Farscape Miniseries (Spoilers)

Text below is in black to preserve spoilers...not that anyone I know who reads this would care. ;-)

By the way -- in case it's not immediately obvious, use your mouse to select the text and you'll be able to see it.

I'm probably only thinking of this because I've been catching up on the 3rd season on Sci-Fi, but my first thought on seeing the page in iTunes with the trialer was -- "Gosh, this John will have a scar on his temple like twin-Talyn-John."

Okay, spoilers are done. :-)

Gee, I Know More Than Tech Support

Good grief, that was unenlightening.

Keep in mind that everything was cut-and-pasted from tech support web pages on Earthlink, which I already read.

A summary:

• "Try power cycling the modem." (Uh, done that about 500 times; tried a different modem, just to see if it was the modem. It's not.)
• "Is it near any type of interference?" (Um, no, it's not -- and, besides, it was in the exact same place, in the exact same configuration when it was working. But just to be sure -- it's on the floor in the middle of my room, with a new Ethernet cable just to be sure.)
• "Try putting it in bridged mode." (Oh, golly gee, it was, which is what I thought was the problem, so it's not now, but I'll put it back in bridged mode if you would like, and try connecting via the software.)
• "We're sorry, we're experiencing technical difficulties in your area." (Uh, yeah, lady, except that according to Earthlink's website, the schedule downtime isn't until 2 AM tomorrow, and I've been having this problem for weeks.)
• "Is there anything else we can help you with?" (Um...else...doesn't the definition of "else" mean that you have helped me with something? Let's reveiw here. Contacted tech support 'cause I had no DSL connection. I still have no DSL connection. Gee, I'd love for you to help me with something else.)
  

You know, when this happened once before, I spoke with a nice, helpful guy who understood that I do, in fact, know what I'm talking about, escalated the case for me right away, did some magic on his end, and voila.

Maybe he works Saturdays. :-(

Yuck

I have the worst hiccoughs right now. Just thought I'd share.

By the way -- Earthlink will still troubleshoot for you if you have a home network. They just don't support home networks unless you spend $10 more a month, so you have to remove the network component between the CPU and the DSL modem...not that it's doing much good.

We're gonna try again, using my laptop to chat over dialup with them. I don't know why this is bugging me so much all of a sudden...it's been down for a few weeks. I guess I just want my money's worth.

Earthlink

I've just about had it. If they can't fix the bleeping DSL line this time (last time, I got the supremely unhelpful "we don't support home networks that aren't our own, sorry" response, and nothing more even once I removed the DSL modem from the network and hooked it straight up to my desktop) I may just switch providers. My earthlink address is overloaded anyway, since I only get 20 hours free dial-up with my (noncommunicative) DSL account, and therefore can't spend hours pulling the spam off the server.

Except...then I have to figure out what to do with all the graphics I've put my email address on as a signature.

Argh.

Speaking of technical matters, though -- the warranty on my TiVo is almost out, so I'm in the process of taping what I want to save and dumping what I don't want, so I can either work up my courage to mod it myself, or send it somewhere that will add a larger hard drive to it. I've been waiting, since either action (since it opens the case) voids the warranty. But once the warranty runs out, and there's no warranty to void (cue evil laughter here).

Darn it

So, I was being industrious and making the first week's vocabulary work for my class (school starts after Labor Day), and the stupid power strip for my computer conked out just as I was trying to find a diplomatic way of saying "quit saying C. can't do the homework and just have him do something" as though it were aimed at all the kids.

All last year, the folks with whom C. lives kept saying "C. can't do this homework" and I kept sending home worksheets that were exactly the same to prove he could. We even discussed it at his IEP. Oh well. I'm sure I can come up with it again....

Uh...huh.

I just saw a guy riding a motorcycle wearing a Superman costume.

Odd Music Choices

Pray tell me why NBC's Olympic coverage recap (namely, the one after the women's 10m platform diving semifinal) is playing the theme to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in the background?

Are we trying to connect the Olympics to Mel Gibson? Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor? Cancelling Christmas? Cutting peoples' hearts out with spoons (because it's dull, and will hurt more, of course)? Using bad English accents, when we remember to use one at all?

;-)

Or, in all seriousness, it could be All-Purpose-Dramatic-Music-Cue-Number-2, a la many movies that have not yet had their scores finalized using the theme from Stargate (the movie, not the TV show) in their previews.

More later.