Cheesed Off

Wow, I am SO grouchy this week it's just unreal! But now at least I have some good focal points for my cheesiness.

First off our internet connection has been irratic for two weeks now. We aren't able to connect unless we manually dial half the time and have to have something that is constantly pinging the server to stay online. It makes me INSANE, trying to order something and finding that between the time I enter my address and credit card info and hit send I've lost my connection. Did they get it? Will they double or triple charge my card if I try again? Akk! AR called Fixnet only to get a person who had no idea what ISDN was. Out here in this deep and narrow canyon we have no cable, no DSL and no broadand anything. Sattelite is a possibility but it's got lags that screw with AR's ability to remote control his client's computers, and since he works from home that's critical. So we have ISDN, which may be outmoded, but is far and away faster than dial up and allows us to do what we do. AR was not encouraged that this particular individual was even able to learn what he needed to, such was his aptitude, and anyway, he wasn't interested. So we limp along while paying over $100/month for our service. NOT acceptable!!! The thought of this going on indefinitely while I am trying to do my lit review is making my nerves jangle big time.

Then today I found that when I finally got on my default page had been hijacked to Mozilla's site. That means they did yet another stealth upgrade, without my permission, which is a really huge hot button for me, and usurped my Washinton Post default. Ok, I can live with that, but when I found that ALL MY BOOKMARKS were gone, I blew a gasket. Not only that, when I went to the site to see if there was somewhere to complain, I found I don't even have the newest version of Mozilla Firefox. What the hell? They blew out my bookmarks of three years for a dinosaur? FUCK THAT!!! I have to say that while I adored Mozilla when I first switched, their more recent versions of Thunderbird, the e-mail program, have royally sucked and when THAT program updates iteself (usually without my permission) it sometimes wipes my inbox. Every goddamned time that has happened there has been something critical in my box, so I finally had to make Hotmail my business e-mail, and don't even get me started on how much I dislike them. Looks like I'll be rethinking Opera, but perhaps I'll give the newest Mozilla a try first. I guess I need to chill my shit seeing as it IS free after all. ;p

I've got more... a dying fan on my laptop that whines incessantly (which is probably a major source of my edginess), a big old battle with DMV that I finally took to the mat today, there was a major heat wave while we were away and almost all my plants died (they had to be outside and off the porch thanks to the fumigation) and the fact that we STILL have people crawling all over our house banging and fuming (with paint, caulking, drywall paste, roofing goop etc) and making me feel like a bug under a microscope, not to mention worrying they're going to fume my birds to death while patting me on the head saying, "Don't worry dear, you're birds will be fine." Today I was told they needed access to do repairs inside but nobody would tell me WHAT repairs or in what room, just that my birds would be fine. Turned out it was caulking in the bathroom and drywall stuff and paint in the living room, both of which could potentially have killed my fids. Nice. I cancelled a lunch date with a friend whom I really want to see because she is so depressed, but as it turns out it was a good thing for my birds I did.

Sigh... ok, so that's enough bile for one post. Sorry to have inflicted it on whomever might come here. The weather is lovely, my fish are home and doing well and bit by bit my house is shaping up inside. We're deep cleaning every room; and that means every cupboard, drawer and the furthest corner of every closet, before we bring anything back in. We know there is a move in our future, though we're not sure how soon; depends on whether the landlord forces it (I know they need to sell this house but they really don't want to - I suspect all this work is about that) or if my education forces it, but either way we need to lose about 3/4 of our stuff, so this evacuation has been a good thing since it prompted us to face reality. Reality being WE ARE PIGS!!! Happy pigs wallowing in our own filth, mind you, but pigs nonetheless. ~Oink~