I managed to put in a full week on “Twisted Key” and now have forty-one pages of new material. I fully plan to do the same thing this week, unless Life gets in my way again.
It did, this morning. I had to drive my sister up to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. She’s got a nasty case of bronchitis, and at her age that can lead to other issues she’d much rather avoid.
So, it’s 4:30 in the afternoon and I’m just now sitting down to the computer. We’ll see how far I can get today without another interruption. Don’t get me wrong – I was happy to be here to help her today, but like I said – Life can get in the way of progress. Can, and usually does. Working past the problems Life throws at us, getting the job done and maintaining ones sense of humor is a very useful life skill. I haven’t quite gotten the hang of that one, yet.
But I’m still working on it. Persistence is another very useful life skill. I’ve got that one down pat.
Six pages a day is not bad, considering all the rewriting involved in coming up with six useable pages every day. I mean, there is less than no sense in turning garbage over to your editors, is there? You’d wind up looking for new editors real quick if you tried that more than once, I promise.
My brother-in-law came back from the store yesterday and handed me a web cam. It’s a MiniCam Pro, a GE product, and has a focus ring, snap shot button and mic, and comes with some very basic software for editing photographs and video clips. It’s a fun little critter to play with.
We use ComCast for our television and internet connectivity. I wish we had a choice. The last apartment we lived in we received both a Netgear router and a wireless adapter for the second computer. In this new apartment, we signed a new contract with ComCast and requested a new router and adapter so we could trunk in the old gear. They said, “Okey-dokey” (okay, they didn’t really say that, exactly), and promptly sent us a new Netgear router. When I called about the adapter, I was told they don’t supply those, that we would have to purchase that ourselves.
It’s no use arguing with them over any of this, really, it’s not. I have done that, several times. It really is not worth the wasted time.
Yesterday morning, I got busy and swapped out the old router for the new one. No joy, no internet. I called ComCast and after a brief meaningful discussion with their tech support, who told me they only deal with the modem and I would have to speak with NetGear about any problems I was having with their products, was transferred to the Netgear help desk, where I hung on hold for twenty minutes before I hung up. I had replaced the old router with the new one, remember. Identical in every way, except for the dust on the case. So I swapped them back. The old router picked up the connection with no problem. So I put the new router in the old box.
The I hooked up the new wireless adapter (a Cisco product) and it picked up the connection with the old router with no problem after I provided the key code to authorize the connection. The old adapter was put back into its box. The whole thing took about two hours, which is about one hour forty-five minutes longer than it should have.
That’s tech support for you.
But I got to curse a lot – not over the phone, of course, but I did get to use some words you’ll never see in anything I write.
The new router and the old wireless adapter went back to ComCast this afternoon, and the money ComCast had held back has been credited to our bill.
Have a Happy and Safe New Year.
Gary's space 