It has occurred to me that in all of the chaos of the last couple months, I failed to relate my battle with Charter, my high-speed cable access provider (using the term ‘provider’ loosely).
<rant>
Charter charged me $56/month for high-speed cable access (no TV channels included) which stopped working at least once an hour. To regain service, I had to shut down my computer, unplug everything, and restart. They also falsely claimed speeds of up to 3Mbps although there were many times when my 56k dial-up modem would have been faster. And despite spending countless hours on the phone with the nearly worthless tech support staff, I couldn’t get wireless access on my lap top more than five feet away from my router. Enter TDS, who set me up with a 1.5 Mbps DSL line which is considerably faster. AND I have wireless access throughout my house. AND the tech support people are friendly and competent. AND it’s $29.95 a month.
Enough said… although I am feeling the urge to edit the meta tags on this page. Revenge is sweet.
</rant>
Archive for March, 2005
Die Charter die
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005The big 6-0
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005Huge kudos and congratulations to mom today who has survived growing up with seven siblings, raising four children of her own, and 38 years of marriage (among countless other challenges). =] Today she turns 60. Well done.
Unfortunate
Monday, March 21st, 2005Apparently JackO was interviewed and photographed by his campus newspaper while in a Circus Arts class and wound up on the front page of the newspaper. He sent us a photo along with this comment: "Due to some rather poor layout choices, in my opinion, the article that appeared to be associated with my photo was not what I expected." Here’s the full page. Hysterical.
NCAA Final Four
Friday, March 18th, 2005Go UNC! Here’s how I’m doing.
St. Fat’s Day
Thursday, March 17th, 2005To celebrate my Irish heritage, I consumed a green frosted chocolate donut filled with white fluffy stuff, a significant portion of a big green frosted birthday cookie for coworker/friend Jeff who turned 30, pesto pizza for lunch, more green frosted cookie and then beer and more pizza. Those Irish are an unhealthy bunch.
Jessie’s shower
Saturday, March 12th, 2005Just returned from a baby shower for Jessie, a former college house mate, who’s due in April. It was fun to see some old friends and watch Jess –the best gift recipient ever– open a gazillion cute baby items. This baby is going to have A LOT of cool stuff.
Goodbye Tower of Pestilence
Wednesday, March 9th, 2005Two and a half years have flown by at WARF and now I’m moving again. This time our whole department is moving to the second floor of the UW Bookstore, which lost their contract to sell apparel and consequently found themselves with an extra floor on their hands. This location rocks. Currently the following items are within a 5-minute walk of my cube: shamrock shakes, four coffee places, Memorial Union (and the terrace, think summer!), a post office, my tailor, the lower half of State Street and all the carts on library mall. And just 12 minutes to the capitol and my favorite dive sandwich shop. Not to mention we’re directly on top of the UW Bookstore which sells a wide awry of greeting cards, office supplies, knickknacks and candy. Aside from being fat and poor it should be a great experience! But I will miss my view from the T.O.P.
Wollersheim’s
Sunday, March 6th, 2005We made it out to Wollersheim Winery yesterday for their annual spring open house. While it’s always fun to visit a vineyard, it was a little disappointing to note the commercialism and mass production which seems to have consumed them. I first visited back in 1996 after taking a mini-course through the UW on wine tasting taught by Bob Wollersheim. We showed up the next weekend and saw the facility (one room), tasted several of the wines, chatted with Bob, and then went for a walk on the grounds. The more recent experience involved crowds of people, a presentation by Bob -on video-, a much longer tour of the new multiplex that all but forced you to buy a glass of wine mid-tour, and far less wine tasting. Still a great time though, with blue skies, temps above freezing (a nice change), and a bit of my favorite wine – the white riesling.
