Our Long National Nightmare May Be Over

Well, actually, it isn't a national nightmare; it is more like my personal pain in the neck. After almost two months, three routers, a network expander, and having the cable company come out and move the modem to a different location in futile attempts to have Internet service that didn't just decide it wanted to stop working whenever it wanted, we've had a stable signal for over twenty-four hours. None of our computers have been dropped from the Internet and things are coasting along with a problem. Hopefully, this is the harbinger of better things (on that front).

The problem, for those who care--and if you don't you can skip down to the nest paragraph--appears to have been the modem. Since the beginning of this mess, I've always suspected that the modem was at fault, but because the provider can remotely check it, they never saw a problem. After we had the modem moved, I was able to connect my Xbox directly to the new wireless router and I found that I was still not always able to connect to my Xbox Live account. I used the Xbox troubleshooter and found that the Xbox (and by extension all of our computers) was unable to connect to the DNS server. Calling customer support, the person on the phone started walking me down the merry path of rebooting the modem and router; I just cut him off, told him I've done this far too many times to do it again, and that I shouldn't have to do reboot the modem every other day. He transferred me to the "local" office (good bye, India) where the person there started the ritual of telling me how to reboot the modem. I cut her off and plainly told her the problem and that I want a new modem. I installed it Tuesday and no problems. Here's hoping things stay this way and I can try posting more regularly.

As a gift for reading this after all this time, may I offer this site and/or this site as today's time wasters. Enjoy, but if you don't get enough work done today, I'm sorry.

The Forbes Fictional 15 - Forbes.com

Anyone who knows me knows Forbes isn't even on my list of magazines I would consider reading. However, you can't beat the conversation starter that this presents. For instance, I would have put Richie Rich in second place, moved Scrooge McDuck to third, while placing Scrooge'e nemesis, Flintheart Glomgold, in fourth. slid Daddy Warbucks in the fifth spot, removed Arthur from the list altogether, and then moved the rest down appropriately.

The Forbes Fictional 15 - Forbes.com

DC Comics Characters to be Featured On U.S. Stamps in 2006

Still having Internet connection problems, but I would be remiss if I didn't post a link to the story.

I don't talk enough about comic books here even though they are my first great obsession. If I ever get reliable Internet service again and I am doing something where I'll feel less guilty about avoiding work, I'll post my thoughts on which characters and the art of which artists should have been used.