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Month: March 2005

Comfort

Arrived at LAX around 3:40p. Got to Pasadena at about 6:15p. Gotta love LA traffic. No, not really, you don’t gotta love it. Loathing it is, in fact, a perfectly…

Arrived at LAX around 3:40p.

Got to Pasadena at about 6:15p.

Gotta love LA traffic. No, not really, you don’t gotta love it. Loathing it is, in fact, a perfectly acceptable option.

California is the opposite of Colorado. Right now, Denver is grey and brown, sere with the winter. Southern California is, on the other hand, green-green-green during the winter (even without the torrential rains they’ve had), but sere brown the rest of the year.

I like Colorado.

Driving a Kia. Wow. Basic white sedan. No electronic locks, but a CD player and an NeverLost. I can live with it.

Had a nice dinner with my folks at the Macaroni Grill in Monrovia.

I’m staying at the fabulous Comfort Inn in Pasadena. Our standard four hotels in Colorado are all booked up. Not sure what’s going on here, but the CI is booked up, too. Yow.

It’s an “outside exit” hotel, and reminds me uncomfortably of the Walnut Hills Holiday Inn where I spent too many months during my Martinez sojourn — including having a fridge and microwave. And I suspect (strongly) that the “no smoking” sign on the room has not been strictly adhered to. On the other hand, it’s clean besides that, and it has wireless broadband for free. I can live with that. Not so sure about the very sheer window curtains — but since I’m at the far end of the hotel, I don’t expect a lot of traffic coming by.

Lateral upgrade

Since I was on a phonecon this morning, even as I watched the cable modem blink its lonely, clueless, disconnected way, Margie ran off to the Comcast Office. She walked…

Since I was on a phonecon this morning, even as I watched the cable modem blink its lonely, clueless, disconnected way, Margie ran off to the Comcast Office. She walked in, said it was broken, and they gave her a new one.

Different model this time, though. Motorola SURFboard SB5120. I have no idea if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Modem didn’t seem to work at first. All the lights came up fine, except the PC light. Played with normal vs. cross-over cables, played with power cycles, etc. No change.

Okay. Call Comcast to register the modem, just in case. Wait on hold for several minutes. Give the nice lady the modem MAC address. Plug stuff back in, waiting for it to recognize …

[Grotesquely painful long story cut short.]

I suspect it is a line problem. Same cycle of blinking lights. Rrg.

Margie eventually called up. Dude at Comcast walked her — again — through the same three pages of “diagnostic tests” they have scripted, complete with my bringing over my notebook to plug directly in (and then being told not to).

She eventually mentioned that there was still a service call scheduled at the house tomorrow morning. At which point, Dude informed her that, no, it was cancelled when I called to register the new modem (which registration they didn’t actually confirm, and which cancellation was not at all mentioned when I talked with Dudette this morning).

Margie wrangled them into a service call time that was relatively convenient, again tomorrow, and hung up.

So Margie is Disconnected in Denver. I’m WiFied in at DIA (“DEN is Ten!”), waiting for my flight. Which is mildly ironic.

On the other hand, I had no problems connecting to the AT&T Wireless signal here this time, and it will bill directly to my company cell phone, and since I made use of the time to connect into the company mail …

I Got Those Disconnected Blues

It is truly astonishing how much of my entertainment and how many of my passtimes rely on Internet connectivity. Really. And that is, of course, driven home when it goes…

It is truly astonishing how much of my entertainment and how many of my passtimes rely on Internet connectivity. Really. And that is, of course, driven home when it goes down. Like it was all morning (except for a tantalizing connection for a half-hour at about 5:30a).

It’s not just City of Heroes, of course, that being down and out blocks.

“Well, since CoH is down, I’ll just check up on my blog and … rats. Okay, e-mail … rats. Well, I can catch up on unread e-mail, hey, look at that, a link someone sent me to an interesting … rats. Dagnabbit, okay, I’ll do my blacklist checking and … rats. Firefox updates … rats. Blog maintenance … rats. Hey, I wanted to pick up a copy of that book for Katherine … rats. Update my CoH character biographies … rats. Oh, gotta do my comic book orders … rats. Quotation research … rats. Pay some bills … rats. Look and see if I can buy ginger Altoids online … rats. Look up directions to … rats. Catch up on my comics … rats. Check my office e-mail … rats. Go to … research … look up … play … browse …

“Well, screw this, I’m going to replace that damned cable modem. I have two cable gateway models right here to research and … rats.”

For the record, “rats” is not the epithet I actually use.

Searching looks

As noted below, we had our last (huzzah!) Official Rector Search Committee meeting last night. Which means we nominated a candidate to present to the Vestry for their approval. Next…

As noted below, we had our last (huzzah!) Official Rector Search Committee meeting last night. Which means we nominated a candidate to present to the Vestry for their approval.

Next Wednesday, we go to the Vestry (huzzah!) and present the candidate’s credentials and, after many questions, they will hopefully vote to extend a call to the candidate in question, and enter into contract negotiations and all that. Since I’m on the Vestry and the Senior Warden is an ex officio member of the Search Committee, there’s two votes right there. I don’t actually expect any problems or controversy or anything (huzzah!).

After the vote for the nomination, I pulled out a bottle of champagne from a little picnic carrier I’d brought with me. It was a fitting and appreciated moment.

It’s a great group of people — ten of us left after the thirteen-plus months we’ve been meeting weekly. Different personalities, different talents, different goals for a new rector, but all of us ultimately pulling together for the good of the parish and in camaraderie with each other. Where we’ve had hard decisions (and there have been several), they’ve not been as hard as initially feared. Attribute that to good group dynamics, the working of the Spirit, or some combination thereof, as you will. And I believe the reward for our efforts will be what the new rector does for the parish over the next several years.

And … it’ll be nice to have Wednesday nights back. Until the next thing I volunteer for, of course …

Sic transit PDA?

Yet another “hey, let’s provoke some headlines and controversy” article over at CNet about the death of the PDA. Which is ironic, because Margie just indicated she needs to replace…

Yet another “hey, let’s provoke some headlines and controversy” article over at CNet about the death of the PDA. Which is ironic, because Margie just indicated she needs to replace her old Palm 105.

I can understand why some folks ringing the death knell — the market for PDAs is not only flat, but receding, they’ve become commodity items, Sony’s dropped out of the picture, cell phones do a lot of PDA functions, etc.

Looking at my own PDA use, it’s gone from a “I use this actively every day” to “I notice it when it’s not with me, but it’s not the be-all end-all of my personal data.” I don’t see getting a phone with PDA functions (navigating via the phone keypad on a tiny screen is not my idea of a good time), but I can certainly understand the attraction of carrying around one fewer widgets.

It will be interesting to see where the market is — and my own needs are — in a year or so, when is start looking at replacing my current Palm Tungsten W. Having a place to carry my calendar and phone list and take notes and so forth is still very valuable, but I’m not sure there isn’t an alternative of some sort coming down the line. I just don’t see anything out there yet that’s quite it.

Spam update

Large number of comment spams flying in over the last few days. All but one or two spattered harmlessly against the windshield (where, moderated, I had to actually clean them…

Large number of comment spams flying in over the last few days. All but one or two spattered harmlessly against the windshield (where, moderated, I had to actually clean them up, but it all stayed behind the scenes). Seeing some different strategies on URLs being tried, which is why fewer are being outright blocked and more are being tossed into “old post” moderation. On the other hand, once particular URLs are caught (check early, check often), I’m then astonished to see multi-hundred block counts rack up in a few days.

I do need to clear off some of the old, unused blogs I have here — they’re no more vulnerable than the currently maintained ones, but they’re one more place to maintain the defenses around.

On a related note, there’s e-mail spam, which seems almost quaintly archaic any more. But, jeez, it still comes in. I get about 20-30 a day, of which Thunderbird catches about 3/4. That still leaves plenty that I need to manually delete, which is annoying — but, at the same token, has become so routine that I almost don’t notice it any more. It’s akin to going to the mailbox and sorting out the stuff to dump in the trash can on the way back inside. Sad, that.

Health Check

Weight is still hovering around 203 — it was a heavy weekend, food-wise, so that’s not a surprise. It will be interesting to see how I do on the business…

Weight is still hovering around 203 — it was a heavy weekend, food-wise, so that’s not a surprise. It will be interesting to see how I do on the business trip, but overall I’m still pleased with how things are going — and I’m 12 lbs. ahead of schedule (down to 175 by 20 October).

My Thousand Miles to Nowhere is not doing quite so well. For various reasons, I’m not getting out at lunch as often as I was last year, which is my main walking time. Result is that I’m averaging YTD only 3.7 miles per day, when I should be averaging 4.1 (which means from here on out I need to average 4.4 in order to make my goal). Rrg.

Searching looks

As noted below, we had our last (huzzah!) Official Rector Search Committee meeting last night. Which means we nominated a candidate to present to the Vestry for their approval. Next…

As noted below, we had our last (huzzah!) Official Rector Search Committee meeting last night. Which means we nominated a candidate to present to the Vestry for their approval.

Next Wednesday, we go to the Vestry and present the candidate’s credentials and, after many questions, they will hopefully vote to extend a call to the candidate in question, and enter into contract negotiations and all that. Since I’m on the Vestry and the Senior Warden is an ex officio member of the Search Committee, there’s two votes right there. I don’t actually expect any problems or controversy or anything.

After the vote for the nomination, I pulled out a bottle of champagne from a little picnic carrier I’d brought with me. It was a fitting and appreciated moment.

It’s a great group of people — ten of us left after the thirteen-plus months we’ve been meeting weekly. Different personalities, different talents, different goals for a new rector, but all of us ultimately pulling together for the good of the parish and in camaraderie with each other. Where we’ve had hard decisions (and there have been several), they’ve not been as hard as initially feared. Attribute that to good group dynamics, the working of the Spirit, or some combination thereof, as you will. And I believe the reward for our efforts will be what the new rector does for the parish over the next several years.

And … it’ll be nice to have Wednesday nights back. Until the next thing I volunteer for …

California, here I come

Off on a business trip this afternoon, back Thursday night. Temps in the mid-high-60s to high 40s, no rain. All sorts of grand Sarbanes-Oxley stuff. Joy….

Off on a business trip this afternoon, back Thursday night. Temps in the mid-high-60s to high 40s, no rain. All sorts of grand Sarbanes-Oxley stuff. Joy.

What we have here is a failure to communicate

Got home last night from my last official Search Committee meeting (huzzah!) to find Margie cursing softly and fooling around with the cable modem … After a half hour or…

Got home last night from my last official Search Committee meeting (huzzah!) to find Margie cursing softly and fooling around with the cable modem …

After a half hour or more with the line not coming back up, she called Comcast. Dude on the phone called up our records, and suggested it was either a bad modem or a line problem (as opposed to Something Evil We’re Doing). Margie set up a cable man appointment for Wednesday — but, meantime, has gotten a location (Arapahoe and Revere) where we can exchange our current modem, to see if that does any good.

I’ve done some research myself, but need to do more, on a replacement. My primary reluctance in doing so, aside from dropping $150 for a cable gateway, is that I hate to give Comcast another excuse to say it’s not their fault.

More as it develops …