monosyllabic

Hi, guys. I mostly lurk on LJ anymore, but I thought I'd drop in on the chance that the omaha_lj doesn't reach someone local that my flist would. Hey, my mom's worth it.

A month or so ago, my mom was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. I haven't talked about this much (or really at all) on public fora because honestly, I wasn't sure (and I'm still not sure) what's appropriate to share. She had to have some pretty substantial surgery, and her ongoing treatment is also very substantial. All of this leads to (you guessed it) Very Substantial Medical Expenses (tm), which as I understand it will not be entirely covered by insurance. (We're glad she has insurance, though. You betcha.)

The Marleybone (map/directions), the best damn Irish pub around and favorite haunt of my family, is having a spaghetti dinner today. All proceeds will go to mom's medical fund. There will also be raffles for a golf foursome out at Quarry Oaks Golf Club ($300 value, $10 a chance), one hour of golf lessons with a professional ($50 value, $2 a chance) and gift certificates to Goldberg's Bar & Grill at 132nd & Center ($10 value, 2 chances for $1). The dinner is $8 a plate, which is (at least for me) about on par with going out for slightly-better-than-fast-food for lunch. It's from 1pm to 6pm - come and go as you please. If you're not doing anything else, we'd love to see you there.

Thank you all so very much.

Ick. My feed (sperari) was nasty broken. Sorry. Better now.

Edit: Whoops. If you have my feed on your list and it just spammy-spam-spammed your friends page, apologies!

Just a quick note. If any of you guys are watching this journal, wondering why I never post--well, I've been busy, just not here. moonrose was nice enough to set up a Livejournal account that grabs the feed from my site, so if you're not inclined to hop over there every few days to check it, add sperari to your friends list and you'll see when I update.

Ta!

I think the time has come for me to say goodbye to livejournal as my means of journaling. I'll still be reading all of you, I'll just be taking my thoughts elsewhere.

But you all know where to find me.

Sam's mom finally sent us our half of the pictures she made us get taken before we moved out here.

( Three largish pics )

This morning, I woke up to loud crashing noises in the living room. Neal finds more interesting shit to get into every day. :-P

I went to check my mail, and got errors. Being the good Cox High Speed Internet Tech Support Representative that I am, I look to see if I can get a webpage, then I look at my modem. No cable light; it's not syncing up. I unplug the power to it and wait for a minute, then plug it back in and watch for a minute as it... still doesn't synch up.

So I call, figuring scratch that, knowing that there can only be a few causes for the problem: 1) the router I'm connecting to is having problems or 2) there's an issue with the lines/splitters/cable drop to my modem that isn't allowing the signal to get through. In the first case, I should hear about an outage in the south part of Omaha; in the second, I won't.

On the phone, I'm greeted with the fact that we have an outage. BUT. The outage is in the DNS servers. I know for a fact (and would have known even if I didn't work for them) that the DNS has nothing to do with my actual connection. What would be my first clue? The fact that we have our own DNS server sitting right here in our living room?

So I sit on hold. When I finally get to someone, I tell them that my cable light is out, and they tell me about the outage. I tell her that that has nothing to do with my cable light not being on. She said it does. She said she'd call me when she knew it was back up. While she was taking down my contact info, she asked which department I worked in. "HSI tech support, same as you," I say. I hear her blanche on the other end of the line. "Oh," she says, "You must be that new girl."

:-P I hate being fed bullshit. It's somewhat gratifying to catch someone in it, though.

Two days ago, the United States renounced involvement with the International Criminal Court. The Bush administration, on the same day, told the Supreme court that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess firearms that is not tied to the maintenance of state militias.

Monday was an awfully good day.

Two new mix CDs. Both made entirely of Highly Amusing Songs.

Freak on a Leash
1 - Korn - Freak on a Leash
2 - Everlast - Black Jesus
3 - Chris Isaak - Baby Did a Bad Thing
4 - Chris Cornell - Can't Change Me
5 - Buckcherry - For the Movies
6 - Linkin Park - In The End
7 - Nickelback - How You Remind Me
8 - 3 Doors Down - Loser
9 - 7 Mary 3 - Cumbersome
10 - Papa Roach - Last Resort
11 - Tori Amos - I'm Not in Love
12 - POD - Youth of a Nation
13 - Kid Rock - Bawitdaba

Get This Party Started
1 - Pulp Fiction - Misirlou
2 - Manfred Mann - Blinded by the Light
3 - Cardigans - My Favorite Game
4 - Pink - Get This Party Started
5 - Fatboy Slim - Tha Rockafeller Skank
6 - Red Hot Chili Peppers - Aeroplane
7 - Ben Folds Five - Jackson Cannery
8 - Weezer - Buddy Holly
9 - Sublime - What I Got
10 - Aerosmith - Pink
11 - Beck - The New Pollution
12 - Madonna - Beautiful Stranger
13 - Mighty Mighty Bosstones - The Impression That I Get
14 - New Radicals - You Get What You Give
15 - Incubus - Pardon Me
16 - Fight Club Soundtrack - Stealing Fat
17 - Ben Folds - Rockin' the Suburbs
18 - Citizen King - Better Days (And Then The Bottom Dropped Out)

Hypothesis: Subject etesla knows how to waste time.

Observations: Subject has been observed using copious amounts of free time and getting absolutely nothing done.

Procedure: Have subject sit in a semi-comfortable chair for eight hours. Restrict subject's activities to very limited (i.e., watched) internet access and doodling on paper while taking calls. Further, limit calls to approximately one six minute call every thirty minutes.

Post-procedure observations: Subject clearly antsy; biting cuticles and gazing out the window.

Conclusions: Subject may need to work harder to find new ways to twiddle thumbs.