TMI?
Personal stuff
Now relegated to Blogblivion...Sunday, June 18, 2006
Wow
We’ve seldom come anywhere close to going over our bandwidth, which over time has grown to 23 GB per month as Hosting Matters has upped it to coincide with changes in costs and competition for hosting. I don’t really even check to see what it’s been, except incidentally, as today. I want to host a domain for my nephew, and I was comparing space available under elhide versus AV. Elhide has this odd problem where it thinks it is out of disk space. I upload large zip files of pictures, 50 mb or so each, four at a time. Deb’s father downloads them. I delete them. Rinse, repeat. Last time I deleted them, they didn’t release the space, but they are gone. So that account is technically fine, if I have HM support do whatever they have to do to make the disk space counter tally properly, but I also have other stuff going on there that maybe makes me not want to host an extra domain.
So I checked AV and it’s so-so on disk space, but instead of almost no bandwidth, we’re already at 60% for this month, which puts us on target to almost exactly use the whole deal. But… I see that in may we used 27.6 GB out of our 23 GB available! See, there’s a great thing about Hosting Matters. Another hosting company might have been all over us, looking to collect the extra charge.
The sad thing is that the next plan up includes 28 GB, which would have just covered that. We may have to switch. I can keep the bandwidth partly in control by never uploading zips of pictures to AV, which I do sometimes, though there’s only disk space for two at once.
While I was looking at adding a new business domain to elhide’s space, I was also thinking of getting hosting for that elsewhere, adding another basket for my eggs. Without resorting to Verizon, Mindspring and Gmail accounts also available but not really used, if HM goes down to a denial of service attack or other serious problem, I am completely cut off.
I looked at GoDaddy, since I have domains registered there.
They are insanely low cost and make HM look stingy on disk space and bandwidth. However, it seems each e-mail account is limited to 10 MB. Normally that’s fine, but I actually do need the ability to have my e-mail accounts unlimited in size. One, I can be e-mailed some rather large attachments. Two, I download the e-mails in more than one location and leave mail on the server for a specified number of days. It’s a safety mechanism.
Also, I didn’t formally ask, but I found mention online that a hosting account there is for one domain, period. I can add a bunch of domains to any given HM hosting account. Nobody without that is likely to get my business.
Anyway, I’m amazed that our bandwidth has actually gotten that large. In the past few months we have gone from routinely in the 200-something hits a day range per Site Meter (which misses a lot of actual traffic) to 400-something, some days 500-something, which is a big difference. We do have photo-heavy content, whch also matters.
Well. We’ll see what happens. At least I know to watch the meter.
Sizzle
It’s scheduled to be so hot today that we’re all going to the office for its air conditioning. And I have stuff there I need to work on, so all the better. We’re actually later leaving than I’d expected.
Depending who you ask, we’re looking at a muggy 90 - 93° today. This morning it was nice, and overnight it got downright cool. Then at about 9:30 it was like running into a brick wall of steamy.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
800-221-1212 and Clicking Speakers
The speakers currently in use on my computer, which in Stoughton were hooked to Deb’s, have always had a problem with static clicks. They pick up some kind of signal from somewhere and click. Sometimes a lot. It’s highly annoying.
We’d not noticed it much since putting them on my machine recently, but in the past couple days it got bad.
In the past couple days, my prepaid Verizon cell phone, a Kyocera going on four years old, started getting repeated calls from 800-221-1212, a number alien to me. It appears to be associated with one or more airline reservation systems. They hang up after a couple rings or if I pick up.
The speakers pre-announce the incoming call.
That’s right. In the second or so before the cell phone rings, the speakers crackle! Then they continue to crackle through a moment after the call stops.
Apparently the cell phone is putting out RF enough to interfere as it… communicates out? Back to the cell tower? In the process of handling the call transaction. Weird.
Mmmm… Calcium, and Light Posting
Sadie must have a calcium craving this morning. She asked for cheese for breakfast, and then for strawberry milk. Not coffee. Which has a lower proportion of milk in it than strawberry milk. She didn’t ask for a pickle, or fruit, or raisins or cashews or whatever. Speaking of pickles, we got a jar of the cutest little miniature gherkins yesterday. They’re Sadie-sized. Speaking of calcium, we got some yogurt, too, which Sadie hasn’t tried since she was a baby. Speaking of shopping, the night before last we went to the BJ’s in Taunton for the first time. I used to go to the Avon store, because it was under 5 minutes from the old apartment.
At two years old you would think the Taunton store was brand new, and built to acknowledge the fact of competition from things like Wal-Mart Supercenters (the amazing Plymouth version of which we went to yesterday). My first thought on walking into it was that the store layout exactly matched that of the Costco in Sherbrooke, Quebec, which is the only Costco I have been in, and a very nice store. From my father’s in Vermont, right on the border, it’s either shop up in that area, probably 40 miles away, or drive all the way across the state at an angle to Burlington, an all day jaunt.
The BJ’s even has parking for customers with infants! We thought we were just getting an insanely good spot - and we still would have even without that - but then we saw the sign… and it happened to apply. Go us.
That BJ’s is one of the nicest stores I have ever been in. My only complaint is the weird traffic pattern they setup for entering the plaza. Well, that and the pair of employees going around gathering empty boxes for the “free boxes” cart, who pretended we weren’t there rather than moving the box cart to the side a foot to let us pass and look at what we wanted in that aisle. They were being low life pricks and there’s no excuse for that.
Anyway, I have to work on billing. It should have been done several days ago. Even though they almost always pay faster, terms are net 15 and it’s the 15th and rent is due the 1st. I’ve just been a combination of busy and skittish about giving the big client a second really huge bill in a row. I figure the extra several days will make it feel less bad. These two will have been larger than all but a handful of other months since we started in January 1999.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
So Yeah, Internet Outage and Verizon Nonsense
The internet went out suddenly today, in the middle of my doing billable work that I have yet to get back to after being derailed. Based on the position of the D-Link router, I think Sadie touched it directly or by tugging a cable, or maye one of us tripped over a cable and yanked it. This is obviously going to be An Issue.
I did all the normal troubleshooting, including turning the router off and on and checking/unplugging/replugging the cables. I am concerned because the WAN port seems to wiggle a bit and feel like the cable to the internet isn’t snug when it is. I even went to the cellar and outside box to make sure nothing was unplugged or visibly amiss.
I finally gave up and called support. Bear in mind I had unplugged the power and rebooted the router three times, and checked the cables repeatedly.
Their test showed all was fine but the router was invisible to them. Reset it again.
I unplugged the WAN cable, unplugged the power, put the WAN cable back better than it had seemed, plugged in the power, instead of no WAN indicator light or one that blinked a lot, it came on solid. Of course it was working fine then! Duh, if I’d only thought of doing that myself, I could have saved a call to support! Oh wait, I did try that myself…
While I was on, I mentioned to the guy that I noticed the OPSU had been plugged into a power outlet that was clearly labeled 3rd floor, the installer never consulted me about where to plug in, and when someone rents that apartment and installed their washer and dryer, there is nothing to stop them from unplugging us from their outlet.
The Verizon guy initially said, “well, as long as it has power...”
Basically I was outside any scope he could have imagined. Hello! If you are going to install these in apartments, and you need power to support them, you are going to have to start coping with and working within the scope of where power that is available of and for that apartment.
Bottom line, unless I really want to make a stink, I may as well run an extension cord across the ceiling because “that’s probably all the installation guy would do if we sent him out.”
Maybe. More likely, he would undo a bunch of staples holding up the tan cable (which goes the whole length of the cellar back to what is apparently the battery backup), snip the electrical ties neatly holding the AC cord to the electical pipe that terminates at the 3rd Floor outlets where the AC code plugs in, unscrew the OPSU, carefully move it across the cellar to somwhere near out outlet, attach the OPSU to the ceiling somewhere, attach the tan cable back to points on the ceiling to the point of departure from its original path, and plug the power into our outlet (or into the power strip I need to hang up there so our outlet can be used for more than one thing). Probably not much more trouble than hanging up an extenstion cord. Heck; I am tempted to move the OPSU myself, now that I’ve thought about it. Long as there is enough tan cable, which I am sure of, given the available length of AC cord. Worst case, I’d have to put a board between a couple of the beams to screw the OPSU to.
Still, extension cord or wholesale move, this should not be my job. The guy had to be able to read “3rd Floor” on that outlet. But it was such an easy spot to install the thing. I was tempted to go down and look over his shoulder while he was installing it, but I thought it would be nice to leave him alone.
Oh well.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Overheard In Our House
Deb, in response to my story of an enthusiastic, overweight drummer I saw in a local band once upon a time:
“Jowls flailing!? Can jowls flail?”
Me:
“I think only if you’re Richard Nixon.”
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Doh!
On my way out, I ran into the lady downstairs and we ended up poking around the cellar, looking at the flooding and talking about her desire to have a lot of their old junk hauled away.
Apparently the landlord hauled away some junk behind the building that has been there three years. In the process, from an entirely different spot he took her plastic cooler cover that very effectively prevents the corner near our laundry machines from leaking when it rains. Oops. But I digress. And that didn’t leak much, compared to the two inches or so of water under the electrical panel.
So while we were down there, I noticed yet another brand new Verizon “box” associated with our change to FiOS (fiber optic). I’ll have to take pictures. There’s the stuff on the outside of the building. Then there is a big box with a green LED under our circuit breaker box, which has tan CAT5 cable coming out and going up to the ceiling and the across the cellar, and to all appearances has an electrical cable hardwired into it, but it’s not clear.
Turns out at the opposite end of the cellar, attached to the ceiling almost above where the 3rd floor people’s washing machine would go, there is a small beige Verizon box with a green LED on it.
From one end comes a power cord, plugged into the outlet that is clearly labeled 3rd floor. This is a problem, only mitigated so far by that apartment being vacant.
I am irritated because that will have to move, which means my having to call Verizon and tell them they screwed up our otherwise perfect install.
Out the other end of that box comes tan CAT5 cable, heading back in the general direction of the back of the cellar. Power to ethernet? Hello?
I need to trace it, but one cable goes out the cellar and up the side of the building, and as far as I can tell, there is only one cable from the back of the cellar, turning a corner and going out and up. Where does the rogue cable from the Verizon electrical theft box go?
Jeez.
Oh well. At least I learned she has no problem with my putting a bright 23 watt curly bulb in the main cellar light socket so we can all see better. And she suggested we put a picnic table and Sadie’s sandbox in the most prime part of the backyard.
Monday, June 05, 2006
The other thing we did this weekend…
Is totally rearrange the living room. The TV is on the opposite wall from where it was, the couch is out of the window-nook, and now we’ve got access to the windows to get good airflow and set up a fan, which we’ll need. Plus the sun doesn’t hit the TV anymore, which makes it much nicer in the afternoons. It still looks weird to me but I like it much better than the way we had it before. Yay!
Monday, May 29, 2006
American Idol: Gone But Not Forgotten
Sadie and I went to a cookout at my youngest brother’s house today. My older brother and sister were there.
Out of the blue my older brother said that he didn’t follow American Idol, but saw a little bit of the results finale. He thought Taylor Hicks was the worst singer on the stage, and is completely baffled that he was the winner.
I thought that was intriguing; sort of like an unclothed emperor moment. All the more so because Taylor has at times reminded me a little of the brother in question. Go figure.
My sister-in-law’s mother and her boyfriend, a blues guitarist whose accent sounds like he could be from Jamaica or elsewhere in the Carribean, were nearby and while they never claimed to like Taylor, were surprised at my vehemence. They were avid American Idol watchers and kept being disappointed that “the good singers” got voted off early. They loved Elliot. They seemed to like Mandisa, and she particularly liked Paris. What I found interesting was that the talk of Taylor made him remark how bad Bruce Springsteen sounds to him; that his guitar playing always sounds “off.” I think that was part of the observation that you don’t have to be great to sell and get rich. They also thought it was a mistake for someone like Katharine to try to cover someone like Celine Dion or Whitney Houston on AI without the chops for it.
And so the water cooler effect continues, despite Idol being done for the season. It’ll be cool knowing there’s another pair of Idol watchers in the extended family next season. Give us something to talk about if we end up at family events together.
Friday, May 26, 2006
And Done!
Argh. I ended up closing the browser in the course of trying to run speed tests and lost the post I started writing.
It’s done. As of an hours or so ago. It was really pretty simple, even though we were a “pain in the ass” install, as 2nd and 3rd floor apartment addresses generally are. Once the wiring was done, nothing to it. And the new router, which replaces the combination of the DSL modem and linksys router, has wireless built in if we ever want it. We weren’t offline for more than about an hour for the switch.
We can tell the difference. In the first speed test I did, I got 4.8 download, but there was no upload test. Once I found one, I got 1.2 upload. This will make uploading pictures in bulk, for the family to download, a lot faster. In fact, I haven’t done that lately in part because I figured I might as well wait.
So Far…
The Verizon installer is here. He was baffled as to how to wire the ethernet into the house. Basically the phone service is on the outside of the house, near the front on the driveway side. Ethernet has to come from there to the opposite corner of the house, where my office is.
His solution, after looking in the cellar, is to do exactly the same thing the cable TV people did when they wired our apartment. That goes through the cellar, up the outside, and in through the baseboard in the office, where it hits a splitter and has a cable for the office and one going through the wall to Sadie’s room. Without looking I don’t remember if it goes from there into the living room, or if the living room has its own wire from outside.
So he got started. That’ll take a while. He has to string fiber from the pole to the house. I wonder if they string extra over for when the other apartments someday get fiber. That’d make sense. Anyway, it’ll get a junction box and so forth. He’ll have to hook on into the phones and have the service switched over, and wire the ethernet. My question now is, knowing the thing is powered and they supply a UPS, where will that plug in. I was assuming the junction box would be in our apartment. Guess I’ll find out.
Speaking of the other apartments, the people upstairs moved yesterday. I echo that guy’s sentiment, hoping we get someone good. They were excellent neighbors, apart from the parking antics during the winter, and that was mainly just funny. How could you not like a guy with a PETA: People Eating Tasty Animals sticker, and a couple of pro gun stickers, on his pickup. And when they put out all their trash by the road yesterday, they put ours out too. I added a couple bags later, but that was so nice. I assumed I’d need to take out their final stuff, but it was conveniently a Thursday so they did it. Sadly, there’s now a pile of trash on the lawn, apparently including heavy stuff like phone books, almost as if one of the trash pickup guys threw it on realizing what it was, or an animal tore it open and it spilled enthusiastically. Oh well.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Light Blogging R Us
Please pardon the lightness of blogging today, despite there being so much to say, and so many pictures I could post. Sadie has been on a roll lately, and appears to be ready to more or less self-teach the potty.
We’re cleaning and organizing the apartment in preparation for the Verizon crew to come install FiOS tomorrow. I planned tomorrow off, but today it worked out I was able to stay home for this and help people remotely. Once I e-mailed the office manager instructions how to access documents on the AS/400, between that and memory of back when she used to use the system, she ran with it and spent most of the morning looking for what they needed. It would have been interesting had she found it, because the thing has a 4 1/4” floppy drive, and I have floppies and a drive I could throw into a PC in my office, but I have no idea whether the AS/400 would use the same format and 1.2 MB capacity, or whether the format would be different or it would want old single-sided floppies. Well, then again, I have some of those too. See what happens when you don’t throw things away?
Maybe later tonight when we have done what we can do for the day, I’ll be back. Tomorrow, who knows. Depends when they arrive and what we continue trying to do about cleaning and organizing. I’ve emptied boxes here in my office that were never unpacked, repacked some stuff, and organized the closet where we are going to put unpacked or not regularly used items.
And here goes, back to it… We also still need to run to the store, or I do anyway.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Mmmm… Barbecue Shredded Beef
Hannaford had big, yummy looking London broil steaks on sale for $1.49 a pound last night, so I bought the limit of four of them with the idea of making barbecue shredded beef in the next few days. Not the ideal time, as Deb’s stomach has been acting up enough to render her diet mainly rice or Rice-a-Roni, bananas, and some cooked veggies temporarily.
Anyway, I just used Google to search barbecue shredded beef, knowing I am near the top, and at one point was number one, for that phrase, and could get right to my recipe for barbecue shredded beef that way.
I ended up adding the word accidental to the search to find my recipe; oh how the meaty had fallen.
To my surprise, my recipe involved less than 2.5 pounds of meat as described. I’d have thought I used more. Maybe I did, the next time I made the stuff. Anyway, what I bought amounts to a little over 8 pounds, meaning probably 7.5 lbs or a bit less after vigorous trimming of fat.
Perhaps we can freeze some of it, or freeze some of the beef. Which is what I am about to do with the few pounds of 90% ground beef I got last night. It was even less than Wal-Mart. The good thing about Wal-Mart is it’s always a low price (not to be cute or anything) and consistently superlative quality.
I am tempted to start the beef cooking now, before I head to the office to get the “must go, I promised” stuff done, so we can have it tonight. We speculate that Deb could handle a small amount, and it seems like it would be fantastic with rice.
Anyway, no particular point to the post, except to remind people of that yummy recipe and try to get Google to put it way up high in the results where it rightfully belongs used to be before slipping.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Mmmm… Fruit
I’ve known for some time about the farmstand a couple miles or so from us, on route 44, I think in the tiny stretch that falls in Lakeville. The road kind of goes Middleboro, Lakeville, Raynham, Taunton, Raynham over a fairly short distance. My sometime client that’s near there recommended the place. Haven’t had any work from them in going on two years, and recently got confirmation that’s because of a tendency to hire relatives and family friends, which is what the guy I worked with on the big project there was. Apparently they still have problems. Which pale next to the problem of their hiring and management practices having led them to be banished as an authorized distributor by the manufacturer representing half of their business. Doh. But I digress.
I’d been meaning to stop at the stand, which is right on my way to and from the nearest Wal-Mart. Which isn’t as good as the nearly as close Wal-Mart in Plymouth, it turns out, but is more or less on my way from work so will continue to get ad-hoc business from us. I just wish they’d start stocking Sadie’s diapers again. They are now one for eleven. That is, one of the last eleven times I have looked (which I now do whether I need them or not), they have been out of her size and brand in the largest packs, and usually in at least one of the other two sizes too.
What finally pushed me over the edge was a hearty and detailed recommendation from one of the employees at my big client, who has gradually been getting everyone there to shop at this farm stand. So yesterday we made an afternoon drive to Wal-Mart to pick up prints we’d ordered and a few other things. It was the worst experience we’ve ever had taking the kids to a store, but Sadie certainly tired herself out, marathoning around the store trying to get run over by shopping carts. She was asleep by the time we hit the farmstand on the way back, and Val needed to eat, so I went in by myself. It was everything I had been told it was.
I spent $16 there and bought bananas, apples, oranges, blueberries, grapes, a pineapple, lettuce, a purple onion, a cucumber, a green pepper, 3 lbs of carrots, and possibly something I am forgetting. The prices ranged from insanely low to normal store prices, and the quality was mostly good. I was tempted by eggplant, green beans, potatoes, and some other things, but figured I can always stop there again any time and focused mainly on salad stuff and fruits.
I don’t remember if the place even has a name other than the prominent “farm stand” signs, but if you’re on route 44 it’s a little west of the Middleboro Rotary, a little beyond Muckey’s Liquor as you head west, also on the left.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Neurosis of the day
Even now, as an adult, I tend to leave social events with a vague uncomfortable sense that I talked too much.
I don’t know where this came from, but I’ve had it all my life.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Caught At A Weak Moment
It’s Deb’s night out. Note the oddly colored moon tonight. I took the opportunity to give myself a recently rare Chinese food fix and introduce Sadie to the cuisine. She liked the first piece of crab rangoon - after all, cream cheese - but wouldn’t eat more later. She loved the lo mein, including the scallion that she pointedly tried after eyeing suspiciously. Fried rice is rice, so she was thrilled and only threw part of it. The other appetizers from the pu pu platter? Not so much. Except maybe a little taste of beef terriyaki and boneless rib, she tried none of it. And I didn’t offer her the shrimp, figuring one tiny bit of shellfish was enough for today.
She wasn’t impressed with how hard the fortune cookie was to eat and discarded half of it, but I saved her first fortune ever; something about careful planning and riches.
Anyway, got her in the tub, did some cleaning and putting away, got her out of the tub and as we walked by the door it knocked at us. Doh. It was a nice young guy from Verizon, lining up dates for people to switch to FiOS. That is, fiber obtic. Net price is less than we pay now for at least six months, free installation, same national calling plan but cheaper. We just have to tolerate installation guys taking 4 - 6 hours to set it up next Friday.
I knew we’d get it anyway, but the dude put me on the spot and derailed my plans to wait as long as possible. But less money and multiple times as fast? Hell yeah. And Idol starts like 3 minutes ago…
Over The Rainbow
Allegedly the judge’s choice for Katharine this week, selected by Simon, is Over The Rainbow. Interesting choice indeed. It could make or easily break her. Here’s hoping for the latter.
That song was a huge favorite of mine when I was very young. I liked to sing it, and would attempt to play it on my grandfather’s organ, using a song book that told you what to press without having to know how to read music.
When I was in first grade, I don’t remember how or why the topic of songs came up, but I sang the beginning of the song in class. The kids made so much fun of me - not for my singing, but for the lyrics and choice of song - that it was a major formative experience in making me more rather than less introverted, and skittish about performing in front of others or making my likes known to others. Other experiences reinforced the “singing in the presence of others” thing over the years, most memorably ones involving a cousin and a stepsister, but that’s where I remember it starting, associated with Over The Rainbow.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Money Tree Very Pretty
It seemed for a couple weeks that gas prices had stabilized. It was $2.86 for several days at the generally low price stations near work, with $2.89 being about the consensus norm, and sightings as low as $2.74 during that time. I think the high was about $2.94. What it looked like is the blend switching had all been done, and if it wasn’t going down much or at all, it wasn’t going up either.
As of yesterday, $2.99 became the apparent new normal. The self-serve, low cost station near the rotary was at $3.03, becoming the first place I’d ever seen $3+ for regular. The low was $2.94 at another traditionally cheap station. Finally, I saw on my way home that the little full-serve, generic station around the corner, which is often as cheap as anywhere, had gone up to $3.10. Wow. I didn’t go by the stations near the office yesterday, but the other day one of them had gone from $2.86 to $2.91 to $2.99, and the other one had gone from $2.86 to $2.89, but not higher yet. I filled the Sentra with the $2.89 stuff and was sad to see that even though it’s running better and seems to have shaken most of the ill effects of the bad gas it got months back, it didn’t even get 20 MPG. I miss it getting 28 - 30 MPG reliably! Then I spiked it with more dry gas, plus some carb and fuel injector cleaner chemicals. Maybe that’ll help.
Maybe this is the Memorial Day increase, but it seems a little soon for that. I’d be eating my words right now, if I had posted about gas prices stabilizing as I planned to a few days ago.
Friday, May 12, 2006
Speaking of Changes…
I finally finished wiring a phone jack into my office in the apartment. This was made interesting by the inability of the electrical snake to go up between the walls without getting stuck. Basically the wall is plaster over horizonal wooden slats. Between each slat is a space. The snake gets caught on those and that’s it.
So the cable comes through a tiny hole in the ceiling tile an inch from the wall, down along the wall to the jack just above the baseboard. Since the plaster isn’t keen on taking screws, the jack required strategic use of hot glue. All I need now is a staple gun to affix the cable to the wall rather than having it dangle loosely against the wall.
Now the DSL modem is under my desk. I wasn’t able to move the router, which is on the floor near the office door, because the network cable to Deb’s computer in the living room isn’t long enough.
Previously the DSL modem was under the kitchen table, along the wall near the door to the office. A phone cord came from the high wall jack next to the outside door, through the air at approximatey neck level to me, looped over a pre-existing nail in the wall above where the table is, then went down along the wall to the DSL modem.
Since moving here, we have been ducking under the phone cord to get to the bathroom door. No more.
Except it’s ghostly hard to forget! Every time I go that way I “see” the wire hanging there and have everything I can do not to duck. The first few times I passed “through” the cable that’s no longer there I said “wow, that’s so weird.” Not just weird having it gone, but weird the reflexive behavior and the ingrained visualization of what should be there based on long experience.
It’s been a few days. I wonder how long until I no longer “see” or have the almost overwhelming urge to duck under what’s not there.
Changes
Well, the people on the third floor are moving. There’s a sign on the door describing their apartment, which is bigger than I thought. It’s a two bedroom for $925, versus our three bedroom for $1050. He told me this past winter that he was planning to move back home to Pennsylvania, so I’ve been expecting this any time. I hope we get someone good up there. Meanwhile, we’ve decided the guy who’s leaving is cool. He has a PETA sticker on the window of his truck: People Eating Tasty Animals, that is. He also has a couple of pro gun stickers. All new, either that or we never noticed them before, but we’re more observant than that.
Anyway, there is also a bright yellow strip at the bottom of the sign that says there’s a three bedroom, first floor apartment at 3 Shaw Ave. for $1250. Intriguing. That is the other place we looked at, on the idea of just in case we’d want it instead. At the time, it had been utterly trashed by a long time tenant and they had a lot of work to do. It was big, similar to this one, but felt smaller and was broken up differently. Parking didn’t look as good either. What we gather from that is they took their time, completely gutted and rebuilt the place, and are only just getting around to renting it. Between the fact that rents seem to have gone up again since we moved (doesn’t seem possible when they’re already out of reach of so many people), it being rendered brand new, it being the first floor, and perhaps a perception that it’s a better location (which makes no sense to me), it’s that much higher. It was clearly a nice apartment even trashed.
The ironic thing is that my brother’s ex and kids lived a few houses from us until they recently moved. Now they live almost as close to that other apartment we looked at.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Sigh…
I dropped Deb and the kids off at my nephew’s house to scrapbook and socialize with Sharon and friends, which the kids entertain each other.
The objective is for me to hang at home for a couple hours or so, then pick them up, drop them here, and I go to the office then, having fended it off until then. The client people are not making it easy. That machine I had to replace yesterday, that had dictation software nobody else uses, as far as I can tell the user is being absolutely foiled by lack of elementary understanding of Windows usage and the fact the configuration doesn’t look precisely as it did on the dead computer.
Speaking of Windows usage, one of the funniest things people do is to open files from Word because they don’t understand that they can (and should) use Windows Explorer/My Computer to do that if it’s not a document. I’ve put pictures on the network and invited people to look at them if curious, and then had to help them because they “won’t open for me” or “are just garbage” or “I can’t see them there” when they browse for and attempt to open them with Word.
I get downright angry when people are particularly devoid of basic knowledge after using computers with variants of the same OS for as much as ten years or more. How do they function?
Update:
Well, at least the specific scenario may have an explanation. Yesterday I told them that the software needed was likely in a particular office. Just now they got around to looking in that office and finding what appears to be the variant of software needed, rather than the variant they left me to install yesterday. And as I said then, this is why most of the client’s software lives in a file cabinet in my office.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Sadie Lately
These are pictures of Sadie downloaded off the camera on the 6th and (twice) on the 7th.
The first four are at my brother’s new place - a house he’s renting on a farm for the same as his apartment had cost - for my niece’s birthday party Sunday. I gave her a little ride around on the bike after she showed so much interest, but she had enough quickly. She loves Sadie-sized furniture. We need to get her a little table and chair set like the ones we saw in Wal-Mart the other day, to give her something abusable she can color at.
The next one is Sadie hugging one of her frogs, which the other day she declared “baby!” It’s actually a frog backpack I bought from a door to door salesperson (allegedly fundraising for charity) at the office years ago. It had been living perched on the patch panel high on the wall in a recessed corner until recently.
The next one is her hugging her grandfather when we were at his house in Plympton to visit and pick up their excellent old dining room table, which looks like it was made to go in our kitchen and couldn’t be more perfect. No more folding camp table.
The one after that is in my father’s yard, near the driveway, where Sadie discovered that a drain grate is Best Thing Ever. She set out to drop as many pebbles and twigs as possible down there, one at a time.
Finally, Sadie in a hat she likes to put on, looking sad for some forgotten reason. Perhaps it was one of her several falls per day. Perhaps she had walked off the end of the coffee table into midair like some obsessive coyote. No idea.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Today
We’re combining a visit to my father and stepmother with picking up a table and chairs from them. They are replacing an old but very nice set, and we’ve been using a folding camping table, literally made of cardboard and aluminum, and wooden folding chairs. And that only started because in this apartment we had the room for it and we wanted to teach Sadie about eating at the table, once she was approaching not needing the highchair. A side benefit will be making it safer for Sadie, and perhaps transitioning her out of the booster seat. She likes to sit on the back of the booster seat, and went from there to sitting on the back of the chair, just begging to go flying across the kitchen. The new chairs will make that impossible.
Later I’ll probably mow the lawn. My understanding was we were all supposed to share keeping up the yard, so I asked the neighbor downstairs about there being a mower and what the deal was. She was surprised I was asking, as pretty much they’re used to doing it all. They bought a new mower last year, which she showed me, and we walked all around the yard and she pointed out this and that, and even which room they used for what on the first floor. Turns out her husband, who is handicapped, uses the room under Sadie’s as an office and works from home. I’d assumed he was simply disabled and hanging out. She warned me about the mulberry tree above where I park the truck, and pointed out I might want to put it on the other side of the Sentra. The landlord mentioned that too, because in effect that was the extra spot I might be able to get away with having a third car in, even though officially we get two spaces. The mulberry droppings were the caveat. What I’ll need to do is get some of my tools out of storage, so I can do some pruning and stuff as well.
Anyway, that was fun, especially the part about shocking them. It makes them feel good about having gotten the driveway plowed all winter.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
This is so not fair and entirely too much how my life is entirely too often.
Totally had plans to do something fun, so of course I woke up sick and had to cancel. Not. fair. at. all.
Oh, well. Life isn’t, etc., but I wish it would cooperate once in a while!
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
A running runner who runs.
Well, actually more like a mothering mother who mothers right now.
Busy, busy day. Busy busy day tomorrow.
But I have to say that I think we might have seen just the slightest bit of evidence tonight that Katharine has a little place, deep inside, that is not 100% plastic, thus making her makeup 99.47% pure faking faker who fakes. Like freaking soap or something, but in this case purity isn’t really a selling point.
Did I steal “faking faker who fakes” from someone? If so, my apologies.
Seriously, did you see her face when they panned back to her while Elliott was singing? She looked like she knew that it was just wrong, candidate.
Anyhoo, back sometime tomorrow...maybe. I have plans involving a sponge and my kitchen floor after we get home. Must. Clean. Floor. ‘Til it shines like Kat’s plastic smile.
Ahem.
Busy But…
I listened to the MP3 files of all the American Idol performances last night, which is always an interesting exercise as the performance aspect has no influence on how you think you heard the song.
Taylor’s performances suffer a lot under that scrutiny, for all they were still adequate and Something sounded less Elvis on the second pass.
KathArine’s second performance benefitted greatly from a blind listen, and while she mangled the first song and nothing changes that, what hit me as diction problems on the second may have been more about the nature and styling of the song.
Chris stayed the same or improved, to me. I also didn’t hear him so much as the lead singer of The Calling, but I could still see him singing this.
Elliot and Paris didn’t really budge for me with the MP3 listens. The both still did a good job, but Paris is still doomed, especially since I have seen a surprising amount of pro-Katharine sentiment. And I mean sentiment of “her second number was the best AI performance ever and she won the night!” variety, not just the “we loved his audition so no matter how bad he is we will think he won every week” variety that kept Taylor alive no matter what. Puzzling. But hey, if he’d been voted off when deserved, we’d have missed the fun of Taylor in the Wild Cherry tree last night.
Okay, back to billing, because getting paid is a really Good Thing.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Well That Was Fun
It turns out that there are two circuit breakers for the wall outlets in the kitchen. One of them has the microwave, toaster oven and DSL modem on it, we learned today. Oops.
It was deja vu back to Quincy, when the entire apartment was on two circuit breakers, and the microwave could not be run at the same time as the toaster oven or, well, much else, so I had it plugged in via the living room to the other circuit.
Deb was making stuff in both cooking venues at once and they died. At first we though that ohmygod the microwave had decided to die the very same day I hooked up the replacement DVD player Deb’s father sent us (woohoo, thanks!). Nope. Just a circuit breaker tied to disparate outlets.
Then the interwebs were down…
Oops, the DSL modem plugs in under the kitchen table, apparently on the same circuit. Doh. So I did all the normal troubleshooting. I rebooted the modem, the router, the computers. I shut them all down in correct order and brought them back up carefully. I flushed the DNS cache with ipconfig. I checked the router settings. I eventually used Verizon’s diagnostic tools and they told me to call.
Spent almost half an hour on the phone with a pleasant young man of modest technical skill but lots of company resources and English easily understood through his Indian accent. He made sure I knew about FiOS being available here, as expected. We had decided we’d wait to try the fiber optic; let it get better established.
The trick was to reset the DSL modem, not reset as in reboot, but as in using the little recessed button that returns the unit to factory settings. We logged onto it, gave it user and password info and basically I was online with no further fuss.
I still have to return to using the router so Deb’s computer has the world wide interwebnets too, but what a relief to be back online and not have to replace the modem. Yay.
Plumbing
We have a plumbing problem that’s annoying yet seems so minor I hate to bother the landlord with it if it’s a five minute fiddle to solve.
The tub has one of those levers you flip down to open and up to close the drain, through whatever chutes and levers mechanism involved.
It won’t stay down, and therefore won’t drain.
You flip the lever down, feeling like you’re pulling up a massive weight in the process, and it glides back up to a middle or slightly upward, and mostly closed, position with all deliberate speed. Is that the same as saying rapidly inexorable? *Shrug*
So what causes this? Is the business end down in the drain so gunked with stuff its weight is a factor? So we just need some drain cleaner? Or is there something worn or maladjusted in the lever mechanism?
Thought I would throw it out here, as someone is bound to know, without my even calling or e-mailing my father, siblings, nephew, or uncle.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Coffeemaker Blogging
I will be watching the results of Glenn’s coffeemaker blogging with great interest, because we could use one Real Soon Now and I would agree with most of his specs. Except I would add reasonable in price.
On the other hand, the $9 Proctor-Silex coffeemaker I bought for the office in 1999 and have used at home intensively for the past… over a year?... since our fancier model died has certainly earned its stripes. It makes good coffee and the main reason for retiring it soon is it has stopped keeping the pot hot enough. Even that’s a close thing.
I like cheap, but I’d also love one of those timer models so you can set it to fire up in the morning like an alarm clock only better.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
I Preferred When DOS Only Meant “Disk Operating System”
Why yes, we’re here. Yesterday morning? Not so much.
There was a Saudi-based denial of service (DoS) attack against Hosting Matters, where we are hosted, yesterday, lasting a few hours. I’ve seen mention that it came back for a while after 9:00 last night, but I didn’t observe that and have no idea if it’s true. There was rumor that the attack was aimed at a specific blog, then point blank denial from HM that the particular bellicose blog was the target. Be that as it may, if you go around goading a bully to punch you in the stomach as hard as he can, and the bully punches you so hard you lose your lunch all over your neighbors, don’t be surprised if your neighbors aren’t unhappy with the bully exclusively.
Anyway, this made things interesting, as I was working from home and couldn’t get work e-mails. This is going to lead to changes in how I have things configured. Any internal e-mail to me forwards to an elhide.com account I can get anywhere. That’s on HM too. Along with the business site and thecotc.com, which is supplied hosting directly by the business site, a couple of client web sites, and one client’s e-mail. My new business sites I’ve been too busy to pursue are hosted in elhide.com’s space, which meant they’d have been down too had that mattered. For me the e-mail was the main thing. The big client’s MX record points inside the building, so even as their web site was down, e-mail worked fine.
Apart from any notions I may have of diversifying my hosting, and apart from having made sure people have Gmail and Verizon e-mail addresses as backup, I think I will switch it so internal client e-mail (to clarify, my office is on their network and I am directly on their internal e-mail, which is great when I am at the office) forwards to Gmail instead. In turn, the Gmail forwards to my primary account, so it would look the same. But if elhide.com were down, I could go to Gmail and have complete continuity.
I almost went and blogged at my original backup site yesterday: InstaJay. That was meant as an “if Hosting Matters is down” backup to my old blog, but after I set it up, HM got more reliable. I may setup something else as an AV backup, but you might bookmark the one I just mentioned so if I do post “we’re down, here’s what’s happening” someone will actually see it, even if I don’t create and publicize another backup site.
Michelle Malkin took it upon herself to be the reporter of record regarding the outage. She offered to list and link all the blogs that were affected, so I sent her ours as an experiment. I guess we don’t count.
My old cell phone also chose yesterday to act up, spontaneously rebooting itself, and being found to be off completely as it sat on the charger. That made me say “well, time for the cell upgrade project like NOW,” until I discovered the back cover was loose and letting the battery disconnect randomly. Doh. I had been thinking I’d try to get a mixed-use portable web and e-mail and phone device as part of updating the cell situation, but maybe it will make more sense just to get a family plan with two or three basic phones (me and Deb, and possibly one to leave at the office), then later do something about “e-mail anywhere” (and web if possible). We’ll see. Just because it’ll officially be a business expense doesn’t mean I don’t want to do the whole thing as reasonably in cost as possible.
Okay, enough digression. This was supposed to be just an obligatory “we were down and we’re back” post. Oh, and I meant to note that from my perspective we’re loading even slower than ever, as if things atill aren’t completely right in host land. Hope that goes away.