Category: Life

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I was about to post this over at my LiveJournal, when I discovered my journal was offline due to a massive server outage. Nice timing, as you’ll see:

Well, the phone’s acting up again. Oddly enough, DSL is working most of the time, even though we can’t get a dial tone. An SBC tech is scheduled to come out tomorrow afternoon, but the guy I spoke with had some suggestions for self-troubleshooting (since if it turns out to be a problem with our equipment, we get charged.

So now that we’ve moved the full-height bookshelf out of the way of the phone jack, I’m about to disconnect the last phone line and see what I can find out. Whee.

On the other hand, now that the shelf is out of the way, I can try rearranging cables to see if it gives us the full DSL speed. We’re supposed to get about 600K, but only ever get half of that, and I suspect it’s the ancient 20-foot phone cable. If I move the modem closer to the jack and use a short phone cord and a long network cable, it might speed things up.

Mood: Resigned.

Update 9:32 PM

Well, that was a colossal waste of time and effort. After disconnecting everything, rearranging the DSL/network structure while I waited, then hooking phones back up one at a time, it seemed everything was working. Same old DSL speed, but at least we had a dial tone on each phone. So I canceled the call forwarding, and called SBC to cancel the dispatch. Then it occurred to me I’d better try to make an incoming call. Half a ring, and suddenly there’s static (and nothing else) on both lines.

So it’s disconnect everything again, wait 5+ minutes again, and this time… nothing. Static, and only static. At least the DSL came back up. That would have really ticked me off. And another call into SBC to reinstate the tech dispatch. Fun, fun, fun! (Grumble.)

Anyway, we’re back to square one. I can only hope anyone who needs to call us before tomorrow afternoon tries one of our cell phones instead.

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On the way to work, Kelson and I often end up pacing a red Mustang with license plate letters ZAR. This would be very cool if I could find something to go with it, but so far I’ve had no luck. This is partly because there are so few choices of matching plates and partly because commuter traffic tends to have the same cars going to the same place at the same time every day. It’s also partly because the black generic small car with letters TMN that takes our route is in the batch of cars on the road about 15 minutes before the Mustang.

There is hope, though. Until yesterday, I’d never seen ZAR on the way home. Now I know that it’s on the road again between 5:30 and 6 pm, and it follows the same route we do for about half our trip. This could be cool…..though it remains to be seen whether I’ll be able to get the camera out in time should the need arise.

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Just imagine……

Trakand Leadership Services
Aybara Industries
Al’Thor Wrecking, Inc.
Al’Vere Management Consultants
Al’Meara General Hospital (and the Flinn Specialty Clinic)
Mandragoran Security Personnel
Kinderode, Mosalaine & Larisett, Attorneys at Law
Telamon Landscaping, Ltd.
Farshaw Vocational Consulting (“Be all you’re gonna be!”)
Mervin’s of Cairhien

and many more……

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Thanks to everyone who helped out with the wedding on Sunday, and thanks also to everyone who came!

It really was like a play – one with no rehearsals and only a half hour of blocking. (Sometime last week it hit me that what I was really nervous about was that this was the Actor’s Nightmare: performing a lead role in a play you barely knew and hadn’t rehearsed.) And like a play, it had its share of things that went wrong behind the scenes, but all the important things worked!

No, we’re not off on a honeymoon right now. Getting the wedding together was enough to plan, so we just spent Sunday night in a really nice hotel (the Surf and Sand resort in Laguna Beach) and went to Disney’s California Adventure today. (We’d never been to it.) We’ll work out where and when we’re going when we’ve got the time.

To anyone who’s curious: the Surf and Sand is very expensive, but it’s very much worth it. The view, the service, the amenities and the food are all fantastic, and there’s a lot of the resort we never even saw just for lack of time.

Anyway, I’m going to post a few Strange World photos and then go to bed.

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I am now the proud owner of a Mozilla Coffee Mug!

Coffee mug with Mozilla Coffee logo

When I went to order a new batch of Mozilla Coffee, I saw that RJ Tarpley’s is now offering mugs with their logo. Something about it just screamed “Buy me! Buy me!” – something in the combination of “Mozilla” and the lizard’s expression as he holds up his coffee mug, all of it appearing on a coffee mug…

(Ironically, I’m posting this using Konqueror.)

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