Now that my cable modem appears good, no dropped packets since they fixed it this morning, the arrival of the DSL modem seemed rather uneventful. Had it been here yesterday, it would have been a life saver, that is, had UPS not forgot it at the shipping facility. But, alas, I have two fully functional broadband services. Outages should be, in theory, a thing of the past no matter how the dice fall.

Time Warner Cable finally came by today and connected the new wire run. My power level increased, because they put in RG11 cable vs RG6, so that means I may not have to re-run some cables I put in the house two years ago to get them to be slightly shorter to the db in the correct “window”. Granted, it has only been 15 minutes, but no hick-ups yet. I will keep you posted. I was sure the 6 inches of rain we got last night would give them an excuse not to complete the job today.

Okay, I work at home. I am home 99% of the time. As I have been relaying in previous posts, it has taken forever and a day to get my new cable line run at my house. Monday (yesterday) they finally put the cable in, but did not terminate it on the pole or at the house. I called TWC and they said they would need to look into it and would call me back right away. Sure. Whatever. Today, I called to find out what the scoop was, and after trying to explain myself for the millionth time, the CSR finally got it and put me on hold. He came back pretty quick, saying they would have someone out tomorrow or the following day to hook it up. At this point, snails move faster than this company and I took it easier knowing my DSL would be here tomorrow. My backup plan, will finally be in place and life will go on.

So, I decide to run a quick errand around 4:30pm, got back about 40 minutes later. I found this note on my door. Ah, the drama continues!

If you are like me and you work from home, and online, you come to appreciate having a good quality Internet connection during times when your Internet connection is sporadic at best. Since I have moved into my house, 3-4 years ago, I have had this recurring issue with my cable modem. Every 3-6 months, it acts up, starts randomly dropping and then coming back, either by itself or through a Microsoft Reboot of the cable modem. Then, either through a visit of a cable tech or a new cable modem, life is good, for another 3-4 months, then a repeat.

However, lately, the situation has been almost unbearable. Daily, between 10am-3pm, it is like pulling teeth to keep SSH sessions active and do anything which requires a steady internet connection. If my primary system had a modem in it, I probably would have gone to dial-up to keep a steady connection (ugh, the thought makes me sick). Time Warner has been responsive, but not helpful to solving the solution. Three weeks ago, they put in the request to put a new service line into my house, but due to weather, and other delays, it only got installed today. But, having a nicely newly buried service cable isn’t much good until they send someone else to hook it up, and climb a telephone pole.

Up in arms and with no promise from Time Warner on when I might have the new line installed and hopefully steady service (although some doubt remains if that will resolve my issues) I decided that I would sign-up for DSL service. Using my Netscreen 5GT Firewall, I will setup routing in such a way use the Cable modem for most of my normal web traffic, and use the DSL for my stable connections like routing SSH traffic over it, and web traffic on the cable modem, since the cable modem will be a faster connection. If the cable service is acting up, then it will auto-fail all traffic to the DSL.

I figure, the cost of having both services running pales in comparison with productivity lost when I am fighting with restoring my cable service so I can get back to work.

Posted more Sprint photos, including covert pictures taken inside the Sprint Idea Lab and inside the ISOC Command Center. Super secret stuff happens here, you can tell by what is on the screens. Plus, I reveal the mug of undercover agent, Chol-Eric.

I have also added photos of my Home, my old Apple II+ Rare Bell & Howell Edition and of my Office Space I had in 2006. I would love to return and could today, but working from home is a nice commute.

In an amazing turn of events in my life, I have found a workable solution to solving my inability to tackling my massively long todo lists. I wish I would have found this solution earlier, but like all things, it might not have applied to the depth needed to really take hold as I need in my life presently. Combined with actually reading the GTD book (or shall I say listened too) and finding some awesome software which implements it all called Thinking Rock (Windows, Mac and Linux), I am on my way to getting my life in control and feeling better about it.

I had this feeling when I discovered GTD as I did when I discovered Geocaching. An entire world of hidden “caches” existed all around me, everywhere I drove and went on a daily basis and I had no clue. After discovering GTD, I found all sorts of applications and web sites dedicated to Getting Things Done and I wish I had known about it earlier. In a effort to help distraction, I am applying some new techniques I hope to use in my daily structure.

For example, instead of setting my email to check every minute, I change it to check hourly or at times of my choosing. This means I am not constantly distracted by incoming emails, spam and what not. Instead of spending time surfing to all my sites I frequent for news in various categories, I have found a use for RSS feeds, which prior to now, I found pointless. I can quickly scan new news through RSS feeds which takes only a fraction of the time. But, all that I don’t think is really part of the GTD model so much as just some good suggestions from others. The GTD model comes into how I handle emails and todo lists. The email method seems as though it will work for me. If I can respond to an email and take care of something in about 2 minutes (or less) I will go ahead and work on it. If it needs my attention either now or later, I will flag it. Other emails, either get filed away for reference or hit the bit bucket.

Todo items are still coming together for me. It includes breaking things down into orderly steps, more granular than I typically organized my todo lists. While this requires more detail and makes my todo list a lot longer, I think it has potential. I typically look at things in blocks, items associated with XYZ project for a period of time, then change gears for another. The new method involves more tossed salad of things that need to be done, and that doing those things, will open doors to the next actions on the list. While I still haven’t fully grasped the entire concept or put it to good use yet, it has about the best potential if I can change my way of thinking, which at this point I am game for change.

I have finally turned up an easy to use gallery (for me and you) with some new galleries. Actually, some of them are older, but new to be published here. These includes Sprint Tech Lab 2002, Suicide Watch, Apple Store KC Grand Opening, My Home Office Project, My Old PowerBook G3, and Storm Chase 2003.

I have had a hard time finding a theme I like. Yes, I could write my own theme, but why? I don’t really take my blog that seriously, but you never know, if it had a better look, maybe I would write more and maybe more people would visit? Unlikely. But, I’m sure Googlebot will appreciate the new look.

I have been reading a lot about Solar Power lately. Not sure why exactly. Where I live, the cost of electricity is not more than the cost to operate a Solar Power system for your home, so the upfront cost to pay off your upfront investment could not be realized for 15-20 years, if that. But, I still decided to give it a try on a smaller scale as an alternative energy source for whatever reason. I bought a solar panel (portable) that folds up. I got it in, plugged in my cell phone which was totally dead, and about 2 hours (or less), it was fully charged, all from the sun.


The down side, if this was only method of electricity, these overcast winter days don’t provide enough juice, only when the sun came out from behind the clouds did the phone power up and start charging.

The one I got outputs about 26 watts, at the max output. Of course, the sun is a big factor in its performance. You can string three of these suckers together for 78 watts. You could easily power a laptop computer with that setup, possibly even with two, depending on your laptop’s power needs. I plan on picking up a portable battery pack that will power up to 600 watts that could be charged by the solar panel. While it would take an entire sunny day (or more) to charge the battery pack, if the electricity went out for a long time, I could operate some smaller, essential items almost anywhere.

Maybe I could build an electronic “recharging” station that the solar panel could hook up too, and I could charge most of my devices using the sun. That would be green! (granted, I’m not a green person, no tree hugging here).

Well, my coughing has subsided for the most part, which is good. I have slept two, 10 hour nights in a row, which is not typical considering I usually do 6-7 hours per night. Today, I feel good, but not 100%. But, I say this during my morning “good” period, which only last around 4 hours before I start descending into sickness swamp. But, lets hope the tide is turning.

I have about had it with all this. I have had this annoying cough now for 4 week. It gets worse, then better, then worse again. In fact, everyone in the family has it, we sound like a dog kennel, with all of us barking at the same time around here. It is getting quite old. I need to find a Bubble to live in, so I can stay healthy from my oldest daughter he gets this crap from daycare and brings the love home to share with all of us.

Update: My daughter has Mono, my youngest daughter has pneumonia, my wife has bronchitis… and I’m suppose to have some %$#@ing acid reflix cough issue? WTF? I hate the doctor I went too. In fact, I took my youngest daughter in two days ago with me and all she got was some pink eye medicine (yea, she has that too). If it wasn’t Friday and Christmas weekend, I’d be calling to make an appointment right now with the doctor my wife just had. My daughter is still coughing, and while she may have had mono, she obviously is sick with something else. The “bread winner” in the house gets the run-around. Thats fantastic!

Update: Well, I managed to see another doctor on Saturday and was given an antibiotic, and like the first doctor, could not nail it down. My father, who had visited us for a whopping 60 minutes the the Friday before all this happened, came down with a viral infection and was given the same things I was given (minus the acid reflux medicine) as I was and told to tuff it out. His symptoms seem to be on par with my wife and I.

I typically only get sick once a year. My oldest daughter (4.5) has been sick twice prior to this summer. My other daughter (2) has been sick maybe once in her lifetime. But, that all changed this summer when my oldest started going to daycare. She was sick after the first week and seems to be fighting something every other week or more. My youngest got pink eye this week and isn’t even going to day care. I have been sick about 5 times (currently on round 5) and I am getting sick of being sick.

I recently took advantage of a $9.95/month upgrade to my RoadRunner speeds. While the increase is about 3 additional MB downwind, the upwind speed leaves much to be desired. 768 kbps would be much better, but I will live. Although, here it is the end of 2006 and back in 2001 I had around the same download speed, with a 980 kbps upload speed with the short lived Sprint ION service.

Tomorrow is Black Friday, when all of us consumers (sheep) get in line early to get great deals on mainly stuff we don’t need, but stuff we can’t seem to live without. I mean, why should I not pass up that HDTV when it is $500 off! I mean, I just saved $500. Oh wait, you mean it still costs what? Ouch.

Guess I will skip out on tomorrow’s herding and just be thankful today, that I will be staying home tomorrow. Now, that is something to be thankful for!