goblinbox

In which I love my new job because they give me benefits!

I started here at the ol’ ISP/CLEC three months ago last week, which made me eligible for not only the first health insurance I’ve had in a decade but also free DSL! Free!

My dry loop was delivered by Qwest today. Oh yes it was.

I got to sit with the engineer while he set up my connection on the DSLAM (card 24, port 6!) and built my connection onto the router.

When I get home, I’ll need to tone the pair out of the apartment back to the demarc and connect it to the new loop, and then program the modem and plug it in…

…and then? And THEN I should have a FUCKING ROCKIN’ SOLID SEVEN MEGABIT PER SECOND FEED INTO MY HOUSE, ONE THAT DOES NOT GO THROUGH A QWEST DSLAM!

Squee!

In which there’s software and hardware and stuff.

Today I updated three WordPress installations on my web server. And then I updated a bunch of WP plug-ins. And then I updated Mint, my stats app. And then I installed some Peppers.

And then I ate Mexican food, because I didn’t get up early enough this morning to pack a bento.

And then I seriously considered going to Gnomedex 9.0 (Human Circuitry: a Technology Conference of Inspiration and Influence) in Seattle next week. It would cost about eight hundred bucks (including con cost, airfare, and a hotel), but it would be hella fun. Plus I haven’t been out of town in a couple of months, and you know how that goes.

Or I could just stay home and do nothing but buy a bicycle.

In which I get the first of many packages.

When I got to work this morning my new phone, an LG Lotus LX600, was on my desk.

I unpacked it, which required opening about six plastic bags and removing five plastic clingies from various of the phone’s shiny surfaces, and plugged it in. Then I checked the quick start manual, and unplugged it from AC power and plugged it straight into one of my PC’s USB 2.0 ports.

I went to sprint.com to activate the phone, but I couldn’t log in…

…so I had to give it to my brother (who is the primary name on our shared cell phone account) to activate it. It was gone FOREVER. I nearly DIED. But then he brought it back and it was finally a properly activated phone!

I love the form factor. It’s square and somehow manages to be chunky and sleek at the same time. It weighs less than my old pink Katana.

It tells me – verbally, not in the form of a dialog notification – when I get text messages. “Message received,” it says. How cute is that?

I love the qwerty keyboard. (It’s a text freak’s dream device.) It’s also an MP3 player (not that I need yet another one of those) and its on board speakers are the best I’ve ever heard from any phone or iPod.

It can be mounted as an external hard drive by clicking the Home icon > Tools > USB Mode (4) > Select Transfer Music or Mass Storage or Phone as Modem or PictBridge. You can move images to and from the device, and put MP3s on it as well.

It has a built-in Google app, Sprint Navigation (a GPS map app), a browser (Opera Mini can be installed instead), and a nicely configurable interface. There’s a built-in doc viewer but I haven’t tested it yet. It takes video.

I will spend my evening transferring my contacts manually, because I’m both too cheap to buy the backup feature and too lazy to take both phones over to Sprint to have them moved.

Long story short: I love the new phone! Can’t wait ’til Notebook Wednesday. This week is totally gonna rock.

In which there’s a new device within range.

In which the Internet seeks to educate me.

My employer’s web site offers live chat support, so literally anyone can come along and open an IM session that pops up on my desktop.

This is the best one EVAR:

In which there are both aliens and my ass in the same entry, but I totally wasn’t abducted or anything.

SETI@home sent me a lovely email today reminding me that I’ve been a member since 1999 (!!!)… and that I haven’t returned a work unit in 153 days. The last unit I returned was from my work machine, but my employer made me remove BOINC about a week after I installed it – the bastards – and I just never got around to installing it on my laptop.

Until now! Let the data crunching begin!

New topic. Ready for the segue? Too bad, ’cause there isn’t one! Dieting is, in its fifth week, suddenly getting difficult. My caloric intake has been inching up steadily for the past week, and now I’m closer to 1500 calories – on a typical day – than 1200. I’ve just been hungry lately. (It’s probably the damned curse messing with my hormones.) I seem to have my hideous water retention problem under control though; restricting calories and exercising (well, a little) has the unintended benefit of reducing my overall sodium intake and keeping me from bloating up like a waterlogged corpse.

After losing 8 pounds right off the bat my weight has remained the same for the past two weekly weigh-ins, but I’m still losing inches: there’s just no reason for someone of my height to be walking around with 40″ hips, just none at all, and I’m safely back into the 30′s now and boy does my ass look better. Yay! (Note: If you know me IRL and tell me I don’t need to lose any weight, I’ll smack you, swear to God, right in your face.) (I mean, the whole weight-loss process and the necessity of it just irritates me, but one does what one must.) Long story short, both my dog and myself should be utterly svelte by late summer.

Speaking of summer (ta-dah! a segue!), I’ve got gigs coming up all over the place. (RB is a gig-booking fiend, especially considering that the band he’s booking has never done a show before and is therefore entirely imaginary thus far.) What I don’t have is gig clothes. I have got to go shopping, but I keep giving my money to dentists and veterinarians instead. Maybe I’ll get Becca to use some of her second-hand store fu to help me find a few cool pieces of clothing, before I start showing up to paying gigs in my fucking pajamas. Or maybe I can just get a t-shirt with an alien on it, and wear it to every single gig we ever do, and become known as “that singer with the one alien shirt she always wears.” A gimmick’s a gimmick, right?

In which I tell you about my plans for my weekend, but you find it boring. Because it is. Boring, I mean.

I’m working until six. After that, I’m going to type up some lyrics for my band book and organize some MP3s for band practice tomorrow afternoon. After that, I’ll probably stop for a quick cocktail and then head home…

…where I have a brand new hard drive and a Windows XP CD waiting for me. UPGRADE TO A BIGGER HARD DRIVE!!! YAY!!!

This really is terribly exciting. Really.

In which I’m foiled.

I was just about to install my new 120Gb hard drive into the laptop when the whole project was derailed before it could even get going.

I lack a 2.5mm Allen wrench, first of all. And my Windows XP installation disc is missing.

I could probably get the thing open anyway, but even if I did I have no operating system to install.

Well, that’s not true. I have Win98SE, Win2kPro, and Vista, but not only do I not want to install any of those operating systems, I don’t have drivers for them anyway.

I wonder what the hell I did with that XP disk.

*sigh*

In which I love these Mac-and-PC commercials.

I’m a Windows user, but that’s only because I’ve been really poor for a long time. When I get cash flow again, though, I’m buyin’ me a Mac.

Widgets, gadgets, completely different things. LOL! Yeah, Vista’s nothing like OSX. NOTHING. LIKE. IT.

In which you all rise up from the dead… just like Jesus!

My mom and step dad sent me this sweatshirt recently:

Silly folk. Silly sweatshirt. Yay!

In which there’s a geek fest.

I got an email today from Dr. Derrick over at ISU. (I don’t think we know each other, but he called me Mush.) Anyway, the point is the geeks will be partying at an event called IgniteIT and he invited me and asked me to let other geeks know.

Geeks! Partying! Here! In Iowa!

IgniteIT is one night in a three-day event called the Emerging Technologies Conference, hosted by ISU and packed full of neato geek guests. I mean, shit: Neil Stephenson is gonna be there. (He wrote Diamond Age and damn near makes fun of the futility of being mayor or Des Moines on his website. Heh.) Neil won’t be at IgniteIT, but I might might be. I mean, room full of geeks! Hello! Sign me up!

Now go read the definition of Latitudinarianism and think about what you’ve done.

In which I’m EMPLOYED!

This morning I drove over here and met with M.S. for an hour. We had a great meeting. They need an all-around office chick, to do their data entry and bookkeeping and billing and various other officey stuff.

I start tomorrow!

I would have offered to start immediately but they need time to clear off a desk and put a computer and a phone on it for me. (I said if they can at least find a box, I can freakin’ build it myself if I have to.) I’ll start with bookkeeping and billing, mainly, but it sounds like there is so much to do there that I won’t have any trouble keeping myself busy. I think it’s one of those environments where a little pro-activity goes a long way. I noted several little projects during our tour of the facility, including writing content for the web site, selling old equipment on eBay, putting inventory away, and taking naps on the big couches stuffed between two of the cubicles. (Hah!)

The tour of the data center proved to me once again how much of a geek I truly am. I love racks filled with servers, their little lights flashing merrily. I love piles of computer parts. I love wires and routers and servers with hand-written signs on them that say something like, “This is the phone server! Don’t mess with it!”

It’s part-time to start with an agreement to discuss it again in a month, but I think I’ll be able to work up to 3/4 or full-time quite soon. The starting wage is low because it’s something of a trial period, but again, discussion in a month. They’re pretty sure they need an office chick, but haven’t had one in so long they can’t remember for sure. I can tell they really need me. I’m gonna make life so much easier for them!

I won’t be doing any engineering stuff – it’s an office job – but not only am I employed again, but I’m at an ISP! Oh, how I love the Internet… and the people who sell connections to it.