dilettantism

For a couple of months now, we’ve struggled with our internet service. If I was browsing more media-heavy sites (just browsing!) or using Google Reader (guess it updates a lot) then Yut’s game would lag. Or video would stutter. So, for example I would have to schedule my photo uploads. All sorts of completely unacceptable behavior and compromises.

So we started to talk about upgrading our AT&T DSL service. They have tiers, $5 gets you slightly better service, you know how that goes. Well we had 3 mbps download and 512 kbps up, which is already the second best possible tier. So we could pay $35 for 6mbps down and 768kbps, which was somewhat tempting because there’d be no changes, the service would just get better. But Comcast (which we used to have years and years ago but canceled due to horrible-ness) has a promotion for $25 per month for something like 15? mbps down and 5? mbps up! I know, it’s at least five times better, for less! Geez, what was AT&T thinking. Although to be fair, AT&T does offer FiOS service with amazing speeds, but they only bundle it with TV service or whatever. (Again, what were they thinking?!)

So yeah, we switched. The customer service guy on the phone (because for some reason, trying to sign up online felt harder — I’m a troglodyte) was nice and efficient. And dude, the Comcast tech actually showed up on time for the appointment!!! So we are hopeful that they are going to be better than they were, service wise. So far, we love it, everything feels much nicer and there is no more internet hogging, or grumpy accusations thereof. :)

Hopefully this solves the problem, or else we might have to adopt Michael’s method: cable service for one, dsl for the other. And to think I used to make fun of him for it.

We canceled the DSL a few days after the cable service got working — can’t have downtime, y’know — and canceled our home phone service too. Too bad AT&T has crap cell service at home. Luckily Yut isn’t on AT&T as well.

I stayed home this morning from work cos I wasn’t feeling too well — nauseous headache amongst some other small things, not really too terrible, but I couldn’t face staring at bright monitors and having to be friendly to people. I’d taken my Excedrin and was lying in bed when I start hearing yelling. Loud, angry yelling. At first, I thought the downstairs neighbors were having an argument. But then I realized it was two male voices, and when I peeked out the window, it was two dudes, yelling into two phones. One of them was my downstairs neighbor, yelling in Chinese, and the other wasn’t someone I recognized, yelling in English.

I threw my covers over my ears, trying to ignore them, and then I swear I heard, “…we’re just gonna have to do this the white man way … take this stuff back to Home Depot…” Uh… what?! Did I just hear that right?

Well… I should keep my nose out of this, right? But maybe it’s just a misunderstanding and I ought to help. So I comb my hair as best as I can and brush my teeth and step out, still wearing my indoor clothes (pink stretchy pants… v. lovely), eyes somewhat puffy feeling. So it turns out that the downstairs windows are leaking.

There were people there to install new windows, but the neighbors had only moved their furniture out of one bedroom (into the living room), so they wanted them to install new windows and carpet and etc only in that room, come back another day so they could move the other bedroom’s worth of stuff into the living room before the work got done in the second bedroom — sort of like one of those puzzles where you have to move one piece out, but there’s lots of pieces and you have to shuffle them around, is there a name for those puzzles?

The contractors had thought that they were going to be installing all of the windows in one trip for a certain price. They were mad at our landlord for not making everything clear, either to them, or the tenants. They’d been having “a frustrating morning” which was as close as we got to talking about the yelling because I certainly wasn’t going to ask them if they’d said what I thought I’d heard. They said they were just going to do the one bedroom, which I relayed since the neighbors had been madly trying to cover all the furniture in the second bedroom because they thought the windows were being done regardless. Poor neighbors, I think they were relieved that their things weren’t going to be dust covered, knock-overed messes.

Now I’m going back to bed… no, wait, I have to go blog about this, it’s too crazy.

OMG, it’s so cold! I’m sitting at a desk, wearing a wool sweater, cords, scarf, hat, and coat!

It’s so cold that some of the buildings at work don’t have heat because parts of the steam system had to be shut down because of overwork (or something like that). The infrastructure can’t deal with the cold.

The only saving grace is that so far there’s been very little precipitation. Otherwise sleet, freezing rain, and snow might have to come back into my vocabulary!!! There’s already been news reports about black ice. Dude, people here do not know how to deal with black ice. Black ice is NEWS! (Okay, that particular article is about SoCal, but I saw a report on black ice on the evening news last night also.)

This is just not how it’s supposed to be!!!

I’m changing my theme. It feels like once ever year or two I just feel like I want something different. But then I have to tweak it, which is a bit of work since I don’t know what I’m doing really. I think I might tone down the colors a bit, and I need to fix the archives. Maybe change the link style, too. It’s more worth it if I like it enough.

So what do you think? Good theme?

There is a giant spider outside our door. It made its web between the banister and the ceiling and it is freaky! Super freaky!

To avoid this spider we are walking the other direction to the further stairs. He’s just catching bugs, not bothering anyone, but jeeeeezus… from top to bottom, legs to legs, he’s probably one and a half inches at least!

Luckily he’s on the side of the web that’s away from us. But then if we do walk under him and he jumps or something, I’ll probably die from a heart attack.