but I did eventually get through to the Broadband Support team. I called the 150 number to report a phoneline fault - on THEIR phone *g*.

anyway a helpful young man with a heavy Indian accent got me to hang up the landline, called me on my mobile and talked me through inputting some sort of 'secret code', then the helpline number on the landline and hey presto, I was listening to it ring out in the correct manner (which it did for some time, but I wasn't hanging up!}

The tech - again an Indian accent - checked his systems and noted that on *his* version of the status page, "certain areas" of Edinburgh - not even a full postcode's worth - were still having problems and the engineers were working on it. He confirmed that the full cost of the premium rate call will be refunded and promised to send a note to the Outage team to make sure the status page is properly updated.

I've got a stack of photos to upload from today, which will have to wait.

Lois's obituary was not published in today's Boston Sunday Globe due to a problem with the on-line submission system. We have been assured that it will run in next Sunday's Globe (5/25). Additionally, the Globe has promised to also run it in tomorrow's paper (Monday, 5/19). As requested, following is the text of her obituary.

Paul M.

MANGAN, Lois H.--Milford, MA.
Unexpectedly, May 10, 2008. Be-
loved wife, sister and friend. Born
1946 to Lester Nathanson and
Helen (Katz) Nathanson. She is
survived by husband, Paul Man-
gan. The second of six children,
she is survived by all siblings: San-
dra Ryan of Brookline, Phillip
Nathanson of Brookline, Debby
LoPinto of Brookline, David Nath-
anson of Dedham, Sharon Fonzo
of Pembroke, and niece, Jessica
Ryan of Somerville. Earning her
R.N. accreditation from UMass
Boston in 1983, Lois dedicated
herself to helping others ("I save
lives for a living!") as a valued
staff-member at Beth Israel Dea-
coness. In Dec. 2003, Lois was di-
agnosed with Parkinson's Dis-
ease, which progressed rapidly
and forced her to abandon the
profession she loved in June
2004. Fan of many things: the
beauty of nature, music, history,
dancing, reading, costuming, sci-
ence fiction, fantasy and filk mu-
sic. She will be sorely missed by
the many who love her. In lieu of
flowers, you may honor her mem-
ory, and help others, by donating
to The American Parkinson Dis-
ease Association, 135 Parkinson
Ave., Staten Island, NY 10305
Ph 800-223-2732, or go to:
www.apda@apdaparkinson.org
A gathering to celebrate her life is
planned for June 1st. For more de-
tails please provide your contact
info to: MacKinnon Funeral Home
866-447-4141

Oh, look, it's one of those cut-tag thingies. Which means that stuff wot spoils lurks within.

( Iron man lives! )

As always, do stay to the end of the credits. It's the polite thing to do and you get rewarded for your patience.

The kicking of @ss and taking of names continues. I've been awake five hours, and in that time I have: driven to the hospital [while catching up by cell phone with my mother], relieved an overtired, overstressed pocketnaomi, driven (us both) home, gone for a 3/4 mile walk, eaten a quick breakfast, gone shopping for groceries and "treats", done a load of dishes and of handwashing, taken out the trash and the recycling, and put away a load of laundry. There's more laundry to be done, but I'm taking a few minutes sit-down just now, I think I've damn well earned it.

It has, unfortunately, become a bit more difficult to keep up this pace; I'm quite convinced that I'm out of full hypomanic mode now. Because I had to work so hard while in it *and* convalescent (the sinus infection is still lingering), I find both that everything uses more spoons and that I have less than my usual allotment to start with, so I run out or nearly out after a four to five hour "full steam ahead" stint, instead of being able to go all day. I still have my brain back though, so instead of the "governors" I had to install last week just to be able to slow down enough to talk to people on the phone without running over them, I'm using the mental agility to tackle the problem of making sure that the "gas" in my "tank" gets me as far as I need to go over the course of a day.

Little Guy is still in the hospital and pocketnaomi talked to the doctor on duty just a few minutes ago; he'll be staying for a third consecutive night. He continues to get better but he's having real difficulty shaking this virus off, and hasn't been sleeping through the night at all. Well wishes etc still earnestly sought and gratefully received on his behalf.

pocketnaomi is continuing to hold up incredibly well, and now that jenkitty is feeling much better and can handle the Duchess during the day and cover the hospital overnight tonight, it feels like things are mostly staying on the rails around here, which is good.

I got five hours sleep last night (8.30pm - 1.30am), then did chores for over three hours, then got another two hours sleep this morning before tackling all of the above. Wish I could take a nap this afternoon, I sure could use it, but it's the biweekly afternoon jam at annathepiper and solarbird's, and I don't wanna miss that. Whee!

But this'll do instead.

Please, PLEASE tell me I am not the only one vaguely creeped out by this.

Himself sez that the next upgrade will be sans clothes.

And They apparently want me old, ugly and fat.

The tricksy knee went out again.

In my sleep.

The main item on yesterday's schedule was, oddly enough, a family shopping trip. Well, 3/4 of the family, anyway. The flower_cat wanted a new purple laptop-bag/purse for her new EeePC, and the chaoswolf wanted a new Windows laptop capable of running Adobe CS3, which she needs for school. The Wolfling had determined that there was a Lenovo at Micro Center that fit her needs, and nolly had suggested either Staples or Office ?Depot? for the bag. Along the way, the Cat wanted to drive around the neighborhood of the Baycon hotel and locate the nearest restaurants. So off we went.

Micro Center is located within Mission College's ring-road, and it's off Great America Parkway only a few blocks from the Santa Clara Convention center, so we hit that first and backtracked to MC, spotting restaurants along the way. There's nothing within a short walk of the hotel, unfortunately, but it's only a short drive. About 20-30 minutes' walking each way, if you want the exercise; I probably will.

The Cat had never been to Micro Center, so she had fun exploring (and rejecting their entire collection of laptop bags, none of which were purple) while the Wolfling bought her lappie. The Cat bought a little laptop stand that looked as though it would hold the EeePC off of upholstry and keep it from burning up, so that was OK. End of part 1.

There was a Staples on the way home. No purple bags, though we did get a dark-pink beanbag laptop tray in case the stand didn't work out. End of part 2. We continued toward home, intending to drop off the Wolf, until I mentioned that there might be something at REI. The Wolf immediately pricked up her ears, and we quickly changed course.

No joy at REI, either, though there were a couple of Timbuktu bags that came close. Sort of a muddy purplish, with a broad stripe of either beige or pink. Gack. But there was an Office Max next door...

Score! Buxton Reno tote; rich dark purple; big enough for her present purse, the Eee, accessories, and so on. Big win. End of part 3.

Came home and verified that, indeed, the little stand held the Eee just fine. The Y.D. immediately claimed the beanbag tray -- "It's pink!" Verified that the bag's handles are -- just barely -- long enough to go over the handles of the wheelchair.

Went out for my walkies around 6pm, when it was pleasantly cool. Leftovers for dinner.

http://blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog/2008/05/hunt-update-1.html

The president is here! Several presidents, in fact.

Hello from Cork city! Stayed in Dublin last night with my college penpal Cian and his wife Linda. Now in Cork to sing at the An Spailpin Fanach session tonight. Tomorrow, back to Dublin and early to the airport the next morning.

Must run have dinner before reporting to the session.

Two flat turtles (species indefinite) by a stream crossing on the far side of the river, one dessicated muskrat pancake just about back into town.  Not-roadkill, one woodchuck at a safe distance from traffic, surveying the Threat Condition from a sentinel prairie-dog pose.  Also a couple of cormorants flapping their way upstream.

Rain stopped, sun came out, temperature rocketed up to 60 F.  So I slathered on sunscreen and headed out on the bike, upriver and across the New Bridge that replaces last year's Bridge of Doom and back down the other side and home.  Got passed by one other cyclist, more energetic than me.  Which doesn't take much.

Usual assortment of trees in flower, including lots of poplar fluff floating in the breeze.  I grabbed a benedryl when I got home, which may short-circuit the pollen reaction...

26.16 miles, 1:59:35

I have heard Garrison Keillor use the word "suckfest" on national radio. :)

What's your favorite regular part of A Prairie Home Companion? I love the Guy Noir stuff in small doses, a lot of the fake ads (the Ketchup Council stuff is amazingly fun and disturbing), and any version of "Powder Milk". And when Robin and Linda Williams show up as "Mavis and Marvin Smiley", hawking a new bluegrass album, it's freakin' gold.

... so a couple of days ago the Wolfling comes to me in a mild panic saying her Window box won't boot after installing a game. It said something like "no OS found", which sounded a lot like a damaged MBR. Ugh.

After determining that she could get by without it for a while, I dropped the priority on the project and made sure I knew where my Ubuntu live CDs were.

This morning after breakfast I went upstairs, turned the machine on, popped the game disk out of the drive it had been left in, and replaced it with Hardy Heron. Booted perfectly, though there's clearly a fan noisily singing its swan song someplace in there.

Looked at the results of fdisk -l -- odd, the main drive seems to be intact. Mount it. Looks OK. There's also a random flash drive plugged in in back. Shut down (popping the CD in the process), pull the flash drive, reboot. No problems.

Best guess is that something on the game CD made the BIOS think it was bootable, but it wasn't.

I'm not a professional system administrator, but I play one at home.

Furthering the goals of the "keep women out of jobs and schools" faction:

On June 7th, the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that gave married people the right to use contraception, the American Life League, along with Pro-Life Wisconsin and Pharmacists for Life International Associate groups want you to join them in protesting in front of facilities that distribute birth control products.  (From Alternet)

That's right, they don't just hate abortions, they hate birth control too.  And if we end up in the same social situation we were in the 1800s,--when a woman couldn't get an education or a decent-paying, well-respected job, because we couldn't ever be alone with a man we weren't related to--why that's not just an unfortunate but necessary side effect of preserving women's purity, but the whole point of the exercise.

Pixel Pushin’ Blues
©2008 Ariel Cinii (0805.14)
(standard blues progression)


I’ve been pixel pushin’. Gotta get that logo right.
I’ve been pixel pushin’. Gotta get that logo right.
Because this document’s in grayscale, I can’t tell dark from light.

I ain’t got enough memory. Computer’s running mighty slow. (2x)
See, I’m runnin’ on a deadline for that presentation show.

I can’t find my cursor, cannot find it anyplace. (2x)
If I delete too many pixels, this model won’t have a face.

That creative director wants to make another change. (2x)
I oughta send him to Endora to turn him into something strange.

This is my fifth revision, comin’ up on number six. (2x)
They want to add another j-peg, and I’ve gotta use all my tricks.

I’ve got too many layers and I can’t find that errant line. (2x)
I’ve gotta hurry and delete it, or the client’s gonna wail and whine.


I’ve been pixel pushin’. Gotta get that logo right.
I’ve been pixel pushin’. Gotta get that logo right.
Because this document’s in grayscale, I can’t tell dark from light.

***

The above was inspired by time spent on the tote bag design for CONTATA 2008 (June 20-22 @ Hilton Parsippany (NJ)). Please feel free to add verses and hug your nearest graphic artist.

I just walked out of church in the middle of the service because there was a child dedication for an infant and I suddenly found that I couldn't handle it at all.

This is all part of the process. I know that. But you know what? The process SUCKS.

I do, at least, have awesome friends at church. One of whom followed me out of the service and one of whom just happened to be walking bythe portico at the right moment. Thank heavens for awesome friends, because right now I don't have a whole lot else to hold on to.

This really, really bites.

It's the latest plan to stop illegal immigrants from entering the country. The nation's 7.4 million employers would be required to provide the government with Social Security numbers for all new employees — more than 55 million each year — and federal employees would then use a massive electronic database to do crosschecks. The new system would aim to detect any workers who got their jobs by using fraudulent Social Security numbers.

*sigh*

I spent the day out in the sun yesterday, thank goodness for sunblock. I wore myself out, but after a little nap, all was well again.

Yesterday I decided the car and I needed to stretch our legs. I have been riding the bus to work when I can, but the car needs to be used. A good excuse to go to the Renaissance Festival at Muskogee. I took photos till the battery died in the camera, but I think I got the essence. Here is a link to the album. Not all my photos are there, but they aren't all great, so no big loss.



I had Shepherd's Pie for lunch, which was a bit greasy, but tasty. It was a mound of mashed potatos (skin-on) over ground beef and mixed veggies in a bread bowl. The bread bowl was quite tasty. Expensive: $7.00, but when I'm out and about I like to eat well. I've been passing gas since. Hopefully I can get back on the wagon and not gain any pounds.

I had put a cooler in the trunk of the car, with diet coke and some water, so I was sufficiently hydrated on the way home. It's not really a long drive, when you consider I used to drive at least that far to visit friends Joe and Edie back in Florida. Books on CD help pass the time and make the trip a joy.

I finished the little quilt I was working on: Fons and Porter's Peekaboo Pattern. It's great for using all those cute little fat quarters I have been piling up. Still have tons of fabric, so there may be more. But I think the next one will be space-themed. Must start planning for Xmas early. Don't want to get caught up like I did last year, with health issues and other stuff.

The final cut for "Cliche", my bro-in-law's creation (with me singing) is online now. I'll find the link and post it. I'm rather proud of the way it turned out.

Must go eat...

http://jdrhoades.blogspot.com/2008/05/weird-america-vacation-spots-for.html

Latest Newspaper Column:

Well, it's that time of year again.

The trees are blooming, the birds are singing, the sap is rising, and the minds of most Americans turn to thoughts of packing up the car, kenneling the pets (or getting a neighbor to come by and feed them), and getting away from it all for a few days. So, as we always do about this time every year, we bring you our guide to American's weirdest vacation destinations:

*Ramp festivals: I regret to say that, by this time of year, most of the South's Ramp Festivals have already taken place. But you can still make the one in Crossnore, N.C., on May 24 and 25.

What's a Ramp Festival, You may ask? It's where you go to eat a whole mess of ramps, silly. And what's a ramp? A ramp is a kind of wild onion, also known as the wild leek. They grow, according to Wikipedia, from South Carolina to Canada, and they've been a staple of the diet in Appalachia for hundreds of years.

The taste has been described as like a "garlicky onion," and there are all sorts of ways to prepare them Unfortunately, though, no matter how you fix them, there's one problem with ramps: They make you smell bad.

Now, it would seem to me that, if you were going to have a festival celebrating something like this, it would be to proclaim, "Thanks be to God that we have a modern food distribution network, so we no longer have to eat something that makes us smell like Satan's gym socks," but tradition is a powerful thing.

As for me, the only way I'm getting near one of these shindigs is to approach it from upwind.

*The Screaming Giant: If you've got a hankering to see a giant metal statue of a screaming bearded man trying to claw his way out of the earth, I'm afraid you're going to have to drive a little farther than you used to.

"The Awakening," a profoundly disturbing statue by sculptor J. Seward Johnson Jr., was originally placed in Washington's Hain's Point Park back in the Reagan years. Apparently the Park Service was never all that crazy about it. Go figure.

In February, a billionaire developer named Milton Peterson laid out 725,000 simoleons for the frantic colossus and moved it to his ritzy new development in National Harbor, Md., where it writhes in all its frozen, mute agony next to the marina and restaurants. Because, you know, there's nothing I want to see more while I'm scarfing down my crab-cakes than a titanic statue of a guy who looks like he's been buried alive. Rich people are weird.

*World's Largest Ball of Twine: It amazes me that, for all the years I've been doing this feature, I've never done a bit on the most classic of all roadside attractions: the world's largest ball of twine. Sisal twine, to be exact.

Well, wait no longer, and my apologies for the delay. It's in Cawker City, Kan. It weighs almost nine tons. It's not particularly interesting-looking. But it is an awful lot of twine.

* The Burger King Vampire Peacock Memorial: In June 2007, a real, live peacock wandered into the parking lot of a Burger King in Staten Island, N.Y., and was promptly beaten to death before a horrified crowd by an insane homeless man who announced he was killing a vampire.

Now, something that weird can't go without being memorialized in some way. So a retired shop teacher from Staten Island named Charles Johnson decided he'd carve a life-size peacock out of elm, decorate it with actual feathers from his own peacocks, haul it to New York from his new home in Virginia, and donate it to the Burger King.

And so he did, and there it sits, in the BK at the corner of Page Avenue and Amboy Road. You can see it to this day. Watch out for insane homeless guys. And the fish sandwich. That thing is nasty.

*The Martian Invasion Memorial: Remember when the Martians landed in 1938? The people of Grover's Mill, N.J., sure do, or at least they remember the hubbub caused by the Orson Welles radio hoax that convinced Americans that nasty Martians with heat rays had landed in their little corner of rural Jersey before being felled by the common cold.

So they've put up a plaque showing a pre-morbid-obesity Welles declaiming into a microphone while a terrified family cowers before the radio. Unfortunately, the water tower that local rubes blasted with shotguns after mistaking it for a Martian war machine has fallen to ruin.

OK, it may not sound like much, but what else are you going to do if you find yourself in Grover's Mill, N.J.?

Happy traveling!


Special question for blogreaders: Where's the weirdest place you've ever been on vacation?