100 Milestone Documents.
The site sez
The list begins with the Lee Resolution of June 7, 1776, a simple document resolving that the United Colonies "are, and of right, ought to be free and independent states. . ." and ends with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a statute that helped fulfill the promise of freedom inherent in the first documents on the list. The remaining milestone documents are among the thousands of public laws, Supreme Court decisions, inaugural speeches, treaties, constitutional amendments, and other documents that have influenced the course of U.S. history. They have helped shape the national character, and they reflect our diversity, our unity, and our commitment as a nation to continue our work toward forming "a more perfect union."
Collections of information like this one, historical collections, artisitic collections, literary collections are what make the Web a wonder.
Wander.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Alcatraz ... visit if you can
We've taken visitors over the years. Spring the extra $4.50 for the audio tour accompaniment to the tour. Audio tours come in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. $16 gets you a trip out plus the audio tour ... and a trip back, too.
Book early. All too often this time of the year, we see disappointed tourists who realize on Sunday that the next seat available is for a boat time on Wednesday, and they will be heading back to ChickPea on Tuesday.
Our behind the scenes tour this spring, put on for Parks huggers by the Parks Conservancy people was a terrific experience. These photos are from a trip in June with visiting family members.
The Alcatraz lighthouse
The gull chicks were finding their sea legs.
View from inside the former prison.
and from outside
Beautiful place.
Desolate place
Go thee hither.
[28 Jun 2005]
Book early. All too often this time of the year, we see disappointed tourists who realize on Sunday that the next seat available is for a boat time on Wednesday, and they will be heading back to ChickPea on Tuesday.
Our behind the scenes tour this spring, put on for Parks huggers by the Parks Conservancy people was a terrific experience. These photos are from a trip in June with visiting family members.
The Alcatraz lighthouse
The gull chicks were finding their sea legs.
View from inside the former prison.
and from outside
Beautiful place.
Desolate place
Go thee hither.
[28 Jun 2005]
Friday, July 29, 2005
Cold War over? Guess so!
The Pallada sails in the Parade of Sail celebrating Sail San Francisco yesterday.
... followed closely behind by the Jeremiah O'Brien
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Tuesday blog pick
Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant
'nuff said. Take a look-see.
How'd I find EdRants? Well ... in a roundabout way because of something he wrote here ... somewhere
'nuff said. Take a look-see.
How'd I find EdRants? Well ... in a roundabout way because of something he wrote here ... somewhere
Ayelet Waldman redux
I think , sez Ayelet Waldman, that I am an exhibitionist.
... but then aren't all writers who are or hope to be published?
Katherine Seligman wrote Ayelet, Unfiltered for this past Sunday's Chronicle magazine.
Loads of people are telling Waldman that they don't approve of what she says and writes these days. Waldman was part of the Book Passage Mystery Writers' Conference that I attended a couple years back. Bright lady. The more I read about her and the more of her I read, the more she strikes me as someone with more guts than I have, saying things I'd say if I had more guts.
Seligman's article wraps up with a Waldman quote:
I went to my 10th high school reunion, with a law degree, just engaged, thin, and I was still a big goober. If I go to my 50th reunion, it will be the same thing.
Read on.
... but then aren't all writers who are or hope to be published?
Katherine Seligman wrote Ayelet, Unfiltered for this past Sunday's Chronicle magazine.
Loads of people are telling Waldman that they don't approve of what she says and writes these days. Waldman was part of the Book Passage Mystery Writers' Conference that I attended a couple years back. Bright lady. The more I read about her and the more of her I read, the more she strikes me as someone with more guts than I have, saying things I'd say if I had more guts.
Seligman's article wraps up with a Waldman quote:
I went to my 10th high school reunion, with a law degree, just engaged, thin, and I was still a big goober. If I go to my 50th reunion, it will be the same thing.
Read on.
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Chinese Symbols Clip-Art Collection
This collection of Chinese Symbols is worth a wander. Check out the translation of the symbol pair given for "alcoholic."
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Hey! Hey! Auntie K! (Comcast update)
1 p.m. Thursday. The supe promises to be out with two techs and they'll see what they can see.
The door buzzed at 1 p.m. and his nibs went down to see who it was.
"Maybe it's the Comcast guy who was supposed to show up tomorrow, showing up a day early," I said helpfully.
"I don't think so," he replied.
But, by golly ...
The Comcast supe was at our doorstep. A tech was finding a place for the van to park and joined him just minutes later.
The supe and the tech checked out this and that and followed cables that went nowhere. Checked under the stairs. Checked up on the roof. They finally found a "good" cable and the supe left, knowing that another tech was showing up, leaving the tech who was already there to connect my cable modem and the new tech to connect the TV.
After much spittering and sputtering, things began to gel.
Tech #2 left for another installation -- well, actually, a disconnect for non-payment -- and Tech #1 continued trying to get me connected. Amidst some confusion, including a work order that called for "platinum" cable TV service when we'd ordered "basic" (and had the earlier work order to prove it), we finally got settled.
I have my high-speed internet connection, and his nibs has the contact phone number for the supe. "Call if you have any problems, so you won't have to go through the 800 #."
Yay, hooray!
Next time Auntie K comes to visit, she'll have her high speed connection and when the younger younger guy arrives later this week, he'll at least have a basic TV connection.
The door buzzed at 1 p.m. and his nibs went down to see who it was.
"Maybe it's the Comcast guy who was supposed to show up tomorrow, showing up a day early," I said helpfully.
"I don't think so," he replied.
But, by golly ...
The Comcast supe was at our doorstep. A tech was finding a place for the van to park and joined him just minutes later.
The supe and the tech checked out this and that and followed cables that went nowhere. Checked under the stairs. Checked up on the roof. They finally found a "good" cable and the supe left, knowing that another tech was showing up, leaving the tech who was already there to connect my cable modem and the new tech to connect the TV.
After much spittering and sputtering, things began to gel.
Tech #2 left for another installation -- well, actually, a disconnect for non-payment -- and Tech #1 continued trying to get me connected. Amidst some confusion, including a work order that called for "platinum" cable TV service when we'd ordered "basic" (and had the earlier work order to prove it), we finally got settled.
I have my high-speed internet connection, and his nibs has the contact phone number for the supe. "Call if you have any problems, so you won't have to go through the 800 #."
Yay, hooray!
Next time Auntie K comes to visit, she'll have her high speed connection and when the younger younger guy arrives later this week, he'll at least have a basic TV connection.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
I will GLADLY pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today
New deal is that the buyers have until Monday 4P to come up with the agreed-on price. If the $$ aren't at the escrow office by then and they haven't agreed to a changed contract (higher price in exchange for two extra weeks to rummage up the dough), the house goes back on the market Tuesday and I'm back doing yardwork and planting pretty flowers and getting our stager team to re-stage without the stuff we pulled out on Wednesday.
OK, fine, their agent said they said. We'll pay the higher price. We still want the house, but we need time to get the money together and we didn't like the bit where you said you'd charge us an extra thousand a day for every day past 29 July that we don't close escrow, they said, according to their agent.
Well, we told Chuck. We don't want an open-ended pay-us-when-you-can agreement. We want the dough. Last Friday. We have plans for it and had to rearrange our family finances to cover for the fact the money didn't arrive on Friday as promised.
Yeah, yeah, Chuck said. You don't want this to drag on forever, but maybe you could give them three weeks. That should be more than enough. Well, okay, we said. But you need to be aware that we may be headed to England at the end of August and we don't want this nonsense with escrow happening all over again while we're gone.
Chuck talked with the other agent and said, I think we can come to an agreement here, but what we need is a signed amended agreement to the escrow that was supposed to close last Friday and we need to give poor ol' Sal and his nibs the deposit money that is sitting in escrow.
Oh, Great! Terrific! Wonderful! said their agent, and I would love to get you that signed agreement pronto but um. they're uh. in a plane in mid-flight as we speak and I can't get hold of them or I certainly would get you that signed amended agreement pronto. I'll try to get hold of them as soon as I can.
Chuck is not amused. We'll see what can be worked out.
Yesterday – after our meeting with the Comcast supe – we headed down to the southland to shift some more things out of the storage whose lease ends at the end of the month. While we were there, I watered the yard at the house in limbo and pulled up banks of vetch that had died while we were elsewhere and letting someone else tend the yard. Had he not watered enough? Was the vetch just ready to turn brown and die? Didn't matter. The end result was ugly looking, so I pulled out the dead flowers and filled the garden recycle to the brim, then put both the garden recycle and the garbage can full of trash out for pickup this morning.
Today his nibs is at work in the southland. I'll be heading down there soon enough to get some work done at the storage and haul in the garbage can and recycle bin.
Mayhap there will be more papers to sign and we'll have another deadline for the escrow folks to work with.
Or the house may go back on the market and I'll be tending yards and stagers again.
OK, fine, their agent said they said. We'll pay the higher price. We still want the house, but we need time to get the money together and we didn't like the bit where you said you'd charge us an extra thousand a day for every day past 29 July that we don't close escrow, they said, according to their agent.
Well, we told Chuck. We don't want an open-ended pay-us-when-you-can agreement. We want the dough. Last Friday. We have plans for it and had to rearrange our family finances to cover for the fact the money didn't arrive on Friday as promised.
Yeah, yeah, Chuck said. You don't want this to drag on forever, but maybe you could give them three weeks. That should be more than enough. Well, okay, we said. But you need to be aware that we may be headed to England at the end of August and we don't want this nonsense with escrow happening all over again while we're gone.
Chuck talked with the other agent and said, I think we can come to an agreement here, but what we need is a signed amended agreement to the escrow that was supposed to close last Friday and we need to give poor ol' Sal and his nibs the deposit money that is sitting in escrow.
Oh, Great! Terrific! Wonderful! said their agent, and I would love to get you that signed agreement pronto but um. they're uh. in a plane in mid-flight as we speak and I can't get hold of them or I certainly would get you that signed amended agreement pronto. I'll try to get hold of them as soon as I can.
Chuck is not amused. We'll see what can be worked out.
Yesterday – after our meeting with the Comcast supe – we headed down to the southland to shift some more things out of the storage whose lease ends at the end of the month. While we were there, I watered the yard at the house in limbo and pulled up banks of vetch that had died while we were elsewhere and letting someone else tend the yard. Had he not watered enough? Was the vetch just ready to turn brown and die? Didn't matter. The end result was ugly looking, so I pulled out the dead flowers and filled the garden recycle to the brim, then put both the garden recycle and the garbage can full of trash out for pickup this morning.
Today his nibs is at work in the southland. I'll be heading down there soon enough to get some work done at the storage and haul in the garbage can and recycle bin.
Mayhap there will be more papers to sign and we'll have another deadline for the escrow folks to work with.
Or the house may go back on the market and I'll be tending yards and stagers again.
Thursday, Thursday ... Comcast redux
We rushed back [Thursday] because we had a meeting scheduled with the Comcast supervisor, who was to appear some time between 12 and 4 to discuss the wiring issues with our Comcast cable hookup.
He never appeared. No one called.
His nibs called Comcast on Friday and never got a call back.
On Sunday the Comcast supervisor returned the call. The supe said he didn't understand what his nibs was on about. The supervisor said he'd sent someone out who had checked out the situation and talked with his nibs. (Um. No. his nibs said. Didn't talk to me. I was home all afternoon waiting …) The supe said the someone had called the supe from our place and said there was no way they could pull cable from the pole and he was standing there with the customer (that would be his nibs) and had told him the same. (Um. No. his nibs said. Didn't talk to me. I was home all afternoon waiting …)
After much hemming and Um. No. Didn't talk to me. repetitions, the supe made a date to be here at 11 a.m. Monday to check out the situation himself.
Phone rings at 11 a.m. Monday. The supe's at the top of the steps and wonders how to find his way here. His nibs offers to walk out and lead him in.
Supe turns out to be another personable Comcast sort. No mention made of the errant employee who allegedly visited last Thursday. We told the supe that the neighbor said the cable had never worked right and how the neighbor was pulling cable through for a satellite connection. We told the supe the cable was put in when the building was put up twenty years ago. We reiterated our request for a new cable. (A fat one, please. Our daughter who's married to a Comcast supe in Naperville sez fat cable is the way to go.) He checked out the pole. Checked out the possibilities. Said the pole would be Plan B because it would take two guys a couple hours to pull the cable from the pole. Plan A is to try again with the existing setup using a different tech.
OK.
1 p.m. Thursday. The supe promises to be out with two techs and they'll see what they can see.
I want my high speed Internet.
He never appeared. No one called.
His nibs called Comcast on Friday and never got a call back.
On Sunday the Comcast supervisor returned the call. The supe said he didn't understand what his nibs was on about. The supervisor said he'd sent someone out who had checked out the situation and talked with his nibs. (Um. No. his nibs said. Didn't talk to me. I was home all afternoon waiting …) The supe said the someone had called the supe from our place and said there was no way they could pull cable from the pole and he was standing there with the customer (that would be his nibs) and had told him the same. (Um. No. his nibs said. Didn't talk to me. I was home all afternoon waiting …)
After much hemming and Um. No. Didn't talk to me. repetitions, the supe made a date to be here at 11 a.m. Monday to check out the situation himself.
Phone rings at 11 a.m. Monday. The supe's at the top of the steps and wonders how to find his way here. His nibs offers to walk out and lead him in.
Supe turns out to be another personable Comcast sort. No mention made of the errant employee who allegedly visited last Thursday. We told the supe that the neighbor said the cable had never worked right and how the neighbor was pulling cable through for a satellite connection. We told the supe the cable was put in when the building was put up twenty years ago. We reiterated our request for a new cable. (A fat one, please. Our daughter who's married to a Comcast supe in Naperville sez fat cable is the way to go.) He checked out the pole. Checked out the possibilities. Said the pole would be Plan B because it would take two guys a couple hours to pull the cable from the pole. Plan A is to try again with the existing setup using a different tech.
OK.
1 p.m. Thursday. The supe promises to be out with two techs and they'll see what they can see.
I want my high speed Internet.
Saturday, July 16, 2005
Shoes and ships and Comcast cable and escrow deadlines and things
Tomorrow the mover guys will pick up a last load of stuff at Dale -- the heavy stuff that we can't (or would rather not) just load into the car and put our backs out moving. The mover guys will take the load to the loft where they'll drop off some bits and pick up some bits. From the loft, they'll head over here where they'll carry the heavy stuff down the steps and up the steps and up even more steps so we don't have to.
The multi-stage move on Wednesday went well. This is the third time we've used these movers (Eastern Moving, SF) for this exercise in shifting from old shell to new. We told them we only needed two guys this time and explained what we were hoping to accomplish. His nibs had been at work Tuesday and I spent my day moving things around at the loft to make room for the pinball machine the stagers had used and to clear the way for the movers to fit the other stuff in.
The two guys Eastern sent were ones we'd had before. Nice. Competent. Careful. Eastern always sends a crew with at least one crew member who manages enough English so we can communicate.
The truck they brought was bigger than the one they'd used the other two times -- bigger than we really needed -- so big that they couldn't come down the Montgomery without risking whacking parked cars. They had to park the truck at the gore point where Montgomery splits and walk the stuff down to where the steps come off Montgomery and then down to our place and up to our front door and then up to whatever floor the stuff belonged on.
Luckily, there wasn't much stuff to move down and up the stairs. Most of stuff we moved Wednesday was dropped off at the loft, where we picked up a few things. The movers only had to move a few things that had come from Dale, a few things from the loft and a variety of potted plants that I couldn't bear to leave behind and that I thought might survive the change in microclimate. The plants we left down in front to use in the front yard, such as it is, that we share with the neighbors, so the movers didn't have to carry those up to the deck.
We were very happy the movers carried the cast iron bench that had been at the Brittan ranch up to the deck. The very heavy bench was the main reason we hired someone to help us with this move instead of us making multiple trips back and forth carrying plants and cast iron benches and stuff.
Thursday we'll finish clearing out Dale.
Thursday, my younger brother came by and we loaded my three large dragon pots into his car, along with some decorative grasses. The pots were too heavy ("and where will we put them, Sal?") to take with us and I hated to give them up. I was very glad my brother wanted them and they wouldn't just be left behind for the buyers who might not care one way or the other.
We rushed back because we had a meeting scheduled with the Comcast supervisor, who was to appear some time between 12 and 4 to discuss the wiring issues with our Comcast cable hookup.
He never appeared. No one called.
His nibs called Comcast on Friday and never got a call back.
Talked with the neighbor last night. He says that they have Comcast for their TV reception and the cable has never worked right so he's spending $$$ to pull wire into their place to hook up to satellite TV. Why don't we consider that too?
I told him it wasn't the TV I was concerned about. I want my Comcast high speed internet. "Well, that's easy," the neighbor said. "You don't need Comcast. Put a repeater up in your place and tap into my wireless connection."
We'll see what the next week brings, whether Comcast ever gets back to us, whether we'll take him up on his way generous offer.
Come Friday, if all goes well, escrow closes.
Escrow didn't close yesterday. The buyers' money (they'd made an "all cash" offer with no contingencies but turns out were depending on someone else refinancing paper they carried to come up with the cash) never arrived at the escrow office and the other agent wasn't returning our agent's calls. When the other agent finally did call, he said his clients were in New York and he couldn't get hold of them. Our agent was =not= amused. He used the phrase "this malarkey" several times in his back-and-forth notes to us.
I found it hard to believe that the buyers would risk their downpayment on the off chance that we wouldn't really mind if we didn't get the money when they promised it. Good gravy. A contract is a contract and you just can't unilaterally decide you aren't going to meet your contractual deadline.
Luckily, his nibs was at work yesterday and I was at the warehouse, sorting through boxes of papers, trying to lighten the load before we move said boxes up to the loft. Warehouse lease is up at the end of the month and we have to have the space cleared.
Luckily, I decided to stay shuffling through papers after lunch instead of running a load or two up to the loft, because he called around 3:30P. By then it was obvious that escrow wasn't going to close. Chuck, our Realtor, had papers for us to sign. Chuck FAX'd the papers over and his nibs walked them over for me to sign and walked back to work, where he FAX'd them back to Chuck. A while later he came over with more papers for us to sign.
New deal is that the buyers have until Monday 4P to come up with the agreed-on price. If the $$ aren't at the escrow office by then and they haven't agreed to a changed contract (higher price in exchange for two extra weeks to rummage up the dough), the house goes back on the market Tuesday and I'm back doing yardwork and planting pretty flowers and getting our stager team to re-stage without the stuff we pulled out on Wednesday.
Fun, eh?
The multi-stage move on Wednesday went well. This is the third time we've used these movers (Eastern Moving, SF) for this exercise in shifting from old shell to new. We told them we only needed two guys this time and explained what we were hoping to accomplish. His nibs had been at work Tuesday and I spent my day moving things around at the loft to make room for the pinball machine the stagers had used and to clear the way for the movers to fit the other stuff in.
The two guys Eastern sent were ones we'd had before. Nice. Competent. Careful. Eastern always sends a crew with at least one crew member who manages enough English so we can communicate.
The truck they brought was bigger than the one they'd used the other two times -- bigger than we really needed -- so big that they couldn't come down the Montgomery without risking whacking parked cars. They had to park the truck at the gore point where Montgomery splits and walk the stuff down to where the steps come off Montgomery and then down to our place and up to our front door and then up to whatever floor the stuff belonged on.
Luckily, there wasn't much stuff to move down and up the stairs. Most of stuff we moved Wednesday was dropped off at the loft, where we picked up a few things. The movers only had to move a few things that had come from Dale, a few things from the loft and a variety of potted plants that I couldn't bear to leave behind and that I thought might survive the change in microclimate. The plants we left down in front to use in the front yard, such as it is, that we share with the neighbors, so the movers didn't have to carry those up to the deck.
We were very happy the movers carried the cast iron bench that had been at the Brittan ranch up to the deck. The very heavy bench was the main reason we hired someone to help us with this move instead of us making multiple trips back and forth carrying plants and cast iron benches and stuff.
Thursday we'll finish clearing out Dale.
Thursday, my younger brother came by and we loaded my three large dragon pots into his car, along with some decorative grasses. The pots were too heavy ("and where will we put them, Sal?") to take with us and I hated to give them up. I was very glad my brother wanted them and they wouldn't just be left behind for the buyers who might not care one way or the other.
We rushed back because we had a meeting scheduled with the Comcast supervisor, who was to appear some time between 12 and 4 to discuss the wiring issues with our Comcast cable hookup.
He never appeared. No one called.
His nibs called Comcast on Friday and never got a call back.
Talked with the neighbor last night. He says that they have Comcast for their TV reception and the cable has never worked right so he's spending $$$ to pull wire into their place to hook up to satellite TV. Why don't we consider that too?
I told him it wasn't the TV I was concerned about. I want my Comcast high speed internet. "Well, that's easy," the neighbor said. "You don't need Comcast. Put a repeater up in your place and tap into my wireless connection."
We'll see what the next week brings, whether Comcast ever gets back to us, whether we'll take him up on his way generous offer.
Come Friday, if all goes well, escrow closes.
Escrow didn't close yesterday. The buyers' money (they'd made an "all cash" offer with no contingencies but turns out were depending on someone else refinancing paper they carried to come up with the cash) never arrived at the escrow office and the other agent wasn't returning our agent's calls. When the other agent finally did call, he said his clients were in New York and he couldn't get hold of them. Our agent was =not= amused. He used the phrase "this malarkey" several times in his back-and-forth notes to us.
I found it hard to believe that the buyers would risk their downpayment on the off chance that we wouldn't really mind if we didn't get the money when they promised it. Good gravy. A contract is a contract and you just can't unilaterally decide you aren't going to meet your contractual deadline.
Luckily, his nibs was at work yesterday and I was at the warehouse, sorting through boxes of papers, trying to lighten the load before we move said boxes up to the loft. Warehouse lease is up at the end of the month and we have to have the space cleared.
Luckily, I decided to stay shuffling through papers after lunch instead of running a load or two up to the loft, because he called around 3:30P. By then it was obvious that escrow wasn't going to close. Chuck, our Realtor, had papers for us to sign. Chuck FAX'd the papers over and his nibs walked them over for me to sign and walked back to work, where he FAX'd them back to Chuck. A while later he came over with more papers for us to sign.
New deal is that the buyers have until Monday 4P to come up with the agreed-on price. If the $$ aren't at the escrow office by then and they haven't agreed to a changed contract (higher price in exchange for two extra weeks to rummage up the dough), the house goes back on the market Tuesday and I'm back doing yardwork and planting pretty flowers and getting our stager team to re-stage without the stuff we pulled out on Wednesday.
Fun, eh?
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
The visit from the Comcast Guy yesterday did not go well.
The visit from the Comcast Guy yesterday did not go well. The Comcast Guy was great and competent and had all his customer contact skills highly honed, but the installation didn't work. He sez our cable's frayed somewhere or kinked or otherwise out of sorts.
Our cable is inside the wall.
Now what?
We could call a contractor to pull new cable through the wall, he said. Comcast doesn't do that, he said.
We could have Comcast connect to the junction box down behind the front stairs by draping wire across the front of the building from the window near my computer to the junction box at walk level, but his supervisor would have to okay that sort of work and his supervisor wasn't in yesterday and would have to make a site visit in any case to see what the issues were ...
His Nibs has a call in to the Supervisor Guy with a suggestion that they just run a new piece of line from the pole I can see outside my window. Easy peasy. Pretend this place was never wired.
We'll see.
With the line frayed, I can get neither high-speed Internet nor TV channels up to Channel 7 on our basic-rate cable. The TV I didn't much care about but the 'net connection ...
I have no news feed with my dialup ISP so must resort to Googja if I want to read Usenet at all. Usenet using the Googja interface is ugly and unwieldy, so Usenet's been taking a hit. Dialup gives me only a 33-42KB connection so fuggedabout playing with anything that's going to take a while to download or upload. Plus the phone line is measured-rate -- the cheapest deal we could find when we needed some sort of line for the burglar alarm. We never intended to use the line for dial-up computer connection or even vox-to-vox for that matter. I have to watch the minutes I spend online, watch the time of day that I'm spending minutes online.
Good thing I've been away or otherwise busy.
Tomorrow the mover guys will pick up a last load of stuff at Dale -- the heavy stuff that we can't (or would rather not) just load into the car and put our backs out moving. The mover guys will take the load to the loft where they'll drop off some bits and pick up some bits. From the loft, they'll head over here where they'll carry the heavy stuff down the steps and up the steps and up even more steps so we don't have to.
Thursday we'll finish clearing out Dale.
Come Friday, if all goes well, escrow closes.
x'd fingers.
Our cable is inside the wall.
Now what?
We could call a contractor to pull new cable through the wall, he said. Comcast doesn't do that, he said.
We could have Comcast connect to the junction box down behind the front stairs by draping wire across the front of the building from the window near my computer to the junction box at walk level, but his supervisor would have to okay that sort of work and his supervisor wasn't in yesterday and would have to make a site visit in any case to see what the issues were ...
His Nibs has a call in to the Supervisor Guy with a suggestion that they just run a new piece of line from the pole I can see outside my window. Easy peasy. Pretend this place was never wired.
We'll see.
With the line frayed, I can get neither high-speed Internet nor TV channels up to Channel 7 on our basic-rate cable. The TV I didn't much care about but the 'net connection ...
I have no news feed with my dialup ISP so must resort to Googja if I want to read Usenet at all. Usenet using the Googja interface is ugly and unwieldy, so Usenet's been taking a hit. Dialup gives me only a 33-42KB connection so fuggedabout playing with anything that's going to take a while to download or upload. Plus the phone line is measured-rate -- the cheapest deal we could find when we needed some sort of line for the burglar alarm. We never intended to use the line for dial-up computer connection or even vox-to-vox for that matter. I have to watch the minutes I spend online, watch the time of day that I'm spending minutes online.
Good thing I've been away or otherwise busy.
Tomorrow the mover guys will pick up a last load of stuff at Dale -- the heavy stuff that we can't (or would rather not) just load into the car and put our backs out moving. The mover guys will take the load to the loft where they'll drop off some bits and pick up some bits. From the loft, they'll head over here where they'll carry the heavy stuff down the steps and up the steps and up even more steps so we don't have to.
Thursday we'll finish clearing out Dale.
Come Friday, if all goes well, escrow closes.
x'd fingers.
Friday, July 08, 2005
Come Monday 10-2, the Comcast Guy will be here.
Come Monday 10-2, the Comcast Guy will be here.
Soon I will have a connection that isn't measured-rate 33KB.
With luck, the Comcast Guy will do his magic. Without luck, the short-ladder Comcast Guy will show up and it will turn out that our place needs the long-ladder Comcast Guy, as happened with my pal Kathy a couple years back.
We've been gone. We're back. Escrow on Dale closes a week from today if all goes well. I'll tell you all about it once the Comcast Guy does his magic.
Soon I will have a connection that isn't measured-rate 33KB.
With luck, the Comcast Guy will do his magic. Without luck, the short-ladder Comcast Guy will show up and it will turn out that our place needs the long-ladder Comcast Guy, as happened with my pal Kathy a couple years back.
We've been gone. We're back. Escrow on Dale closes a week from today if all goes well. I'll tell you all about it once the Comcast Guy does his magic.
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