Hello! Hello! Hello!

I'm back, on-line, WiFied with Excellent signal strength. For the first time in weeks, I can write my post with aplomb and acumen, knowing that I will not be dropped in the middle. I will not narrate the various and sundry vagaries that my Comcast modem put me through in the past three weeks. Suffice to say, IT WAS HELL AND BACK. Okay, maybe I should reserve that for something a tad more dire. But still--.

The Comcast person was set to arrive this morning between 8 and 10. These are not, normally, hours that I'm spry--or even, often, up. But I lurched out of bed at 7-something, stuck my contacts in my eyes, combed my hair and wondered what the hell I was going to do for the next couple of hours. At 8 sharp, a lovely lady from Comcast called to ask if I was still wanting my visit between 8 and 10. Yes indeedy, I said. See you soon, she replied. At 9:55 the doorbell rang.

Molly and I answered the door together and there before us was the Comcast person. It was a kid. A kid that looked to be twelve at most. I opened my mouth and in true Jane fashion, the following flew out: "Are you old enough to be doing this?" Evidently the Comcast person was not unfamiliar with that response and was generous enough not to spit on me or otherwise show intensely masculine displeasure. As he worked away fiddling with the wires and such, I studied him.

He had a small face, sweet really, and very pale. His hair was red, cut very short and his head was dwarfed by a too large Comcast cap. He wore jeans, which couldn't mask the fact that his ass was the size of a 52" big screen TV, and his sports shirt hung limply from shoulders that were half of that. He had all the requisite paraphernalia hanging from his belt and steel-toed work boots, but still, something wasn't right. He was mushy, soft and I wondered for a moment if he suffered from one of those endocrine issues that make you age prematurely, or maybe not at all. Then I looked some more, did the whole up and down check, and saw that he seemed to have breasts. Were these man-titties? I have several relatives who have man-titties and they're not so, so There, present over a great expanse of chest. Suddenly it hit me: strapped- down girl-boobs of a generous size, say C cup or better, would spread out in just such a way. And I wondered if the lovely lady who called to confirm the appointment was not a secretary back at the office, but the tech himself.

Still, he diagnosed and fixed my Comcast problem, which was the router, router, router being old and broken and bad. Now I have a new router, and I'm absolutely good to go. At last. Computer consistency, thou art mine again.

It's the witching hour....

...and I have no brain. My Comcast has been in and out all day. I am, to say the least, pissed beyond belief. What little money I earn comes from my work on the internet. So Comcast, you shit heads, are costing me money! BLECH!!!!!!

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Monday...

Just pretend it's Monday, okay? Humor me.

Last night when I sat down to post, my !@#$%^&*()_+ WiFi was out again. So this is Monday's post, just a shade over the dateline late.

Why I'm Wired in a Wireless World

I am writing this so delicately, my fingers barely tap tap tapping on the keys. I don't want to disrupt the incredibly tenuous, don't breathe on it connection between my laptop and the world. It is, right now, jerryrigged more or less. I am hooked into the modem for my wireless service. Which means that I'm not wireless anymore. It also means that logistics being what they are, I am playing Mother May I with the cord every time I want to leave the room.

Oh woe.

Yesterday late morning my wireless went kapuey. I spent many hours on the phone with the Comcast techs in Canada (yeah for speaking English!) and the Toshiba techs in whatever offshore third world country they're in (boo for mangling English). The problem seems to be within my little laptop. It doesn't want to maintain the wireless connection. I enable and enable and enable and--pfffft! it disables. To figure it out and hopefully maybe please God fix it, I have to run all sorts of Restore shit. And of course, you know what I have never done on this laptop: begins with a B and ends with a P.

I must have known this was coming because for the past couple of weeks, I've been feeling Backup urges. But I ignored them, of course. So much else to do: websites to create; blogposts to write.

First order of the day this AM was to transfer some of my files onto CDs. But whatever ails my wireless adapter seems also to be ailing my D drive. And then, I remembered. One of our MidLifeBloggers, Carolyn Bahm, has an ad or something way down at the bottom of her blog. I went, I got the url, and I am now, even as I write having all of my hard drive sucked up into Carbonite where, for a mere $49.95 a year it will reside along with regular, I-don't-have-to-think-about-it Backups.

And tomorrow, after I am well and truly BACKEDUP, I can figure out what the flippin' deal is with this computer.

Announcements...

1. My computer is behaving itself again, thank you very much...

thus

2. There is a new post over a MidLifeBloggers. Menopause Has Stolen My Brain, by Janis Smyth of Jan's Sushi Bar

and

3. The "About" page, titled Who Are We, and Why is also up at MidLifeBloggers.

Go have a look.

I'm back, and I'm grumpy...

Pissed off is more like it. Something strange happened to my email and then to D's email and it took me almost an hour this morning on the phone with a terrific Comcast techie in Winnipeg to get the strangeness undone. Both of our Comcast email accounts had been forwarded to some unknown ISP with rr in the address. It took that long to figure that out and it took two seconds to uncheck the forward, please command. But now I'm thinking--how the hell did that happen? Were we highjacked? How? By whom? And now what do I do about it?

This was not how I intended to spend my morning. I have mucho chores to do, not the least of which is sending the state some tax bullshit so they don't charge me $500. Yes, yes, I should have done it a couple of years ago, but--that's the way it goes.

I was also going to take Molly on a nice long walk and then work out at the gym for a while. And then I was going to finish my novel and sign up for that new PhD program and then I was going to take a bubble bath, paint the tub, and do my nails. And then I was going to...what an utter load of whatever you want to call it.

The thing I hate about being away is that it puts me off my schedule. And when I'm off my schedule, I'm cranky. Blame it on my mother. Blame it all on my mother.

Fixed it...

T'was a gizmo in the whatsit that quite plainly said to block all photos from Blogger.com
Now why the hell would I want to do that? So I hit 'unblock' and, voila!

What's Missing?

Pictures. Or as my old friend GeorgeAnne would have said (before she got her M.A.): pitchers! She also used to pronounce wreath, wreaf, and never knew where to stop with alumininininininininininium.

But I digress. As is my wont.

Something happened to either my computer or my template or my blog or (pick another)about a week ago and graphics that I upload from Blogger are not appearing. Or at least they're not appearing on my laptop. Which does seem to indicate that it's the problem of this Toshiba laptop, doesn't it.