Friday Ramblings

There are some days that it is just not worth chewing through the leather straps. Yesterday was that day for me. To start my day, I had to crawl out of bed. Literally. Crawl. Everything was aching, which I actually like. So I was groaning a bit, but liking that muscle burny feeling compliments of my lovely lady-trainer that grins like a psychopath when I taunt her :) She wuvs me :)

That was where the bad started. The internet connection was down and I couldn't get on to work. So, I called my ISP provider, who shall remain nameless, but whose jingle goes "S_d_e_l_n_k, you're connected." It should be "Suddenly, you're disconnected."

So, after 2 hours of waiting and trying to connect, I gave in and called them. I already knew what they would tell me. It's the same thing they always tell me. It's my fault, not theirs.

Tech person .. Steve: Thank you for choosing S___link, how can I help you?

Me: I need to see if there's a cable outage in my area please.

Steve: Sure, I can help you with that. Can I have your home phone number?

Me: Sure - xxx-xxx-xxxx

Steve: I'll need you to verify your name, address, zip code and the last 4 of your social.

Me: Just to tell me if there's an outage? Fine .. blah blah blah

Steve: I'm surprised to see that you are not taking advantage of our 12-meg connection. It's a bit more expensive, but worth every cent.

Me: I doubt it.

Steve: Excuse me?

Me: The 6 meg connection that I have doesn't work right and I'm paying an arm and a leg and my first born child for that .. why do you suppose I would want to pay MORE for crappy service? Can you just tell me if it's down or not?

Steve: It shows that it's working just fine and you haven't called tech support for a long time. We can't fix it if we don't know there's something wrong.

Me: You don't fix it when you -do- know there's something wrong, dear. You guys never fix it, you just tell me it's the router.

After about 30 minutes on the phone with him telling me how I have a great signal coming into my house, power-cycling the router and the modem .. twice, then having him completely reboot the modem from where he is ... and it's STILL.NOT.WORKING....

Steve: It must be your router. It can cause slow speeds ..blah blah blah You should hook up directly to the modem.

Me: Yes, I know .. it's the router's fault. It's always the router's fault. Never S___link. This is why I don't call tech support. It takes months to convince you people it's your equipment to get you to come and replace it. The last time I had to spend a ton of money on a new router and new ethernet cables before you people would come out and change the blasted modem. Thanks. Really.

Steve: Thank you for choosing S____link.

Me: Believe me honey, if I had a choice at all ... I'd choose someone else. *click*

Now, let me say .. about 30 minutes after this call, the cable was out again, even though I hooked up to the modem like he said. About 2 hours later, we were getting hit with a humongous hailstorm.

In hindsight, I'm thinking that perhaps it was the huge iceballs hitting everything on the way here that might have been causing a problem, STEVE, because when I hooked up everything to the router this morning ....it all works again. Just like always. Steve.

In the midst of all that nonsense, I went out to the gym for my daily torture while Pookie had her swimming lesson. The nice lady loves me lots. I have to do Tai Chi a couple of times a day at home to stretch the muscles so I don't end up all gimped up when they stiffen after all her abuse, but it feels really good :) She's working me like a dog for about an hour a day for now. She says she's going to drag me to her kickboxing class as soon as SHE thinks my knee can handle it. Apparently, she doesn't trust my judgment on the matter :p


On a totally different subject ... Did you know that gray hairs grow at about 700 times the rate of normal hair? They do! I dyed my hair a couple months ago, dark brown, which is my natural color, because I got tired of the blonde. It's only grown out about an inch, which you can't really tell, because I matched up the color pretty darn well, if I don't say so myself.
There are 2 gray hairs up there.

New ones.

Six inches long.

I blame Steve.