fractalnavel

• turned off all my symantec stuff when i was using dial-up ealrier.  damn thing wanted to do its "live update" over a phone line - !  it's slow as shit even on broadband.  left it off.  everything works several times as fast now. pos software.
• my online billing service is telling me that at&t is complaining and wants me to update my profile or something at their site before it will allow updates to be retrieved.  so i go there, and what i see is that they want three "security" questions to be chosen, with my answers provided.  i have to pick from their questions before i can do anything else.  and they're stupid.  even better, the questions that you get to choose from change every time you refresh the page !  some asshat design team's wet dream of security, i guess.  and the questions ?  give me a break.  here's a sample:

<option value="71" >What was your boss's first name at your first job?</option>
<option value="116">Last Name of your kindergarten teacher?</option>
<option value="101">Who was your arch rival when you were growing up?</option>
<option value="99" >Other than where you live, what's your favorite city?</option>
<option value="92" >What is the last name of your favorite teacher?</option>
<option value="121">What is your favorite flower?</option>
<option value="98" >What is the last name of the funniest friend you know?</option>
<option value="105">What is the most unusual job you have had?</option>
<option value="59" >Who is your favorite person from history?</option>
<option value="97" >What is your favorite car?</option>
<option value="68" >What is your youngest child's nickname?</option>
<option value="95" >Who is your favorite singer?</option>
<option value="1"  >What was the name of your first pet?</option>
<option value="120">Name of a college you applied to but did not attend?</option>
<option value="112">Name of favorite childhood pet?</option>
<option value="117">What is the last name of your childhood doctor?</option>
<option value="109">What is your favorite cartoon character?</option>
<option value="90" >What is the name of your favorite movie?</option>
<option value="102">Where did you go on your honeymoon?</option>
<option value="122">What was your most memorable gift as a child?</option>
<option value="96" >What is your favorite song?</option>

all i know for sure is that they have at least 122 of them.

i don't have an answer for any of these.  and most of the others that i saw.

wait - oh yeah - "jeep".

my sister posts to our familly group site:

 A valentine song, that was one of Mom's favorites, that I teach to my
preschoolers each year:

@>---- @>---- @>---- @>---- @>---- @>---- @>---- @>---- @>----
Tell me why the stars do shine,
Tell me why the ivy twines,
Tell me why the sky's so blue,
And I will tell you why
I love you.

Because God made the stars to shine,
Because God made the ivy twine,
Because God made the sky so blue,
Because God made you, that's why
I love you.
@>---- @>---- @>---- @>---- @>---- @>---- @>---- @>----

just thought i'd share.

... that seeing a low car insurance premium would be depressing.  my price reference point is still twenty five years ago, where the actuarial realities of my youth would slap me in the face every 3 months.  i think i was paying as much, or more, then for a month as i do now for six months - and that's not even putting it in terms of today's dollars !

yeah, ok, i post too much when i'm sitting at home instead of working.  sometimes.  but it's not like it was when i used to sit on the couch with the laptop in its nominal position, ready for every in(s)anity that my remaining neurons would conjure.

i just noticed it broke my website's sitemap css.  add it to the list.

man, that was a trip.  to make a short story long:

good ol' lazy me (i'm not blaming self for this) decided to let bills go for a few months.  yeah, yeah - save it.  anyway, i thought that as long as i had some advance notice about power and broadband shut-off, i could catch it in time to prevent being disconnected and having to boot-strap connectivity and services from scratch.  getting on the grid takes work too, y'know.

so here i am, going to work this morning, got my coffee, drove into the parking lot, and it turns out the place is closed. no cars anywhere, no lights.  wtf ?!  the roads aren't that bad.  the ice on the trees was pretty in the sun.  oh well, maybe with all the schools closed & the power outages & the kids at home etc. it's a good idea anyway.

i head home.  before i get too comfortable, i figure maybe i should check the website or company email to see if anyone had anything to say about it.  what the-- hey!  what happened to my internet connection ?  it was just there.  friggin' modem / router is all blinkin' greens.  i try power cycling and rebooting it, but no help.  i figure maybe roadrunner is down, you know, with the storm.  oh well, i wasn't going to be able to work from home anyway.  i don't have that kind of access (VPN), being a contractor and all.  i could just try to pick up the threads of the document i was writing and merge the stuff together later, but that's just a lot of work.  screw it - take the day off.  maybe i'll just do bills - finally...  only because i find bill-paying just slightly more palatable than the wasteland of daytime tv, and then only on special occasions.

i was curious, i never quite saw my broadband service fail that way before.  the led patterns are different.  this was pretty distinctive - all the lights are blinking in synch.  so i look it up - says "network access denied".  uh-oh.  do y' think ... ?  but i never got any email !  i figured for sure they would send an email to the account owner address.  whaddya mean, check my mail ?  who does bills on paper these days ?  hell, i haven't even opened my mail, since, uh, ...

then again, i don't answer my phone(s) either, and only occasionally check voicemail, mostly out of morbid curiousity, since weeks old messages aren't usually relevant anymore.

and there it is - or rather, they are - two messages from time-warner, two weeks ago.  nothing specific, just "call us, it's important".  not real useful. but that was it. 

then at 8:30 this morning, sszzzt, nothing.

but that's not what was trippy (i said "short story long", didn't i ?).  my fallback position is to fire up aol in dial-up mode.  yeah, ok, that's a bit trippy, but not the one i had in mind.  dang, is dial-up slow, or what ?  seems all the websites these days are designed for broadband users - even the sites trying to sell broadband to dial-up users !  now there's a study in useless design ;-)  i finally locate the time-warner billing page (does anyone realize how critical good website navigation is if you've got a slow connection ?  hunting for pages is just not a valid option.)  i log in.  woo-hoo !  a light-weight page.  i enter my credit card info.  check-box: you can make this a direct-debit transaction and it will be processed in realtime, as with an atm.  hmm, ok, that sounds like a good option in this case. *check*  *click*.  "please wait at least ..." *page returns*.  hmm, let me look at my account summary... *click* interesting, says my high-speed cable is active... *glance at modem*...

DAMN! all the lights are firin' up like things are normal again.  

that was fast!  instant friggin' service!  wasn't expecting that.  yes, this was the trippy part.  well, ok, at least something about B2C is working right these days.  i was sure there'd have to be at least one phone call where the humble consumer had to bow and scrape before the paragons of virtue and financial morality over at the billing center, requesting please, restore my service, forgive me, i won't do it again (i was going to have self do that part. fair? who said anything about 'fair'?).

so i quickly drop dial-up, sure enough, i'm online, life is wonderful, and to celebrate my newly rehabilitated digital reputation, i fire off this post.

huh ? pay my what ? 

small footnote to this:  i noticed that my bandwidth suffered more the longer my bills were overdue.  instead of 5mbps, i was getting 2mpbs or less.  probably pretty smart of them.  but then, if they were really smart, they wouldn't actually cut a customer's service off after two and a half months, they should just downgrade it to 100kbps, which would get the person's attention yet still allow them to easily pay *hint, hint*.  as in, capture all their page requests and redirect to them to bill payment.