I cancelled WebTV

Just dropping a note that I finally made the move to cancel WebTV, so my webtv email address should not be used anymore. I don't have access to WebTV right now due to cancelling it so I can't send a note via that route, and the nice lady said I have up to 6 months after today that if I should get something like the Broadband MSNTV box, I could reactivate it on that, since the new box has updated features. But I have more than one computer around here to get me on the net, and I paid for both Road Runner and a dial up ISP since my mom passed away (After her buying spree in 2002, I was forced to pay for both WebTV and the dialup because she became irresponsible about paying the right bills). It doesn't make sense to pay for 2 ISPs anymore.

Just a heads up in case an email gets sent to my webtv address and it bounces.

On a side note, as a result of MSNTV upgrading their "Junk" email filtering, I was forced to indoctrinate a Hotmail address (or Windows Live ID) that also remotely fetched my WebTV email, and some messages did migrate to that.

I finally got off all the saved emails, saved webpage URLs, and my inbox off their servers. Adieu, WebTV. It was a nice 14 years. I will miss using their Newsgroups.

On another note, Ikkoku Meiro no Croisee has been pretty good. Though I still long for a Menma and a Victorique figure and not an expensive dollfie.

Move away from WebTV practically complete

Aside from things on other user accounts on our terminal, I'm pretty much done with moving what data I wanted to save from my 14 years using WebTV (now MSNTV) to my Yahoo! address as well as web pages I made saved onto a thumbdrive for hopefully hosting somewhere else. I just don't know where to put them at the moment.

I didn't know that the email servers on WebTV would save data for accounts where email was disabled, because I re-enabled it on one account (that Mom took over for her continued pervasive eBay shopping spree) and found some old emails I had saved.

I found a few interesting and memory jogging notes on my Mom's account that put a lot of things into perspective.

It was during August 1997 when we bought the first WebTV terminal and I ended up being able to sell a Defender upright arcade machine (I had knocked the cabinet apart with a rubber mallet) for about $80 to some guy from Pittsburgh who showed up in person and was more than happy to take it off my hands. I used that money for things I bought for my first trip to Canada and to the first Anime North. I learned after that first year to take more money on subsequent trips to Anime North.


It's going to be hard to turn off WebTV and dialup, but I imagine the money I save will go toward paying bills.

Linksys router dropping connection is aggravating

So Sunday I get online to do some things and the net connection drops for some reason. The Linksys router which has worked flawlessly for months is acting up. Maybe the power supply is going bad? Maybe the firmware needs updating? It did it twice in the span of minutes and it did that again today just out of the blue. Maybe the cable modem is going bad? The Data Received LED lights up and then goes out after operating for a while after plugging it back in. Then there's the blinking LED from the cable modem to the router that shows a device is plugged in. It was blinking irregularly on Sunday.

I did confirm the firmware appears to be old and I did check the number of the new version. Hopefully it will update and not become a brick.

My anxiety and stress go up each time a reliable piece of equipment suddenly decides to act up.
 

July so far...

July so far has been a mix. I've had pain and tiredness a lot. I had to catch up on sleep due to some of this tiredness. Ibuprofen doesn't always work. And July 4th was interesting in that our redneck neighbors set off sticks of dynamite. Well, it might not have been that, but what they did explode shook the house several times each one went off. I was trying to get to sleep last night when I was woke up by our dog at 3 A.M. She snuck upstairs to my room because of something, which I had to get out of bed to set her straight. I don't know what she heard and I couldn't have slept that soundly that I didn't hear more explosions, but I got up and let her do her business. Among this, I found Negi had caught another mouse and was doing his growling while holding his prize in his mouth. While Melody did her business outside, Negi dispatched the mouse as only Negi does by eating it. He did spend sometime outside in 2007 when that horrible lady was here, and I imagine he got some natural snacking goodness by catching a few mice, so he knows what to do. Quite unlike a week or so ago when Marmalade caught one but somehow left it in an odd place. On the chair in the bathroom but under the bag I have toilet paper in, on top of the Mr. Dippy ad thing. At first I thought it was a toy, but it was too big and too real to be a toy. When I realized what it was, it was summarily flushed down the toilet.

So I caught up on sleep, and then lost some of it again...

Frustrations and annoyances

So I sent off payments like I do around the beginning of the month. One was to the dialup ISP I use WebTV through. It's probably a good idea I've been making some moves to cancel our long-time use of WebTV even in spite of the recent upgrade in the email handling of spam. Anyway, I got a call last Monday, 9 days after my payment to the dialup ISP was sent. The nice lady explains that they haven't received it yet. 

Great. Just flipping great. It'll cost me $15 to sent to Western Onion to find out if the thing was cashed or not. And the Post Office for some reason doesn't offer Delivery Confirmation for just regular envelopes. This is really stupid. You can send something Certified, but not the cheaper confirmation for a regular envelope?

I don't know when I'll get around to being able to trace that first attempt at paying the dialup ISP. Maybe in the next few weeks I'll get that access back and finally have WebTV cancelled once and for all. I'll miss using it and the access to Usenet newsgroups when so many other ISPs have cut it off for stupid reasons.


UPDATE: GOOD NEWS: I sent in a replacement payment to the Dialup ISP Certified over the weekend. The lady picking up the mail for them, while she was signing for it asked the postmaster at the post office about the missing payment. AS IT TURNED OUT, NOT ONLY was my payment Correctly Addressed, but IT GOT PUT IN THE WRONG MAILBOX, NEXT TO THE RIGHT BOX - ALONG WITH A FEW OTHERS AS WELL.


When it comes to mail delivered to post office boxes, they really need to pay attention and allow for a check of boxes. Possibly those misdelivered envelopes were in boxes not used by anyone.

Super 8

It's rare for me to do a movie review on my blog, so don't let me break this tradition by much. I was intrigued by the trailers for Super 8. Speilberg's name was associated with it even though he didn't write or direct it. Was it good? I'd say it was "Meh" and tell you to wait until it comes out on home video formats and rent it. At least if you must, go to a cheap matinee showing.

I'm not so much reviewing the movie that I'm going to do here as an account of what I did to go through to see the movie. The Alliance Cinemark 5 has state of the art digital projection, but the sound system is severely underutilized. Admittedly, the movies do cost less than other theatres in the area, but there's no excuse for not using the 6 speakers on the walls that go along with the ones near the screen. If there's a bass unit, I don't know if it's on. Plus the volume from what speakers are being used is clearly not high enough. The impact the movie could have had was hampered by a less than satisfactory sound system. Also, I had to put up with some idiot high school student (presumably) and his date continually talking for the first 45 minutes of the movie. I mean who the hell goes to a movie and sits there bullcrapping about stuff that's not the movie? I hissed a terse "Please shut the hell up" at them and the volume of their inane banter did decrease. Go outside to talk; you go into a movie to see a movie, not talk.

The movie itself seems to be mis-named because I expected a suspense and intrigue flick surrounding a reel of Super 8 film shot by accident that some kids were using to shoot a little movie they were making. "Super 8" is what you'd call a Classic 1980s sci-fi flick, and it makes pain-staking effort to reinforce it's supposed to be set in the early 1980s, which is why the kids are using a Super 8 movie camera and not videocameras.

I expected an all out conspiracy fight for the film the kids shot, unknowingly, after a mysterious train accident. I'm not going to give away how this was possible, because it's one of the movie's great moments. However, the story never goes in that direction and the existence of the footage on the Super 8 film the kids shot becomes secondary. It's not the film I was expecting which I felt would have been a better story. It's as if they couldn't come up with a better name.

How to straighten a truck frame, redneck style

I didn't hear this going on at the time, just moments ago, but my older sister did and just got done telling me about it. 

Apparently out front, within mere feet of the front door of Apartment B, our redneck neighbors that live across the street from us were trying to straighten out a truck frame.

However, they were using another truck to do it and trying to do this in the road, not on their property.

Imagine 2 trucks attached to each other by the towing hitch, heading in opposite directions. Now imagine this dangerous scene within 5 feet of your front door on the road. I went out to see the skid marks on the road from this.

My sister was in the right to yell at these idiots because they were endangering other people and personal property. She says some lady also from over there was yelling at her (apparently with no teeth) for yelling at the 2 idiots trying to straighten out a truck frame! Mentioning something about having kids and all, what this has to do with what was going on with the two trucks, I don't know.

My sister believes people like them aren't worth suing because they likely have nothing and or have no insurance for stupid things like this. If I had seen this as it was happening, I would have taken pics, but also advise them that they'd better have insurance and be ready to file a claim as we'd be suing them. I'm sure the event of the chain or whatever they used to hook the 2 trucks together snapping wasn't considered at all.

If you want to straighten a truck frame, you have to go to a garage and take the truck apart. It also costs a lot of money for the labor to do something like this. I would imagine there's some welding involved.

Fighting, burning, and now this. I wish I had the money to buy up these surrounding houses.

And another thing: The rednecks have this big ass USA flag draped across and over their huge wood pile. Nothing wrong with a flag, but does it have to be 8 feet tall?

The best part of this was one guy apologizing and they did leave.

ADDITIONAL:  Later that night, there were 2 ambulances that went rushing down the road, so maybe that was them somewhere else? Who is to know?

Young drivers out and about yesterday

Yesterday I'm doing a few things. Getting water jugs filled, a few foodstuffs. I go to one store in town where they still have the water jug filling machine set at 25 cents and while I get out of the car, I see a girl in a billowy yellow dress and a boy get in a car. Oh, I guess the Spring Formal aka Prom (why is it called Prom?) is tonight. I file that away, fill my jugs and get on with things to do.

Some time later while at Aldi's as I go in, I hear rescue vehicles screaming in the distance, and by the sounds of things, they're going away from where I am. I get done with what I get there and leave, deciding to go right home.

It's a good thing I'm not quick on the accelerator, because as soon as the light turned green for me, I went to turn right out of the parking lot, and I barely managed to keep from getting hit by a black SUV from my left. The driver clearly was not paying attention to the red light he had - clearly red long enough for him to see it. I recall the driver was in the vehicle with someone else (which I managed to see in the split second the damn vehicle sped right in front of me - and there were witnesses), and was able to determine it was an underage driver at the wheel. I was so mad I fumbled around before managing to sound my horn. It must have shaken the other driver up because he did brake and slow down. I wasn't sure if he thought I was coming after him, and I really should have after seeing him pull into the used car lot a block down the road to let him know how close he came to having his insurance premium get more expensive or cancelled altogether and me getting a new car (among other problems).

Anyway, after a few minutes of going towards home, I come to the crossing of where two state routes meet, and the scene of a traffic accident. That's where the rescue vehicles were going.  I see a girl in a familiar yellow dress - just odd that a while before they were in town. I don't know who was at fault, but seeing another girl in the gathered group of onlookers in a purple dress, I guess a more than a few prom attendees' evening just got more complicated if not cancelled altogether. A gray car and a black SUV collided at the light at that intersection.

Makes me wonder how many other high school prom attendees were involved in collisions this weekend. I saw a stretch limo SUV earlier getting fuel. That's the way to do it - hire a limo and driver. I would think that's much safer even if it costs some money to rent one.

I WOULD have to find that stuff NOW dammit...

So my sister asks about a noise maker that helps people fall asleep. I
know Mom used it when we were out at my grandparents' house and I seem
to remember seeing it here after we moved in. She needs it to fall
asleep because of some ringing in her ears.

When I got a moment, I decided to check out the dressers Mom has and had
her stuff in. The one tall dresser didn't have the noise maker.

Then I turned to looking in the drawers in the other dresser.

While I didn't find the noise maker unit, I did freaking finally run
across the Go Lite Mom got for Seasonal Affected Disorder (or Depression
in my Mom's case) as well as the other basket Mom bought for her walker.
I have NO IDEA why the Go Lite was even in the drawer. But that f___en
basket!!! We searched ALL OVER for that damn thing! Mom was hoping to
use it because it held onto her walker better than the one I kept
repairing. I think it got stashed away in the dresser when my other
sister came out one January (I seem to remember this being around New
Years) and helped organize and clean things up. Only nobody reminded
anyone where things got put.

I JUST HAD TO RUN ACROSS THAT DAMN BASKET NOW, DIDN'T I? I saw that
thing in the drawer and called out "MOM, I FINALLY FOUND THAT GODDAMN
BASKET!"

And her Go Lite. Why was it stashed in a dresser drawer when it was
something she needed? She was hoping to find it and show one doctor she
went to about things since the doctor expressed interest in seeing the
device, perhaps recommend it to others.

But I didn't turn up the noise maker. My back was yelling at me over the
exertion, so I took a break and decided to check out the toy box /
storage bin. It wasn't in there either (so it must be in a box upstairs
in that... room), but I managed to find something else. I knew it when I
saw it what the hell it was... Dammit. The yellow piece that went on the
... water reservoir for Mom's BIPAP machine when you needed to rinse it
out and clean it. We lost that at some point and I spent 2 years holding
my fingers over the holes when I rinsed it out with a little vinegar to
remove the annoying particulate build-up inside it. Why the hell did it
end up in with the toys?

Going through the toys was depressing. It certainly was full of the love
my Mom had for her grandchildren. It makes me depressed to realize that
when I finally start a family, my children will never meet a grandmother
that would have loved them a lot as well.

I just HAD to find all 3 of those items today. I still have so much of
Mom's stuff here. I don't know what I'm going to do with a lot of her
books. I will keep some, but there's a lot I have no desire to keep, and
since nobody in the family has voiced any interest (which is a damn
shame), when I sell or get some amount of money out of them, I will use
it as I please and if anyone has a problem, they'll just have to deal
with it.

Dumping WebTV soon

Just letting everyone who needs to know that I'm making plans to cancel
our dialup ISP and WebTV services soon. I've already saved all the
webpages I created and some a friend has on here as well, but I've got
some more details to deal with such as saved webpages and emails. This
will take some time to clear out.

If anybody wants something, grab it now. I need to find a free personal
webpage host that lets me upload my own HTML and pictures similar to
Geociites' File Manager.

Which is odd to be getting rid of WebTV when I got a notice loading up
my email that MSN is offering (requiring is more like it) Windows Live
ID shtuff and wouldn't let me delete email until I created one.
(f__kers).