Category: tech

Long Life

I can’t remember but I think I blogged about getting a new battery for the laptop. Well it arrived yesterday and I’m kicking myself for not doing it sooner. I bought a laptop back in December as a christmas present to myself. A Dell Inspiron 9200 which came w/a 2.5 hour battery (so they say). In reality it only lasts about 2 hours. The new battery lasted almost 4 hours today!

Incoherent Ramblings II

The only successful task I’ve completed today is watching reruns of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. I used to be an avid fan but I stopped after things kept getting weird. I regretted missing the season where Tara gets killed and Willow goes mental. (Tara and Willow were lesbian lovers.) I never seem to be able to catch the episode when Giles comes back and teaches Willow the finer points of magic. Well thank god for TIVO! I’ve managed to catch up and tomorrow is the big event. *giggle*

I also caught a great documentry on Logo about the Harvey Milk murder back in the late 70’s. Not knowing a lot about it, I found it moving, eduational, and shameful all at the same time. The guy who shot and killed Harvey Milk only got 5 years in prison, he got out and tried to pick up his life as if nothing ever happended. He showed no remorse for what he’d done thru the whole ordeal. He killed himself shortly after his release. Apparently, he was depressed over not being able to pick up his life where he left off.

I signed up for Comcast High Speed Internet on Monday and the cable tech dropped of the install kit and modem today. Within 10 minutes of cracking open the box, I had my cable internet up and running. Seamless and painless. Hello SBC? Are you listening? Speaking of SBC, they are giving me grief about cancelling my account. After going online to cancel, I get an email requesting account details, no problem. I get a follow up email requesting confirmation of my request to cancel. Today, I get a third email telling me I need to call them to cancel. WTF? Why go thru the trouble of offering the ability to cancel your account online if I’m still gonna have to call, get put on hold for an eon, and then have to answer 50 questions about why I’m cancelling, blah blah blah. Just cancel my fucking service already! *oom-rah….ooom-rah….ooom-rah* Better now.

So, I’m catching up on my Blogroll today and stumbled across this gem. . .

Dragon Thong
*giggle* It’s cute and ridiculous all at the same time. I can’t wait to see it turn up in porno’s. Well, if I watched porno’s. *note to self, start watching porno.*

Moving on, I’ve been neglecting my podcasting lately. I was off to a blazing start then *fizzle*. I’ll try to get one in this week. I’m sure you’re just holding your breath in anticipation right?

Yeah, me neither.

Thunderbirds Are Go!

Ok, if you know where the title is from extra points. (I’m dating myself w/that comment, hehehe.)

Anyway, I remembered one of the things I wanted to blog about. I guess I’m on a roll w/vendor changes this week. I’ve gotten so annoyed w/Outlook lately, I made the switch to Mozilla’s Thunderbird app. I’m giving up some functionality but Outlook crashes so often now, I’ve just had it. I thought originally I’d just overtaxed it w/so much going thru my pc however, the same problem is happending on the laptop. (Which has an even newer version.) I could go on and on about the details but I’d hate to bore you to death. One of the neat features I didn’t know Thunderbird had is spam blocker. It has a spam detection engine built in. Very nice!

Work Work Work

Today is my second day on my new shift. I’m dragging a little. I’m used to 8 hours vs 10 and I’m used to taking my sweet time waking up. I have to get up by 10:00 am now. (I know, poor me) My days off are mixed up this week w/the change. Next week they’ll be all together again.

Saturday was very uneventful. I had lunch w/the ex caught up on a few things. I guess his new boyfriend wasn’t too happy to find out we were still “legally” hitched via our domestic partner registration. (I had to leave him on it so he’d have medical coverage) Well with him finally working he doesn’t need it anymore. He went down and had it dissolved. He was kind enough to bring me a copy of the paperwork. My first divorce! I feel so “legite” now. lolol I was a little sad at first but moving on.

I ran into Tyrone from the BCC committee at Starbucks. We hung out and finished the last batch of images for the 2006 men. I just realized I forgot two pages so I’m working on those today. I’ve finished revamping the entire site so my work is mostly over at this point. I’ll still be doing minor updates but the hard stuff is behind me. (whew) Mostovic also dropped by. I hadn’t seen him lately so we also had a chance to catch up. The three of us ended up doing dinner at Blue and then I volunteered to help Mostovic get his wifi up and running. Three hours later we discovered his DSL line was corrupted and had to schedule a repair. @#$%! SBC! I saw a new offer from Comcast on the tele so I’ve decided to bite the bullet and switch. (Bobby will be so pleased)

I had several things I wanted to blog about today but have completely forgotten what they were. Maybe they’ll come to me later.

Can You Hear Me Now? II

I woke up this morning to discover Tmobile had terminated my cell service. I get to Starbucks in the Castro expecting to log on, pay some bills, blah blah blah except no signal. I’m like “oh k, What gives?” So I call’em up, on someone else’s phone mind you, and “oops! we are sorry sir, we cancelled your account for no apparent reason”. With a little digging, we discovered the mysterious error. You’ll remember I lost my cellphone a few weeks back. Well, Tmoblie forgot to remove the automatic account termination after 30 days. I did get a very sincere apology and 50 extra minutes so I guess I can’t complain too much. I think they did it on purpose just to make sure the account wasn’t stolen. Bitches!

Tmobile overall has been a decent service. I haven’t had any trouble w/their cell coverage. Plus, I’m not currently on a contract so they know they have to be nice to me! hehehe

Die SBC DIE!

I hate SBC! Or the artist formerly known as Pacific Bell. I much prefer cable internet over DSL as the speeds are often much faster for what you pay. However, when I moved into this building, Comcrack had not yet wired it for high speed internet. I was left w/SBC or nothing.

Apparently, because SBC contracts out for DSL, even though the bill has their name on it, I have different billing cycles for my phone and DSL servcie. This creates a problem in that one month I get billed for just my phone line and the next I get billed for my phone line and 2 months worth of DSL. It’s not breaking me but it is annoying. I call today to try and resolve the issue and I’m given lip service by both sides (after being on hold for a whopping 16 minutes) about how they can’t change my contract, blah blah blah.

Were it not for my investment in books, tuition, etc for school, I’d pay the termination fee and switch today. However, reason has overriden my anger to strangle the life out of my phone.

OY! I feel better now.

And The Karma Wheel Turns

I found my phone!

I can’t believe it. I am sooo giddy right now. Remeber when I said I called Starbucks to see if maybe I’d left it there. Well today, on a whim, I stopped by thinking mabye the night crew didn’t know about it since I’d been there during the day. And as fate would have it, they did! I’m still in shock. They said some homeless guy tried to claim it but since it has my name on the startup screen it foiled his attempt.

Another glaring example of my karma coming back to me I think. Switched the sim chips back over and I’m back in business.

I be so happy!!!

Cellphone Hell

I’m trying to get over my anger at myself for losing my phone. There isn’t much I can do about it now. As annoyed as I am, its not the end of the world in the scope of things. I mean I could be living in Iraq and fearful my house might be blown up at any minute.

I’ve decided for the time being to activate my old cellphone until I get back from TX. The old phone is a pda as well albeit a bit fragile. The original Tmobile pocket pc phones were metal w/glass screens. An accident waiting to happen. And let’s face it, I’m hard on my toys.

I’m not sure if I’ll get a pda again. Now that I have the laptop, I’m not sure I really need it. Don’t get me wrong, I used it plenty. I used it to track my workouts from the gym, play mp3’s, looking up movie tickets, surfing blogs via RSS, etc. I’m just not in a place where I can drop $300-$500 on a new gadget. Especially, with school starting. Audiovox has their new cell/pda combo on sale for $299.00 w/new service. Basically, the same as the one I had just different maker/model and a slighter faster chip.

My first priority right now is school of course. I have to make sure I have enough cash in the bank to cover tuition, books, etc as I make way too much to qualify for a grant. Damn prioirities…