You're Doing It Wrong

Does anyone else feel their username/password situation getting out of control? I try to keep things grouped thematically and keep them the same but I’m starting to lose it and am wondering what’s going to happen if I get hit on the head or something.

Not too long ago I was at the bank and there was this lady who appeared to have challenges of both mind and body. She was trying to make a withdrawal and of course she didn’t have an account number and it wasn’t her normal branch so no one recognized her and she fussed about getting out her ID. In the meantime there’s a gigantic line. The teller was politely hostile. The teller was finally able to get her account info and announced that she had: $6.31 in the account. The lady says to go ahead and give it all to her. The teller says, “Is a five and a one okay?” Completely hilarious.

I’m back. Everything on the trip to Oklahoma went smoothly. Yes, I had to sit in the back row or middle seats on the flights, but everything was on time and safe so we’ll just leave it at that. Security is interesting. At PDX on Thursday morning you really did need the full 2 hours for check in. Our flight left at 8:10a and we got to the aiport at about 6:15a and we still had to take cuts in the security line to get on our plane in time. At PDX we walked through the thing, they wanded us and patted us down. In Oklahoma City we just went through the thing. In Denver they were doing random wanding at the gate. Also my ID was checked at least 15 times with my ticket and not one person ever looked at my face to see if it matched the ID. I think that’s a flaw.

The Conference was super fun and I have lots of notes but I’m still a little frazzled catching up from things when I was gone, so more later.

I tried to do this last night and after I had my thing all typed up I accidentally clicked “back” and it all went away.

I’m going to Oklahoma today for RTG and I’ve been rushing around trying to get my act together. I need to bring more stuff than fits in my “tiny” travel bag — but not really enough to fit in the gigantic bag. We have no medium bag. So I’m bringing extra shoes and warm things since I’m paranoid about being cold. Probably no blog until I get back.

I’m forgetting the stuff about our itinerary getting completely “adjusted” by United — I can’t believe they didn’t expect me to be upset that instead of getting home at 6pm I was getting home at 11:30pm on Sunday. I still have to fly through Seattle but they did get me out earlier. We still have a 4 hour delay in Denver today. But — I see it all as catching up on my reading time.

I’ve gotta run, more later.

This morning we got up early and went to the Farmer’s Market. I bought a ton of bell peppers among other fun vegetables. Then we went to the Credit Union to open a checking account for Bob. I generally like to avoid doing anything remotely errand like during the day on Saturday but this didn’t turn out as bad as I had expected.

Later I put in some time in the yard and got things pretty much put away for Fall. There is potential to do more but I’m guessing this is it. I watched 1/2 of the Germany v. Finland World Cup qualifier — I have it on tape so can catch the 2nd half in a second here.

I just connected my DSL. Yay. As of 3pm today I still hadn’t rec’d my modem so I got on the phone and was in phonetree/hold hell when I heard the doorbell ring. I opened the front door and there was my box of loot.

The directions said to expect 60-90 minutes for the install which frightened me, but here I am. More on this story as it develops.

I spent an insane amount of time on Friday in Qwest’s phonetree bowels of hell. I can’t imagine that any company anywhere really thinks they are doing a good thing by making their customers work through a phone tree.

First I had to call and find out the story on my DSL. Actually FIRST I had to call Pacifier (ISP) back and find out what was going on there — get some additional info and then call QWest. Thank my lucky stars after a couple of transfers and endless being on hold, I ended up with David who was completely competent and was quickly able to see that my order had been screwed up pretty much from page 1 and was able to get me fixed up, anticipate that I’d have billing problems, and told me exactly how to handle it. Yay David.

BUT — I still didn’t have my modem because when the order was put in there was a note that said, don’t send a modem. So we had to order it so I won’t have a modem for another week, even though my service will be connected on the 1st. But that’s fine, I’ve lived without it this long, I can survive another week.

So my separate Qwest matter was to get that stupid Customer Choice thing taken off. This is some great service that costs $32 a month and I’m not sure if this is the line charge plus all these worthless extras — or $32 on top of the line charges. I ordered it to get the activation fee on the DSL waived and agreed we’d try it and we loathed it immediately. I don’t like call waiting. We don’t have a caller ID rig. We still got solicitation calls. And the freaky alternate ring for long distance calls freaked me out every time.

To make a long story short — I had to be transferred around to at least 5 different people including one jackass who insisted that I should really keep the Customer Choice and learn to like it. What, does this lady get beaten at the end of the day if a customer cancels the special package? We’ll see how it all turns out when I get our bill.

I feel like I’m behind in everything. Maybe I am. Or maybe everything isn’t that important.

My DSL is supposed to go on tomorrow. Except I haven’t gotten my modem yet and I called today and they advised me to call someone else because it should be here right now. I got another call (different person) from Qwest that my ISP isn’t signing up new people or doesn’t recognize them. And I called my new ISP to sign up and there was some sort of hold up and they would call me back in a half hour and never called back. This isn’t looking so good, is it?

Bob found the 9.1 disk so I can update my system now. Better back everything up and disk doctor and that whole tap dance again to be on the safe side. If I can get 9.1 on here and get iTunes and that Gnutella thing figured out and get DSL working all in one weekend I will proclaim myself the technological genius of the century.

We watched Pulp Fiction this week — I wanted to see it again because I read this article about some different films and I haven’t seen it for several years and if you haven’t you should go see it again because it’s brilliant and Bob and I have had an extended conversation analyzing it. If forced to chose I’d have to pick Harvey Keitel as my favorite character in the movie.

We got the latest MacMall catalog this week and I noticed that RAM is unspeakably cheap. I thought I might try to max Yoda (266 mhz iMac) out and researched whether I could do the install myself. I found a website (which I neglected to bookmark but something imac2.com or whatever) and it had very wonderful instructions with detailed photos which convinced me I’d better pay someone to do this. I’d probably be more adventurous if I hadn’t had such a bad time replacing the hard drive in Billy’s Compaq piece of crap at the office. (To be truthful, I only partially replaced the item and had to call in a professional to complete the job.)

This weekend I’m going to be as lazy as possible for me and probably start phase one of putting the garden to bed. I’ve just about had enough.