Routers, Rain and RIP

The word of the week is argh, with all its various spellings.

Nov 22 – 12 Hours At Work

Argh – more snow! I opened the branch today and by noon blinding white flurries were creating havoc on the roads. Neither one of my employees could safely make it to work even by mid-afternoon, so I ended up spending 12 hours in-branch from open to close. Luckily my car had its tire chains added, so I could safely make it back home up the mountain tonight – no hotels for me. Did you know that regular tire chains limit your speed to no more than 50kph, making the car vibrate like you’re riding continuously over rumble strips? No? Well, they do – I hadn’t considered that, but it’s a safety trade-off I was willing to make. Especially when I watched two impatient morons in large pickups pass me at high speed... and both of them started sliding. Idiots In Trucks – there has to be an IQ cap to own one.

For those of you wondering about my recent FBook status updates involving stew, here’s a brief explanation. Stew is a metaphor for a few things: a hot bubbling mix of different things, usually yummy, that also has the possibility of going bad despite best intents. Stew can also stand for Stressfully Taxing Emotional Weirdness, which is also appropriate. Given that the holidays are usually a stressful time of year, I’m not surprised that I’m feeling it... but I hope( hope! )that the new year will bring some relief. It’s not nearly as bad in some ways for my parents and I as it could have been this month and next, so for that I’m grateful – I’ve just switched my stress focus, I guess, and have to deal.

Nov 23 – Boxxes And Wimmin

The jury’s still out on the Boxee Box – it’s a great idea with very little goodness out of the box for Canadian owners, if you’ll pardon the comparative pun. I’m not convinced it’s my answer to my media needs, so I’m still looking to price out a nice media server in the new year. Windows Home Server’s still looking like the winner, but I may run Boxee’s software on the thing. I wouldn’t be so eagar, but since my HDMI port on the laptop seems to have died along with 2 of the 3 USB ports, there’s not a lot of cheap options to stream media right now from my still-cool laptop. Well, it’s cool-looking, but it runs hot. You get the idea.

I use MSN for communicating with a good number of my NWN friends, and the thing pops up an advert every time I connect listing the ‘top stories’ at MSN.ca – good and bad. For the most part, it seems to be journalistic pap, much of the kind you find glaring at you while standing at the supermarket checkout. Case in point is this article about The 12 Types of Single Women, which caught my eye as I thought “Hey, here’s something perhaps I don’t know.” Turns out I shouldn’t have bothered; have a read and let me know what you think – the article entitled Ten Things To Know Before You Get Engaged is a lot better, IMHO, though still somewhat derivative. My fave? Check out the quote from Lucille Ball – right on!

Nov 24 – My Juice Tastes Like Bullets

Aw, man... another of my childhood memories tarnished. Or in this case, leaded. Those collectible glasses that Burger King and other fast food outlets put out in for Star Wars and the Muppets are just packed full of lead. It doesn’t stop there: according to the article, pretty much every collectible glass made in the last 50 years has toxic levels of lead and cadmium in them. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t end up holding onto them; makes me wonder if they’ll be cheaper now on eBay? Hmmm.

At my day job, I deal with more than my share of fraud-related things, including quite a few people who come in who are being duped by internet scammers. I do what I can to help them and educate them to ensure they don’t fall victim to the international scumbags running the scams, but people just keep naively believing the damnedest concocted stories. So I was glad to stumble across a site that strikes back at the scammers: 419eater.com, where users post their scam-the-scammer stories. My favourites? The one were a savvy user scammed a scammer into carving a full-size wooden Commodore64 , and the one where the scamming scumbag gets a tattoo – with the 419eater’s usename on it! Hilarious!

Nov 25 – Cookies, not Stew

Well, well, what’s this? A day off, despite other stores calling me( evil magic, that )to see if I can work? No can do; I need my day off – spent at home, as it snowed a LOT last night( and kept doing it today )so I wasn’t going anywhere unnecessary. It was well-spent on Things Relaxing, such as COD: Black Ops( which I was royally smacked around at, ah well )and writing a bit, plus the traditional trip to the Mountain Bean. Which was really great, as I spent a couple of quiet hours parked in front of the giant stone fireplace with tea and cookies at hand. Plus some football game or somesuch on the giant TV that I ignored. The evening was a bit of a letdown, as I stewed( just a bit )on the topics of Life Fail, Love Fail and Work Fail but came to no real conclusions. Apart from realizing that more cookies CAN make things better, but only in the short-term. Maybe I should make some bacon cookies soon?

A bit of nostalgia, then a bit of Way Cool: remember Hot Wheels, those semi-indestructible die-cast toy cars? Of course you do – we all had a few of them; some had more than a few. This guy has 1200 of them, and he’s made an incredible automated work of art of all those cars in continuous motion. Mesmerizing! Plus, in my books, a whole lot cooler than turning your basement into a giant train set. Enjoy:

Nov 26 – Futurama and Fone Fury

Telus: a phone company who apparently can’t master the complicated art of a three-way call, which has only been around for a few decades now( they kept disconnecting me ). I called today to return my LG IQ phone, as I’m extremely disappointed with it – the Windows Mobile 6.5 OS stinks. I’ve had to pull the battery from the thing 5 times now as it won’t shut down / reset; I can’t connect to the WiFi any more( despite it working fine, if slowly, early in the week ); the battery life is marginal... and it’s just darn hard to get a grip on. In the main, the OS is the deal-breaker, as I’m flabbergasted that LG would release a product with such obvious glitches. Anyway... they’re sending a mailer to me to pack the LG IQ in to send it back. I’ll be re-activating my old LG Shine for the foreseeable future( under the new monthly plan, which is fine )as Telus won’t cut me a deal for the HTC Desire. There’s no way I’m going to pony up $350.00 to get a phone for a 2-year contract – I’m definitely going to wait for a tablet, however long that takes. Even shopping on eBay 6 months from now probably won’t get me a much better price... but it’s the principle of the thing. For the amount of time I'll use it, I want a free phone on a long-term contract or no deal.

All right, time to damp the phone fury and turn back to the funny. In case you’ve been missing it, Futurama’s sixth season is available to watch FOR FREE from GoodnewsFuturama.com – just pick your episodic poison, max the window and enjoy every animated moment of Groening goodness. Ahhh....

Nov 27 – Routing Cars and Data

Good news, everyone – well, everyone who gets stuck in traffic around here near Victoria. After years( and years )of talk, word has come down that the BC Government has earmarked a whopping 500 million bucks for rapid transit systems outside the Lower Mainland( ie. Vancouver & area ). So Victoria should get a good share of that to put towards ironing out the snarled mess that Highway 1 turns twice a weekday. They also mention overpasses, which we really don’t have here – unlike the QEW in Ontario, which has overpasses everywhere to keep the traffic flowing uninterrupted on the highway. Only makes sense, right?

Argh!!! Does that express it? Dead routers SUCK, but wonky ones are just as bad: neither one lets your data stream smoothly at home. I was gaming on the Xbox tonight and noticed a LOT of lag, so I logged into my D-Link DIR-655... and lost the internet. Hours later I gave up trying to fix it and plugged in my old Linksys WRT54G, which has been smoothly running my Vonage VOIP line for years – still works great. I’ll be trying to diagnose things on my next day off, but I suspect some lingering problems I’ve been having with the 655 router are signs that a new router is in the cards. The speed I had expected from the 655 never materialized, and the setup was somewhat of a nightmare to get everything talking. So we’ll see when this ends up, and when – not that I’m thrilled about spending more money I didn’t want to... I’ll see if a firmware update fixes things.

Nov 28 – Farewell, Leslie Nielsen

One of my favourite actors passed away today: Leslie Neilsen, best known for his starring role in the Naked Gun movie series. He was also in one of my favourite movies of all time very early in his career: Forbidden Planet, a film that has influenced science fiction since its release decades ago. I’ve always enjoyed films with Leslie in them; he brought charm, humour and dignity to roles that nobody else could have pulled off. I’ll miss him more than I realized, but he’ll live on in the roles that he played so well on screen.

It’s cold outside, it’s dark... but at least it’s raining! Yes, the forecast here for Vancouver Island( at least the southern bits )is a return to normal temperatures starting tomorrow – goodbye, snow! Despite doom-and-gloomers saying it’s going to be the coldest winter in decades, I’m just looking forward to the rain – check out some of the amazing facts about Victoria’s mild weather here. The rainiest month is December, and the driest is July... with very little snow in between. Sounds perfect to me!

Next week? Rain. I’ve learned to like it a lot – you don’t have to shovel it, or slide on skates over it.