Temporal updates

First, something I was working on earlier and gave up on:

“I have recently been experiencing an unreasonable amount of difficulty with my dial-up internet access. It seems that five out of six time I dial the ISP, I get connected, authenticaed, and am able to send data, but nothing comes back down the pipe to me. The sixth time, it comes down, but apparently with much difficulty. The data is coming down slower even than it was a week or two ago with the same ISP. THe difficulty started occurring BEFORE I spilled on my keyboard, and thus was effecting my iMac and is now effecting my Powerbook as well. More often than not, once I’ve found a modem that will connect AND send data back, it hangs up on me after a couple of short minutes. I’m beginning to get fed up.”

And now on to the regular post, while I have online-ness to work with. Something about timing.

First, hooray, Easyspace agreed with me that things were a little off in my records and that instead of everything expiring 5/3/03, they expire 7/15/03. Which is really good, because we’ve earned less than one third of the amount required to pay them off. I might have been able to make up part of the difference out of my own pocket despite not selling more than the one painting, except that Cox Communications is convinced I still have one of their analog converters, and stol $150 out of my checking account. A month ago. I’ve called half a dozen times & everyone tells me they’re powerless or (as they finally did today) that they refuse to give me my money unless I can come up with a three-year-old receipt showing that I turned the box in. Except that, thinking that my final bill from Cox had already come and gone, I converted all my old Cox bills and receipts to heat about 6 weeks ago. And I doubt anyway that the receipt in question would have been saved anyway. So, they’re “checking their warehouses” to see if they can locate the box. Which means that they’re going to keep my $150 dollars, perhaps forever, while they do nothing. There is little else I can do about this, considering I DID give them the box and I DON’T have the receipt. Which seems like another reason to hate Corporate America, to me. That even if I could afford to take them to court, I couldn’t win, because I can’t prove they have the box. I offered to come down and look through their warehouses myself, considering they’ve been “looking” for four weeks and have come up with nothing, not even a completed unsuccessful search. Note: they began the same search two and a half years ago the first time they tried billing me for the same box they lost, and after several conversations (fewer than I’ve had this time) they decided not to bill me, saying they’d found it. I guess no one wrote it down that way, though, because they swear that they still don’t have it.

What I want to know is, what the fuck would I be doing with a Cox Communications Analog Cable Converter box, 100 miles from the nearest Cox service? Holding it out of spite? The people I was talking to today about it were clearly not rational, agreeing with me that there was no reason for me to have it, but that unless I could prove that they had it, they were going to keep my money. Then my cellphone’s battery died after about ninety minutes of this, and then before I could find their 800 number and call from the landline, their billing department closed for the day. Fuck. What’s the deal with irrational company policies? Fuck Corporate America. Fuck the company line.

Anyway, yeah. So, I’ll update the banner later this week. Probably when I get back from … away. Tomorrow my father and sister come up to Pine, then tomorrow night I go back down to the valley with them. Then Thursday Angela and I go down to Nogales and back. Some time after that, by bus or other means, I return to Pine. Hopefully before the beginning of time. That is, I’m taking a clandestine trip to Mexico three days before the beginning of Year Zero, and then returning to my mountain hideaway, 100 miles from the nearest metropolis and a mile up, before Year Zero begins. … I haven’t been watching the news lately… have they verified that Saddam is dead … and recovered his nuclear arsenal … “yet”?

So, there’s that one song by Portishead I know for a fact I like. So I was browsing Apple’s new Music Service, and they have most of the album that it’s on, but they list it as “Partial Album” so you can’t buy the whole thing, just individual tracks. Which might have been fine, since I thought I’d just like that one song. Except that one song is the one not available for purchase through the service. What a silly thing.

Tonight, while watching Felicity on DVD, I invented a new version of Solitaire. I tried several times, and kept coming up with too-easy games. When I did come up with an interesting one, I wasn’t sure if it was possible to win, so I played it and played it and played it, and after around seven tries I hadn’t come close to winning, but could see that it wasn’t 100% luck that determined winning, so that was good. It’s mostly similar to the classic Klondike version of Solitaire, and I won’t try to explain how to play, but maybe I’ll show you. Likewise, I can’t say if it’s exactly easier or exactly harder than standard Klondike. Certainly more complex, but … as far as easier or harder goes, I’m not the one to ask. I think it may be both. Harder because more cards are locked up at the outset of the game and fewer are available in the …uhh… remaining deck which is accessible only every third card as in Klondike… but also Easier for some, because the modification makes it possible to use a longer-term strategy… more cards are face-up at the beginning of the game, though not necessarily accessible. Okay, so. I got some new decks of cards from my sister, and was playing with them, but didn’t just want to play Klondike again… and didn’t want to go get a book and learn some existing game… so I modified it to give myself a challenge. Oh, and on the eighth-or-so game, I did win, so it is possible.

Okay. Bed. Or wait, is that Sara waking up? Maybe I’ll chat with her for a bit as I drift into unconsciousness…