Category: Daily Life

and up and down and up and down. About 5 months ago a tree fell on the lines at the end of the road missing the power but stretching the phone and cable without breaking them. The line crews came out and retensioned the wires. Now when it rains, our Comcast Internet connection seems flaky. Coincidence? Maybe.

After several calls and 2 tech visits to the house I may have figured out the problem. On one phone call a wise technician suggested that "your splitter might be going bad" I finally spent $15 on a really nice ChannelPlus 2514a splitter/combiner and went into the attic only to find I don’t have a splitter. Turns out the splitter is in the sealed box on the outside of the house which the last technician kindly left unlocked for me. During his call he proclaimed that "your signal is too good!" and switched the Internet to the -7.5db lead putting the television on the -3.5db lead. Tech magic. Discussions with the tech and a couple of other people led me to belief I’d been taken by Shields on the splitter.

This morning the Internet connection was down worse than ever. I got frustrated and may a support call for a visit on Tuesday morning. With nothing else to do I went outside an replaced the old generic splitter with the new ChannelPlus splitter and in minutes the Internet was back and working seemlessly. Apparently, splitters do go bad and you do get what you pay for!

Now, do I replace my RCA cable modem with a Motorola come Tuesday morning?

Client fire is out.

It is now physically impossible for me to get the tax paperwork to DHS before their office closes so if the baby comes this weekend the hospital treats us like "cash trash" instead of "medicaid gold".

First trying to pay another bill. I wonder if a check is in the mailbox…no, not until Tuesday.

Switching gears to pleasing the wife client and getting the upstairs floors cleaned.

Had lunch. Paid a large bill throwing us into ecomonic woes.

Back on client fires.

Client 1 done for now.

Moving onto financial woes. Paying bills and making magic money.

Anyone got a money tree? Can I have a sprig?

Was focused on Taxes but have a fire to put out. Switching to Client 1.

• Confirm funds in bank and pay 3 large bills over the phone
• 2004 tax paperwork (4-8 hours)
• Client 1 (5-8 hours)
• Client 2 (20 hours)
• Client 3 (5-8 hours)
• Clean upstairs floors (2 hours)
• Get Girl Scout troop to circus by 5pm

I had a very measureable goal that had to be reached for her to have a nice birthday. It wasn’t met.

I ended up doing Clown Day with pink eye. The teacher called and said, “we’ve got hand sanitizer for you and just don’t touch your face.” So if the whole first grade comes down with pink eye its my fault but I don’t take the blame 🙂 For those that might not know, for the past 25 years or so when the Ringling Brothers Circus comes to town Rocky Hill Elementary’s first grade gets visited by 4 or 5 clowns. It’s a neat treat. I go to the school and spend the day teaching 1st graders how to juggling (about 3-4 will actually get it and the rest have fun throwing the balls and trying to catch them). I really enjoy getting to talk to the clowns although this year I didn’t bother them.

After that I returned for some frantic computer work amidst Comcast network outages. My goal was to give Cathy insurance for her birthday. My 2004 tax paperwork is all that stands in the way. Of course, my w-2s, 1099s et al are buried in those boxes of unopened mail. I was told that using TurboTax I should be able to do this in 4 hours. It has taken a week! Of course with my allergies in full swing and the pink eye going I haven’t been able to pull some of the late night hours that would really help.

The computer work ended when we took the family out to Digenova’s for pizza and then Noah and I rushed off to a scout meeting.

I wanted to blow this day up for Cathy. It had been on my mind for weeks.

Yesterday was like trying to play golf with the Marx Brothers! I’d set up the shot and just about complete my swing when some distraction would make me have to start all over again. The work I do is very mental and requires a certain set of tools. A browser has to be opened to the development box for the front end and another for the backend. Two more for the production server frontend and backend. Now one browser for each of the database tools. Editors: ColdFusion Studio 5, Visio, and MS Word. An FTP program. Online documentation. The mere act of switching from one computer to another devours 10 minutes. Then comes the mindset. Getting into the programming groove. Once the mind is focused and that particular nirvana is reached the code flows from my finger tips like paint from an artist’s brush.

Yesterday’s effort probably took 6 times longer than it should have and caused me to not be able to complete certain things that are now making today a miserable day.

On the positive side, my sinuses seem more clear. I don’t feel like coughing as much. I presume this is attributable to Alavert.

On the negative side, I have pink eye. And so does the dog! What does that mean?

I was supposed to teach the 2nd graders at the elementary school to juggle. It’s Clown Day. I also take great pleasure in getting to chat with the Ringling Brothers clowns. I don’t think it would be prudent for me to infect the whole 2nd grade.

Comcast is giving me fits. The connection is up and down like a bad metaphor.

My cellphone has a grandfathered service called "alternate line service" which is two phone numbers that come to the same cell phone. When we had service interupted they never got the alternate line (my business line!) fully up. I can call out but no one can call in.

There are others. A lot on me today.

This morning I made the mistake of leaving the dog unattended while I drove Sarah to school. I left my books with my glasses on them within dog’s reach. I now have a nice hairline verticle scratch down the center of the right lense. I thought I wouldn’t notice but its hard to miss. I guess these 8-10 year old glasses need replacing anyway. Maybe in the Fall.

Ever get behind on your mail? 

I was around 15 years old. My best friend’s family had me as a guest to a beach house at Ocean City, New Jersey. At this point in my life my hormones were raging. There was one constant thing on my mind. Swelling inside of me. The frustration causing my temperature to rise and my heart to pump, pump, pump with sweat pouring down my body until all was ready to explode!

My southern accent in New Jersey drew one of two reactions. Humor or ridicule. My friend’s father found it humorous and commented to me, “Doug, you’re the kind of guy that I’d expect to walk up to a woman and say ‘howdy ma’am! Wanna get laid?'” And it suddenly dawned on me that I’d never used that line. A mere couple of hours later my friend and I (and some others I don’t remember) were on the hunt. Five of us were crammed into an MG Midget, topless and shirtless of course, cruising down the strip looking for babes. We hooted, cat called, hollered, whistled and otherwise flushed out our prey. The hunt was ripe! The savannah was fresh and certainly not barren.

We parked and broke down into teams as five would easily startle even the most experienced of the tenderloins. I quickly honed in on my target, aimed my bolt and fired. The words poetically cascaded through my lips, bolstered by the charming twang of my southern accent, “Howdy Ma’am..Wo..Wo” and my string broke. “Would you like to go see a movie tonight?” She replied, “yes” and we parted company until the evening.

I never did get laid on that trip but we sure did have one helluva popcorn fight in the closed balcony of that movie theatre. I’ll never remember the movie as we were removed from the theatre shortly into the flick but man did we ever have some good laughs and share some strong kisses for one evening walking barefoot on the Jersey shore.

n.b. She later confided that she accepted my invite because no one had ever said “Howdy ma’am” to her before.

Want to see a spy plane?