Weekend!
My co-worker tells me that I have to get home and download the latest drivers for the VR Headset because they’ve totally made stuff work so much better.
Oooh! Cool!, I think to myself. Maribou is out of town and I will have free reign to goof off as much as I want! I’m totally going to do that!
I get home. I log onto my computer. Hrm. No internet. Fair enough. I unplug the router and reboot the computer and go upstairs and give Momo his NSAID and feed all of the babies and then wander back downstairs and… no internet.
Hrm. I’m pretty sure that we have their phone number in email and we downloaded that locally. So I open up the thunderbird and do a search and find the number and call.
“Hey. Are you experiencing an outage downtown?”
“May I have your name sir?”
“It’s Jay Bird. Are we experiencing an outage?”
“Could you spell your last name?”
“Bravo-India-Romaine-um…Dragon?”
“Could you give me your address?”
“You need that to tell me whether you’re experiencing an outage?”
“Could you give me your address?”
“It’s at 123 Suitable For The Internet Lane.”
“We have a Mary-um-bow Bird?”
“Yes, Maribou. I am her husband. Are we experiencing an outage?”
“I’ve only just gotten in, sir, and we haven’t had our handover yet.” (and, seriously, the “sir” part was like the “sir” when you told your Vulture to do something in StarCraft. Please hold.”
And then I was on hold for, like, half a minute.
“Sir?”
“This is Jaybird.”
“Yes. We are experiencing an outage in your area.”
“Do we have an estimated time for when we’ll have our internet back?”
“No, sir.”
So, fine. I played my game on the PS4. It hit 10PM. I checked the internet again. Still down.
I went to bed.
I woke up! I got showered. I got dressed. I got downstairs. I checked the router. Still down. I called the internet people. I had a conversation that was even more frustrating than the one above. I went to work.
And I was fully planning on tonight being an outage as well. Luckily, I got home, got changed, fed the babies, and checked the internet and IT WAS BACK. IT WAS 2018 AGAIN.
And I was stuck here trying to remember the last time I went without internet for more than 4 hours for anything other than an intercontinental plane flight.
And it has been a while. Reading magazines whilst in the bathroom, playing unconnected game systems in the television room, and using the computer as a word processor/data repository.
Oh, my gosh. If we ever have an EMP…
Anyway, this weekend is a 3 day weekend for me. I’m running errands on Friday, going over to the sister’s to celebrate “The Birthdays” on Saturday, and culminating in doing nothing on Sunday,
So… what’s on your docket?
(Image is “Play” by Clare Briggs. Used with permission of the Briggs estate.)
Just back from a business trip to NYC… where we had an event on a Degraw St. in Brooklyn… So I immediately started looking around for Saul.Report
On a business trip to Tacoma which goes until Sat… Unless I feel I need to stay longer, as my wife kept insisting… But it is nice up here! Wish business was a little better though…
Did go to the largest used bookstore in Washington, which was nice. It was my kind of shop, books stacked haphazardly as they bought more books that they could deal with, which is nice. Found some good things, talked shop with the owner for a bit, felt all was right in his world.Report
We need to work on your phonetic alphabet.
Bug has all of next week off of school (AZ has a week long fall break), so we are heading to Carlsbad, CA. Got two days at LegoLand, a few days at the SD Zoo, some other things tossed in there. Bugs girlfriend is joining us for a couple of days while her mom decompresses.
Carlsbad is right near Camp Pendleton, which is where ACU-5 is located. Last month, I dropped a line to the Public Affairs Officer and got permission to bring the kids by for a tour, so Bug and C will get to see what I did in the Navy. Probably won’t be able to go for a ride on an LCAC (paperwork requirements these days are considerable, I hear), but should be able to tour one, and maybe see some flying around.Report
Even if you can’t see some flying around, you’ll probably be able to hear them.Report
The PAO seemed excited to have us, so I’m hoping if anyone is flying, he’ll take us up to the tower and let the kids watch from up there.Report
One time, our modem was fried by a power surge, it was a Friday afternoon, and my ISP closed early, so I went the weekend and a couple more days before they could ship us another one.
I did not like that, Sam-I-am.
This weekend my sister and her husband is coming to visit. They are bringing a 15 year old who is said to be a board game nerd. This bodes well.Report
That’s why phones have a wifi hotspot feature, isn’t it? Not as fast, but at least access to the basics is there. The only lengthy outage we’ve had lately was a power outage that went on longer than the backup power for my desktop and cable modem.
The weather forecast says we might hit freezing Sunday or Monday night, so (temporarily) drain the above-ground parts of the sprinkler system. Check the tomato bushes and see if there are any that can be picked and ripened indoors.Report
“Not as fast”
Someone needs to check their landline Mb/s privilege.Report
@michael-cain We have one phone working currently. It is a flip phone. And I stole it to take it to Canada with me, so he didn’t even have that….Report
We were going to go camping for Thanksgiving per longstanding tradition in Mr T’s family, but then there was a big ugly snowstorm where we were going to camp. So now the plan is a gathering at some relatives’ house.
So tonight we make the sweet potato casserole for Saturday supper, get the stuff for fruit salad for Sunday breakfast, pack up all the things, set out, turn back for the things we forgot, and finally arrive much later than anticipated.Report
Gremlins, Inc. is on sale on Steam, as are the add-ons and bundles and stuff.Report
I cannot recommend Gremlins, Inc highly enough. It is the *PERFECT* single-player board game experience.Report
Yeah, but it is four-bucks perfect?Report
This computer board game is so good you’re going to wanna slap your momma.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFsEZ3PDSwoReport
OK, OK, but you realize if I don’t like the game, I’m gonna want to slap *your* momma.Report
You have to like board games.
If you like board games? You’re going to *LOVE* this.
(As for the DLC? It’s pretty much only cosmetic. Change your pictures and whatnot. Give you a wacky trail behind you as your token moves around the board. It doesn’t do anything else. But the game is good.)Report
Really hoping it’s less eventful than today was, whatever it is:
– Had to mow and edge my lawn because the grass was *almost* too tall and it’s supposed rain forever starting tomorrow afternoon and there are also just enough a-holes in city hall that one of them might come after me for “unkempt lawn” (I’ve known it to happen to people)
– Came home to a broken toilet (the internal mechanism – the thing that triggers the tank refill, I forget what it’s called – had died). At first didn’t realize that was the issue, called a plumber. They couldn’t send anyone out before Monday. I have one toilet in the house and zero monies to stay in a motel and no desire to dig a latrine in the backyard or whatever other damn options I had.
Took the toilet apart and found that I THOUGHT I had turned off the water intake valve but had not, totally, turned it off. (At least now I had to mop the floor). Took the bits to Lowe’s and found a replacement and changed it out. Had someone run a stop sign and nearly hit me on the way home.
– Didn’t get the exams graded I was planning on grading.
I have fieldwork with my student tomorrow provided it’s not raining.
I hope someday to have a life that does not consist of me running from crisis to crisis and figuring which finger I can pull out of a leak in the dam without causing a massive flood, but I’m beginning to despair of that ever being the case.
I also got BOTH mansplained and humblebragged at at the same time today by an individual who has done it before. I should be able to let that kind of crap roll off me by now but today it hit me at a vulnerable time and I just wound up feeling bad about it (the thing that I was humblebragged at about, because it’s not something I’m doing) for much of the rest of the day.Report
As the guy in the neighborhood who gets hit with “unkempt lawn” letters every other year?
Lemme tell ya:
It ain’t so bad.
As for the Stop Sign, the grading, the mansplaining, and the humblebragging… I can’t really offer anything more than “use GrubHub”. I wish I had more to offer than “not leaving the house but eating deep fried food anyways”. If you were in Colorado, we could take you to the little dive next to the campus where teenagers bring you overdone burgers and veggies/ranch… but you’re not so here we are.
In the short run, just know that Team Colorado is saying “Heck With Those People.”Report
*cough*
It ain’t so bad for the person who doesn’t have to call all the lawn places and get it dealt with, pardner.
@fillyjonk Sorry you had such a cruddy day today.Report
thanks, yeah.
Part of it is just unpartnered-person problems: literally no one to run interference for me so at times it feels like everything falls on me. (I could hire a lawn service, but: my lawn is small and friends of mine who have them say often you have to nag them to come out, and I’d rather just do my own lawn than have to call a relative stranger on the phone).
Things are a little better right now; fieldwork is done and maybe I can get the exams graded this afternoon, especially if I find something that I can “watch” on tv without having to pay attention to it (aka “background noise” tv)
But teaching four different classes is for the birds. Even my mansplainy colleague recognizes that. But it’s my reality now because I am the only one who can teach three of the four classes in question,Report
I am in Montreal at a con with my sister.
So far so good.
On Monday we start our road trip…. woo.Report
I was just reading outstanding reviews of Cherry by Nico Walker. He’s being compared to Heller, Hemingway, and J.D. Salinger. Fortunately, Kentucky gets to keep him here until 2020, whereas all too often we quickly lose great authors to New York or LA.Report