fourth or so to come up with the perfect place.

Interestingly, the vacancy rate tends to move around by an order of magnitude. There was a brief scuffle on #ottawa today about whether it was 2% or 0.02%.

This would be much easier if I were in Ottawa, which should happen soon. The joys of having to sublet will come in later entries.

[Reposted in November 2003 from my short-lived journal on Use Perl.]