Comedy of... Something

So let's review:

I signed up for DSL through Sonic.net. They provide DSL via Pacific Bell (now SBC). I receive my DSL modem. My due date (the date the line's supposed to be switched on) is this past Friday. So far, so good.

Thursday, I'm told turn-on will be delayed because of equipment issues at SBC. Sunday night, no DSL yet. Monday I call Sonic.net, and they tell me SBC has pushed back my due date by a month. Yeesh.

Monday evening I'm dialed up. I look over at the DSL modem and think, "Hmm, that blinking light has stopped blinking. It's just on now. I wonder." Yep, you guessed it: I set up my TCP/IP settings (everyone who knows nothing about networking just went on to the next journal) and whee! I have DSL!

But wait, there's more! This morning I stumble out to pick up the newspaper. Turns out there's an SBC guy out there checking the lines. He says he came out to check things out and see whether the wire needs to be mumbledy-mumbledy to prevent my getting bounceback. (At this point even I've gone on to the next journal. Hey, it was before 8 in the morning!) I tell him my tale of woe and whoa. He asks if I'm getting good speed, and I say yeah, works great. Much faster than dial-up. He says as far as he knows there's no reason I shouldn't be turned on.

I this afternoon I call Sonic.net and let them know. Today's support guy says it all sounds very strange to him, and that having my turn-on date pushed back a month certainly didn't sound too reasonable. A few folks suggested I could simply not have told Sonic and hoped I wouldn't get billed for this month, but I decided honesty is the best policy. Besides, the way things have been going if I didn't call then my second due date would arrive and my DSL would stop working. Sheez!

So now I have DSL at last. The only thing I figure is that running Internet Exploiter on my ancient Mac on Mac OS 9 means my browser is probably slower than my net connection. I really do need to get a new machine...

Monday was kind of a crummy day for a variety of reasons, the DSL being only one.

First, Sunday night I set my alarm for 7 p.m. Thankfully, the cats get hungry in the morning and woke me up around 7:45. Which means I got up a bit after 8:00, since, well, it always takes me 20 minutes to get up unless a plane flight or something is involved.

So I'm puttering around the house a little later, and I go into the garage. Coming back out of the garage, I... well, I don't come back out of the garage, because the door is locked. As is my front door. Somewhere along the way, either Debbi or I must have locked the handle on the garage door, which I try never to lock, using the dead bolts exclusively. So yes, I've locked myself out of my house.

In 12 years of apartment living I never once locked myself out. I've done so twice in less than two years in my house.

Fortunately, I was able to use a neighbor's phone, and Subrata was home and nearly awake (I could practically hear his brain booting up over the phone; not to be unkind, though - I'm pretty much the same way), and he was able to bring over my spare key. Thanks, Subrata, you're a life-saver!

I need to figure out an alternative back-up plan for these situations. I'm not sure what it is, though. I do know I want to avoid leaving a key actually outside the house somewhere. That's just a recipe for trouble.

The rest of the day was marred only by the whole DSL thing. But it all ended okay.

In a recent entry, Jim writes about his earliest memories. Like him, most of my earliest memories date from age three-and-a-half.

Most of them.

Here are my earliest memories:

1. July 1969: I am 6 months old. I recall watching the Apollo moon landing on TV. I vividly recall that it was night (which means we were probably watching footage on the evening news, since I believe the landing happened during the day in the US), and my Mom carrying me to the balcony of our apartment (which had a black metal railing) and pointing up to the moon and telling me there are people up there. I imagine that I can see them. No one I've ever told this story believes I really remember it.

2. 1971?: I'm about 2 years old. I recall running up the stairs in our apartment, which was on the second floor.

3. 1972?: I'm about 3 years old. I recall my folks letting me walk my Dad down to the train station to go to work, and then walking back on my own. It made me feel very grown-up at the time. My recollection is that the walk was quite long, but I think it was only a couple of blocks, and no doubt Mom kept an eye on me the whole way back.

4. July 1972: I'm 3 years old (well, three-and-a-half). On the day we moved from our apartment to the house I grew up in, I recall the moving van driving in front of us as we rode along in our white Volkswagon squareback (which turned out to be a lemon, later on), driving to the next city through a part of town I didn't get to know until I became a teenager, and pulling into the driveway of our new house. One event, but three segments of memory. I dimly recall being told how I ran off to meet the neighbor girl who was playing across the street (Laura, or "Yaura" as I called her at first; haven't seen her in over a decade), but don't remember it very well.

Lots of memories from growing up. Friends Adam and Doug and Stephen and Ben, and Josh and Aaron and Jeff (the whole Dungeons and Dragons crowd from elementary school). Julie, my first "girlfriend", only in the sense that you can't have a mixed-sex friendship in fourth grade without her being your "girlfriend". Dad taking me to my first comic book shop, The Million Year Picnic (named for the Bradbury story), which was at the time in The Garage in Harvard Square. Getting into a fight with Ben because of our competition over Stephen's friendship (I "won" by kicking him in the stomach, which was not a wise move on my part, it turned out). Stephen and Ben moving away the same summer. After sixth grade. Blah.

Rob (my friend who now lives in Berkeley) moving in across the street the next winter (talk about a great Christmas present!). Staying up late with Rob and his brother Ben playing games like Divine Right and saying "shitballs" a lot (not around our parents [much]), because you like to make up weird swear words when you're 13. Rob learning how probability works a year before me (because he was, like, a year ahead of me in school) and beating the pants off of me in Axis and Allies. Going to high school and biking every day because I hated taking the bus. Ben moving back to town and our becoming friends again, even though he showed me the last letter he'd received from Stephen where Stephen said Ben had been his best friend. Ouch. Crushes on various women (notably Michelle, who moved away after tenth grade, thus sparing the custodians from having to clean quite so much drool off my desks), but never actually dating anyone. Going to New Hampshire and Maine to stay with Rob and his families (his parents, like mine, are divorced) for long weekends. Lots of mosquitoes in New Hampshire.

Well, this turned out to be a lot more reminiscing than I'd intended. I figure I'm in for a few rude comments from John tomorrow. Not that that would make tomorrow different from any other day.