My buddy Matt is a movie-to-TV script consultant. He's responsible for writing the non-profanity lines that get dubbed over swear words when they put movies on television. You'd think that in his spare time, he'd either curse up a storm all the time, or maybe he'd constantly be all monkey-fighting this and Monday-to-Friday that.

Neither is true. Mostly Matt talks in a really high-pitched, almost squeaky voice. He swears occasionally but not often.

But Matt and I don't talk about our jobs often. What we like to do is get together on weekends in the mall, and open up a table booth, and tell passersby what utensils would most make them happy.

"You, sir, would be happiest with chopsticks made from finished pine wood," we might say, "and I know it might take a while to learn, but trust us, it'll make you happiest."

Or "you, ma'am, would benefit from a simple set of silver flatware. Antique. I thinka few places in this mall might have them, but I don't know which. Good luck."

Today, somehow, everyone we've met would benefit from a titanium spork. Matt and I are stumped. What does this mean?

Originally published at BunkBlog. You can comment here or there.

Suddenlink killed my cable modem on Thursday morning. When I called tech support that night, they couldn’t get a signal from my modem, an old Motorola 4200 (DOCSIS 1.1).  The techie they sent to the house Friday said that Suddenlink had recently upgraded to DOCSIS 3.0 locally, and therefore my old modem would no longer work. He offered to rent or sell me a modem or I could go out and buy a new one on my own. Since I know they sell a strange brand that nobody respects, I decided to hit the local Radio Shack to pick up a DOCSIS 3.0 modem. They only sell one modem, which happens to be a DOCSIS 3.0 model (Motorola 6120).

I plugged in the modem, hit DHCP refresh and got a non-local IP address, but couldn’t connect to the internet. This is expected, of course, and so I called the tech support help hell line and proceeded to be told that 1) DOCSIS 3.0 is not in my area, 2) the modem I had been using should work just fine, and 3) the modem I just spent $100 on was not on their approved list. Naturally, I find it absurd that a modem which complies with DOCSIS 2.0 and DOCSIS 3.0 standards would not work on a DOCSIS 2.0 network. Isn’t that the whole point of standards? The tech support guy was very patient and well-informed but was eventually unable to get the Suddenlink system to connect to my modem, regardless of the IP address that it granted me. He even had me connect the old modem, which would not grant me a routable IP address, and he couldn’t get a signal from.

Back to the store, to return the modem. And then to a different store a few miles away, to buy a less-capable modem. While at the store, I noticed a couple things. First, there were almost no DOCSIS 2.0 cable modems remaining on the shelf, although they normally stock three different models. Secondly, my old buddy Karl was there. Karl’s cable modem died on Thursday morning as well. He told me that his gym buddies also had widespread cable modem destruction visited upon them at the same time. Suspicious. We both left the store with new cable modems, and the shelves appeared to have one modem remaining that would work on our system.

I get the new cable modem (which is awfully tiny compared to the old one) home, plug it in and call the tech line to get the modem provisioned. This time, the person on the end of the line was less informed, which is always annoying. She was very obviously reading directly from her flowchart and would not deviate, no matter how absurd the things she insisted I do. At one point, she wanted me to unplug the modem, the router, and all computers connected to the router. This displays a deep lack of understanding of how routers work. Finally, after far too long on the phone with Flowchart Fanny, the connection was up and functioning as it was meant to.

I find it absolutely amazing that the two stores I went to both sold the Motorola 6120, which won’t work on the local system. Since there’s only one cable internet company in town, this exhibits a distressing lack of understanding of the market on the part of the local retailers.

Now it’s time to write a nasty letter to Suddenlink for breaking my modem, lying to me, and wasting my time and money. I don’t expect to get anything but catharsis from this exercise, but I must try.

Tags: geek, stupid people

Oh MDC, you Den of Iniquity...

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In case you wondered, dear local friends, why I have not been seeing you much lately, I am spending my time answering questions that look like this:

"Reaction of 3,3-dimethyl-1-butene with hydrogen iodide yields two compounds A and B, each having the molecular formula C6H13I, in the ratio AB=90:10. Compound A, on being heated with potassium hydroxide in n-propyl alcohol, gives only 3,3-dimethyl-1-butene. Compound B undergoes elimination under these conditions to give 2,3-dimethyl-2-butene as the major product. Draw the structure for compound B."

And for about a half hour at a time they are totally and perfectly comprehensible, and then my brain jams and leaves me staring at pig latin.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

It will help VERY much to switch to a different class schedule in the winter, I think, that concentrates my classes all in the middle of the week. This stuff is at my complexity level, and I should be able to work through it faster, but I've been running up a sleep deficit that really gets in the way.

Tags: tales of an inveterate college addict

Hours of driving, a tankful of gas, and within five minutes it was all over.
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Tags: misplaced places
listening to: "Ben Pode Santa Maria" - Azam Ali

in about ten days I go to get the one tooth assessed for either some reconstruction or pulling, and then we're straight off to the orthodontic races. I'm sort of excited by the idea that I could have nice straight teeth again. ( invisalign! woot!)

It's a freaking gorgeous sunny warm day out, ( however, fall allergies can suck it!, spring and fall are the WORST. alas, they're my fave seasons for not so extreme weather. Ah well.)


bwahaha: awesome: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/on-swine-flu-conspiracy-theories/article1354651/

So, we can have public health care, but can we live with ourselves in the morning?

I can, once the rest of this is sorted out, but I think it's going to require me to donate $10 a month to Planned Parenthood, or another organization which provides access to abortion for women who cannot afford expensive private health plans: the ones who are most at risk from rape and abuse; the ones most in danger of conceiving children they cannot raise or care for. I encourage anyone who supports the rights of women, and can afford this small contribution (or a larger or smaller one), to do likewise. This year has proven to me so many times over that people will take care of each other in the absence of external resources.

If all of us who care band together over this one thing, its absence from national health care will cease to matter. If your conscience agrees with mine, please think about what you can do personally towards solving this problem.

And then I come home to the biggest day yet, working with this group. I saw 37 patients, between office, hospitals, and nursing homes. Whew!

So much for vacation...

Happy birthday, lifeofreilly!

Happy birthday, greenmansgrove!

Happy birthday, quinns_crossing!

Bright and chilly.

Things to be done today:

Morning--edit/revise assignment, send to parent for her to proofread.
Hope to have that sent off by early afternoon. It's due at 6.
Done and submitted.

Afternoon--blog, or at least do some research for some post ideas.
watch Fat Head
woo work
before dancing, prep the kitchen for the morning
belly dance at 6.30
rush home and go out to dinner with stevefava. woooo dinner!

For all the writing time I don't seem to have, I am still thinking about starting up another blog next year. This one would focus on traditional foods and my trying to incorporate more of that type of eating into my life.

Tags: grad school, traditional foods

Booted an antivaccination health care community worker from my FB. For serious, you want to work in community health outreach and you believe a site that says vaccines contain lead and that you'd rather have "god given immunity"
God's an asshole on the immunity front. Good luck with that.( seriously, riding the safety of the herd and asking I take a risk so you don't have to? go lick door handles.)

***

We went off Sat to Spadina, to quite possibly the most insanely huge yarn shop ever ( romni wools, go google if you knit.) If any of you knitters on my FL visit, I will take you there and your head will splode.

I wanted some yarn to do a simple lace scarf for my Oma, ( awwww) and one for me, so we nabbed some gorgeous, but spendy Noro, in a grey/pale blue/pale green/white, and after a few miss-starts, since i haven't knitted in YEARS since starting chainmail, off and rolling.

Ate lunch at a funky diner, the shanghai cowboy, and raided the chinese bakery for goodies.

On the way home, came across some anti vax crazy screeds tucked in newsboxes.Two of em. Instinct, we cursed and automatically reached for a newsbox each and pulled the sheets.

Woke up due to some crazy nightmare, urgh.

Tuesday aft we have a houseguest again as he snagged work, but no apt, contrary to his concern he'd find an apt but no work. I'll keep plugging away at my dutch lessons,make a batch of earrings for this upcoming craft fair ( they seem to sell well at holiday fairs), and soon, I'll be off and travellin!

(and hey, something of a healthcare bill passed. It's far from perfect, and how, but abortion is career suicide for any politician who even thinks of being pro choice, so as much as that frosts my ass, I can live with it for now, and hope for change, and it's fun to watch the "OMG GUBMINT TAKE OVER AND CONTROL" screemies, because hey, didn't they just use government to throw women's reproductive choice/right under the bus? You want no abortion? fine, then you have to let everyone else access affordable care via a government option. I suspect there'll be loopholes, there always is, and barring that, canada is lovely, liberal, and we have legal gay marriage and abortion.:D)

Tonight, Becca needed to re-dye her hair with henna (a lengthy and remarkably gloppy experience, I'll stick to conventional dyes when I bother), and so Alice helped her, it was very cute and very loving. As Becca put it in a very pleased & proud tone of voice, "Alice put mud in my hair". Seeing my two wonderful partners together, happy, and being very loving towards one another is one of the greatest gifts my life has given me.

frame of mind: giddy

Thanksgiving 1 by ~dmotz on deviantART



Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,
With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,
And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!
Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,
Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand
Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land,
Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain!

--from "Autumn" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow




Harvest linens



Glazed Fall Vegetables
Warm Orchard Wassail


Pheasant and apples in mustard cream sauce

Tags: autumnvent, food and drink, pictures, poetry

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While we were in New Orleans, including the traveling, I finished two books.

First was And Another Thing..., the sixth book of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, written by Eoin Colfer. It's not worth it. I'm not even sure that it would be worth it from the library. *Sigh*.

The second book was Groucho and Me by Groucho Marx. I grabbed it for readability and my interest in the topic. It truly is pretty well-written, and you can see Groucho's deft touch with the language.

It's weird how my obsessions kick in and out so forcefully. With the next David Tennant special coming up in a week, I'm suddenly haunted again and the story is running around in my head once more. Yesterday it wasn't -- yesterday, I checked my fic archive and wished I could write more, but didn't feel "there".

This kind of internal travel between storyworlds is what I got my tattoo about - though it is about many things, really.

I just took a look at some stills with Eleven. (For those of you strenuously avoiding spoilers, I'll cut, although I'm not really spoiling anything other than the casting and wardrobe.) ( Read more... )

EDIT: And yes, I know each regeneration is not always literally younger than the preceding - but check out this, yo:



Indeed, I made a scatterplot in the OpenOffice equivalent of Excel, because I am a dork and have been doing a lot of this in lab reports lately. The trendline equation, if you must know, is f(x)=-2.09x+54.09. *blushes scarlet*

I took data points from the middle of each actor's run, and the newcomer's current age since we don't know how long his run will be yet.

Tags: doctor who

EINS, ZWEI, DREI VIER
BRUDERCHEN, KOMM TANZ MIT MIR