I spent an insane amount of time on Friday in Qwest's phonetree bowels of hell. I can't imagine that any company anywhere really thinks they are doing a good thing by making their customers work through a phone tree.

First I had to call and find out the story on my DSL. Actually FIRST I had to call Pacifier (ISP) back and find out what was going on there -- get some additional info and then call QWest. Thank my lucky stars after a couple of transfers and endless being on hold, I ended up with David who was completely competent and was quickly able to see that my order had been screwed up pretty much from page 1 and was able to get me fixed up, anticipate that I'd have billing problems, and told me exactly how to handle it. Yay David.

BUT -- I still didn't have my modem because when the order was put in there was a note that said, don't send a modem. So we had to order it so I won't have a modem for another week, even though my service will be connected on the 1st. But that's fine, I've lived without it this long, I can survive another week.

So my separate Qwest matter was to get that stupid Customer Choice thing taken off. This is some great service that costs $32 a month and I'm not sure if this is the line charge plus all these worthless extras -- or $32 on top of the line charges. I ordered it to get the activation fee on the DSL waived and agreed we'd try it and we loathed it immediately. I don't like call waiting. We don't have a caller ID rig. We still got solicitation calls. And the freaky alternate ring for long distance calls freaked me out every time.

To make a long story short -- I had to be transferred around to at least 5 different people including one jackass who insisted that I should really keep the Customer Choice and learn to like it. What, does this lady get beaten at the end of the day if a customer cancels the special package? We'll see how it all turns out when I get our bill.

I feel like I'm behind in everything. Maybe I am. Or maybe everything isn't that important.

My DSL is supposed to go on tomorrow. Except I haven't gotten my modem yet and I called today and they advised me to call someone else because it should be here right now. I got another call (different person) from Qwest that my ISP isn't signing up new people or doesn't recognize them. And I called my new ISP to sign up and there was some sort of hold up and they would call me back in a half hour and never called back. This isn't looking so good, is it?

Bob found the 9.1 disk so I can update my system now. Better back everything up and disk doctor and that whole tap dance again to be on the safe side. If I can get 9.1 on here and get iTunes and that Gnutella thing figured out and get DSL working all in one weekend I will proclaim myself the technological genius of the century.

We watched Pulp Fiction this week -- I wanted to see it again because I read this article about some different films and I haven't seen it for several years and if you haven't you should go see it again because it's brilliant and Bob and I have had an extended conversation analyzing it. If forced to chose I'd have to pick Harvey Keitel as my favorite character in the movie.

We got the latest MacMall catalog this week and I noticed that RAM is unspeakably cheap. I thought I might try to max Yoda (266 mhz iMac) out and researched whether I could do the install myself. I found a website (which I neglected to bookmark but something imac2.com or whatever) and it had very wonderful instructions with detailed photos which convinced me I'd better pay someone to do this. I'd probably be more adventurous if I hadn't had such a bad time replacing the hard drive in Billy's Compaq piece of crap at the office. (To be truthful, I only partially replaced the item and had to call in a professional to complete the job.)

This weekend I'm going to be as lazy as possible for me and probably start phase one of putting the garden to bed. I've just about had enough.

Do you ever do this? You need to be somewhere at a certain time and you look at the clock and can see you're absurdly ahead of schedule so you dick around a bit and then suddenly you have to rush around and you end up being late?

On Wednesday Bob and I went to the Portland Art Museum to see the Clement Greenberg collection. I've been referring him as Stanley Greenberg (does anyone know who Stanley Greenberg is?) and Bob just corrected me this morning so don't look here for accuracy on this report.

Greenberg was an art critic in the US for years and collected modern art. Generally, I'd characterize my appreciation for modern art as being difficult to locate. We went to that modern art museum in Paris - the Pompadeau(?) and it was about 8 floors of waffles surrounded by chicken wire and pieces of rope taped to the wall and I was a bit underwhelmed by the whole thing.

This collection is interesting because it's one man's vision and I viewed it as a challenge to figure out why it was art. The museum displayed a number of quotes from Greenberg's writings and I was impressed by the strength of his conviction. He knew exactly what he liked and why he liked it. And I liked a lot of the pieces and I'd be a better blogger if I could tell you the artists' names.

Another plus, the museum was quiet so we could wander around in almost complete privacy.

On Saturday afternoon a guy came and knocked on our door. He claimed he was from a meat delivery service (points to refrigerator truck parked out in street) and had a bunch of extra stuff on his truck and rather than take it all back and have to do the paperwork, he'd like to sell me some of these conveniently already assembled assorted packs. Does this sound sketchy to you?

Yesterday I signed up for DSL. I'm supposed to be connected on 9/28. Stay tuned for details. I've been researching DSL v. Cable Modem all summer -- knowing that my current ISP account expires at the end of this month. AT&T is currently running a promo -- and Bob and I know several people using @home -- so I asked around and decided that we'd try that.

I had a list of questions, like about adding a 2nd computer and about remote access so I visited their completely worthless webpage and realized that I had even more questions. I wrote everything down and phoned them assuming that I would sign up with them.

First I get vaulted into the AT&T standard phone tree from hell. If you have any AT&T service of any kind, you know about this tree. I patiently press 1, then 2, then 1 again, then 1 again, and so on until I get put on hold. I'm a potential new customer, shouldn't they be trying to impress me? If it's this bad signing up what's going to happen when my connection goes dead?

I finally got a sales person who was completely unable to answer my questions and at my request transferred me to a more technical person, more on hold music, then the technical person is in service and tells me they aren't supposed to deal with sales calls. She interrogates me as to why I've been transferred and somewhat begrudgingly agrees to answer my questions. She proceeds to tell me that they don't support computer networks or remote access. hm.

Of course, I'd already had enough 10 minutes earlier so I thank her and call QWest and set up DSL.

The Cosmic Meaning of Sneezes

1 sneeze - you have allergies
2 sneezes - you'll never get out of debt
3 sneezes - an angel flew past your head
4 sneezes - your ab workout is finished

A Day in the Life of Pam

A week or so ago I read in the paper about the alternatives to Napster. I'm not a big music fiend like I was once upon a time, but I am curious about this whole music online scene so I saved the article and yesterday I visited a couple of the URLS in the article. I became interested in Gnutella [I love Nutella] and Mactella so I decided to download and check out. Except I need to upgrade my OS because I am still using 8.5.

I have OS 9 just never got around to installing it (to quote Kenman, I haven't wanted to spend one of my Saturday's saying "shit") so I Disk Doctored and backed up and zapped my PRAM and rebuilt my desktop and finally I'm ready for my upgrade -- except there is no disk in the box.

Bob thinks I have the disk so I clean off my bookshelves, my computer/junk cupboard and my closet. In my closet I found a box with old letters and cards I've saved over the years -- omigod, I didn't know I still had half that stuff. I had cards from guys I don't remember ever exchanging cards with. Akka sent me newspaper articles from UCSB when Javier was AS president that I didn't remember having. I have letters that are over 20 years old. (Julie Kaufer and Lisa Pine, are you out there?) So from Napster to memory lane, that was my day. And I never found the system disk so I'm still using 8.5.1

Today I went to the mall to try to get a few things for fall. I'm not going back to school, but I'm going back to cooler weather. I still have a hard time finding anything that fits. Petites are a wee bit wee, regulars are baggy and need 8 inch hems and Juniors large is way too small. Where are the clothes for the girls like me? I got a couple of pairs of pants for my hours of trouble. I still need tops and shoes. I had a miserable experience buying shoes. I was the only person in the store but could this gal have been any less interested in helping me find something that worked? She was friendly but useless.

In the meantime, we're having a plumbing issue downstairs. When I got home Bob announced that we were getting a new water heater installed next week ($350). I asked him if he remembered that when we bought the house we'd signed up for a program where you pay extra on your electric bill and then the power company bails you out if your hot water goes? I'm not clear on the program exactly and am almost certain it sounds better than it is -- but regardless, this had completely vacated Bob's memory and I had to dig around in our files until I found proof on paper. So now we have the power company coming out to look at our water heater and hopefully save us a bundle.

Fremont Bridge
I can't remember if I put this up here or not -- but when I did the bridge walk, I saw the signs they have on the upper level of the Fremont Bridge. It's the phone number for suicide hotline. Now let's think about this for a minute. You are in deep despair, you decide to end it all. You stop on the Fremont Bridge. You see the sign. But you don't have a phone. And you don't have a piece of paper to write the number on. And, the signs haven't been updated for 10 digit dialing. Wouldn't you just throw yourself off the bridge?

Saturday SoccerDay
On Saturday morning Bob and I went downtown. Bob intended to go to Powell's technical to see some computer head guy. I intended to go to Kells to watch the Germany v. England World Cup qualifier. I had called the bar to confirm that they were showing the game.

We wanted to have breakfast first at the Bijou Cafe - which Bob says is very yummy. I've never been there. Well must be since at 8:15 am there was an hour wait and a million people crammed into a waiting area the size of a broom closet. I don't know if it's age or what but there is very little in this life that I want to stand around waiting for.

We decided to try our luck elsewhere and happened to walk by Kells and figured we'd see about their breakfast. Great idea except that the Norway v. Ireland soccer match was on and, oh yeah, a $20 cover charge! Yes, they wanted $20 to watch the games. You think that might have been pertinent information when I called about the match.

We went home to see about pay per view but AT&T is completely worthless for anything except raising their rates. I called to ask and the guy is like, "Do you know what time?" I tell him. "Do you know what channel?" What kind of idiot does this guy think I am? So we didn't get to watch the game or see the computer guy at Powells. On the plus side, I did not drink a gallon of beer before noon and thus render myself useless for the rest of the day.