Jan. 15th, 2003 @ 12:27 am (no subject)
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angry
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Current Mood: angry
Current Music: Judas Priest - Rock Hard Ride Free
Annoyances Deux: OK, I'm now deeply grumblesome on other subjects. As pretty much everyone on earth knows, DirectTV DSL fell over and sank into the swamp, so the lot of we poor schmos who were on it got tossed over to BellSouth FastAccess. According to the documentation we were presented with, we were supposed to get comperable level of service from our new provider, good price back on the inevitable new DSL modem, etc. I figured this was all well and good, so went skittering over and got everything hooked up today. Now -- here's where the fun starts. I spent half the day thinking their mailserver was/is down because I couldn't ping it. Eventually I called tech support tonight -- and, no, its not down. No, it can't be pinged. No, the support tech had no idea what to do. I eventually just popped its config as I winged it into kmail -- and it worked.

Their mail server is set up not to be pingable.

This despite the fact that their DSL model is designed to try and ping said server as part of its diagnostic routines.

This boded poorly already. So, I had the tech give me the address for their UseNet server. Do I even really need to say what that resulted in? That address isn't even pingable.

Needless to say, I'm somewhat less than thrilled right now with BellSouth FastAccess DSL, and I'm verging on calling them up and ragging them in the harshest possible way, telling them I feel they got my business under false pretenses, and that I want a static IP address, and to talk to a real tech immediately, or I'll be happy to tell the Better Business Bureau about their deceptive tactics to get DirectTV DSL subscribers to switch. And then I'll start getting really nasty.

[sigh] The fact that I'm going out of town this Thur to Boston until Sun doesn't make this any easier. I hate leaving it for any number of days, lest they feel complacent.
Jan. 15th, 2003 @ 02:13 am (no subject)
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godzilla
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Current Mood: annoyed
Erf:
Diet%20Evil%20Ferret
What Kind of Ferret Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Wow! You're Diet Evil Ferret! You're adorable and pretty, but inside lurks insidious plots to turn the house into chaos, all as a diversion while you go round up every piece of footwear to stash under the couch.

(Mmmmmm, eeeeeeevil.)
Jan. 15th, 2003 @ 10:03 am (no subject)
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elric
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Current Mood: awake
Battle: I gird to do battle with the Evil BellSouth.
Jan. 15th, 2003 @ 10:58 am (no subject)
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kawaii
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Current Mood: pleased
Verne: Its good to know my ostensible relatives are still at large.
Jan. 15th, 2003 @ 11:15 am (no subject)
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destroyah
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Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Oingo Boingo - Little Girls
Bitterness: OK, I'm bitter, too, but there are few Onion articles that really resonate with me like this one:
"Back in college, when I was screwing with reasonable regularity, I'd actually spend time thinking about the subject [of safe sex]," Tudor said. "I'd worry if carrying a condom in my purse was being too forward. I'd think, is it okay to have sex with friends? What sort of stuff do I want to explore? Are threesomes safe? I had no idea that one day, my safe-sex questions would boil down to, 'Where can I get some?'"

DSL Woes: OK, I've cancelled my account with BellSouth, and picked one up with a local company called Speed Factory who actually, horror of horrors, had a technically competent person on the phone and gave me all the right things I needed to hear. This pleases me muchly. What displeases me is that DSL could go out again almost any time as BellSouth cancels my account and Speed Factory are backlogged, so Hades below knows when the thing will actually get done. I might actually end up having to drive in to the office when I get in from Boston, after all. Sigh
Jan. 15th, 2003 @ 11:32 am (no subject)
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threat, existentional, warning
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Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Oingo Boingo - Insects
Gift Ideas: Hey, look, my hatchday is coming up in April, so if a few of you wanted to pool your resources and get me something nice for it, I wouldn't object.
Jan. 15th, 2003 @ 06:52 pm (no subject)
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threat, existentional, warning
2 comments
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Current Mood: blank
Bleary:
This is my little bit of the Mandelbrot set.
I got it from the mandelbit generator.
You can get one there too.


(Gotta love that technology.)

Mall-Crawler: So, damn, I needed some self-time today, and ended up lurking around the Discover Mills Mall, where I was almost talked into buying into Games Orkshop cruft and narrowly avoided buying War of the Monsters. I feel virtuous.