MikeBrum.com

I happen to have a decent connection tonight, so I’m trying not to squander it. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

I’ve been spending a bunch of time with a cute Australian girl, which has been pretty awesome. This weekend I think we’re going to hit up a movie and get some dinner with Michele and Pam and also try to go ice skating with her sister and brother-in-law. I can’t remember the last time I went ice skating, but I’m hoping it’s something like roller blading and I won’t be that bad at it and bust my ass. :)

Work has been going well. I got a lot done today, and that felt good. Tomorrow is probably going to be really busy with a few meetings and a bunch of issues to work through. Only time will tell how it goes, but I hope it’s not too bad.

Paul and Beth gave me a really cool gift today – an old school Gameboy and three games. How cool is that? It seems so gigantic compared to all the newer hand-helds that are on the market… but it’s pretty awesome none-the-less.

Oh – and hopefully a week from tomorrow RCN will have my cable internet up and running and I won’t have to be a bum and steal it anymore… I hate being a leach.

Comcast has been added to my shitlist.

They also have the distinct pleasure of having service ordered and canceled before I ever had the chance to use said service.

I had someone out on Saturday to hook up the line and gave me my “self install kit”. The “install kit” basically amounts to “follow these basic pictures and just connect some wires”. It’s amazingly easy to do and probably doesn’t even warrant the term “install” in the name. That’s all well and good… if the damned service works for the modem to get a signal!

This means that on Saturday night I have to place a <series of> call(s) to get someone out here today – the scheduled window was 11 – 1. Thus, I had to take the day off of work (which I didn’t like, but didn’t have much choice since Verizon was being terminated today). I got a call at 11:40a saying that the guy will be there within “30 – 40 minutes”. At 1:30 (30 minutes after the scheduled window and over an hour after the guy said he’d be here), I get a call from some customer care rep saying that the tech isn’t coming out and that they need to reschedule.

Time to freak out.

Long story short, I told Comcast to shove it and canceled my service right then and there. If you need to call out for work, you don’t do so an hour after your shift begins… and certainly not that late after you talk to your boss in the AM saying you’ll be there on time. Wtf?

After telling them to fuck off, I got on the phone and set up service with RCN. They should be out here on Feb 2nd between 8 and 11 (reminder: tell my team lead that I may be in a bit late a week from Thursday) to set up service.

All-in-all, this is a really shitty way to start off the week. I won’t have internet access for about a week and a half aside from what I can steal from my neighbor’s unprotected access points (I installed a wifi card this afternoon for this sole purpose – I’m glad I had one laying around). Looks like there won’t be any torrent downloads this week.

Anyhow, there’s more to ramble about, but I’m sure I’ll have to try to submit this a few times before it goes through. The connections I have available are all very weak.

Ok, so the weather here in the Boston area has been nothing short of insane the past 12 hours. The roads near work are shrouded in tree parts, hydroplaning is everywhere, Rt 1 was closed in both directions earlier (I’m assuming it’s open now) due to downed power lines, 1/2 of the city of Newton was without power… insanity!

It got a bit nicer for a little while, but I think the rain has picked up again. Blech.

I have the pleasure of someone making me dinner tonight in Somerville. That should be nice. It’s been a while since my meals weren’t take-out, pulled out of a freezer or picked up at a drive-through window.

Tomorrow is my “early day”, so I should try to keep tonight from being a late night. I hate being exhausted when I have a bunch of stuff to do.

I don’t think I have a lot more to report… maybe in the next few days… we’ll see.

I’m really tired today. I got in yesterday around noon with very little sleep, made some calls and headed down for a 3 hour nap… a 3 hour nap.

It wasn’t much, but it helped some. Then Pat & Kevin came over and we played for a while. Despite how much a geek it makes me, I enjoy playing D&D. And no, we don’t get dressed up in wizard outfits or anything like that.

Today I’m starting off really tired. I don’t like starting out the week exhausted. Granted it’s easy to remedy – just get more sleep – but somewhere that gets difficult and I never seem to do it. We’ll see what happens tonight, though. I just have a lot of cleaning up to do and I’m terrified of going outside right now.

I hate the winter – I should move to Hawaii.

Last night I stopped off on my way home and dropped off the PC I was selling and I’m not $200 richer. Nice.

I visited my mom shortly this morning since I was in Delaware and Philly last weekend. I picked up a DVD (the Aeon Flux complete series) along with a book that was late to arrive for xmas. She brought me back some weird looking, but cool mask made from different stones all stuck together… hard to describe and I’m too lazy to get the camera… so that’s what you got to work with :)

I stopped by the shop to drop off some stuff for Marria but she wasn’t around so I hung out for a bit then headed home. I got some food in the oven then it’s shower time.

Tonight looks like pizza and DVDs with a friend – no clue what I’ll be watching. Tomorrow – cleaning & D&D – a decent mix.

And that’ll bring us up to Monday… workworkwork.

I called Verizon last night because my connection speed sucks. So I talk to this guy that probably knows little to nothing about computers (which I can largely confirm) and he reads a bunch of crap from the prompt which makes little sense (like deleting my cookies to check bandwidth issues?!?!?) and I just told him “I simply refuse to do that”. At that point he put me on hold (that was the story, anyhow) and I got transferred to the phone queue auto-attendant (the “please enter your phone number…” automated system).

Ok… so I was pissed. Called back in and immediately asked for a manager who did nothing but give me bullshit half-apologies.

I called up this morning, canceled my phone service then xferred to DSL customer support and canceled that. The reason I gave was that “the technical support and customer service was nothing short of horrible” – which the sales rep person didn’t really have much to say about. She kept looking over my incident, trying to get my to do all sorts of things but I just told her that I’ve already canceled my phone line, and ordered another service… which got her to stop trying to “fix things” and actually move ahead with canceling my service.

So around the 21st, I’ll have the most basic cable you can get and cable internet again. After I pay off my last bit from Verizon, I’ll still save more money each and have more bandwidth. I should have done this months ago. Plus – I really don’t need a land line. I have a cell that I pay enough for that people call me on when they need me.

Hopefully the transition is easy… but I know it won’t be.

Yesterday I was exhausted, it was horrible. I went out with Benjii after work to Bukowski’s and had a couple of drinks and some food. We were both completely worn out, but it was still fun.

I got home, bummed around a bit, but was still feeling spent and ended up crashing early. I was asleep by 12 – which isn’t common at all for me. Today’s my “early day” (in at 10 vs 11) and I woke up at 8 feeling awesome. I even did more pushups this morning than I usually do. Go me!

We’ll see what today holds – I just hope I can keep up the momentum and ride this all day long. Wheee…

I use the word “fuck” a lot – not at work (ok, not “often” at work) and certainly not when talking customers (despite when it’d be very appropriate) – but a lot none-the-less. Swearing adds a lot to interaction that simple language doesn’t. There’s all sorts of inflection and emotion that dropping well-timed swears adds to any conversation.

On top of that, I find it odd that all swearing is considered “vulgar” by some people. Like the word “ass” – one of the tamer swear words – is rarely “vulgar” in most cases. Calling someone an ass or saying that “you fell on your ass” isn’t really a big deal.

Eh… I do live in a blue state… but I just don’t understand why people get so bent out of such unimportant bullshit.

My desk started to disappear under mounds of junk. Oops. Got me some hard drives, mail, magazines, more CDs than I can count, DVDs, a spindle of DVD-Rs, markers, pens, chainmaille, random computer peripherals, a tire pump… all sorts of crazy shit. Got that largely cleaned off and then took care of a bunch of bills. I’ll be seeing one entire bill disappear in 2 months. Then I see the next one disappear for good in about 4 or 5 I think. That’s pretty damn exciting!

Looks like my week’s filling up, which is cool. I also may have some news around Friday which I’m holding my tongue on until I hear something. Also looks like I’ve found someone to buy a spare PC I had laying around and some people interested in buying some spare hard drives I have.

I’ve simply thrown some hard drives away – I actually had a 212MB hard drive. What the fuck can I do with that – and why didn’t I throw that out years ago? I guess the answers are “nothing” and “because I’m a pack rat” respectively… but that’s still semi-amusing for geek types.

Anyway – I think I have about 30 minutes left then it’s teeth brushing, push ups and bed time.