Mesa back!

Well, that wasn't long. Certainly not long enough for anybody to actually miss this blog. Maybe I should go into hiding again!

Anyhow, yes, the DSL has been installed and life is now happy and blissful at Minas Jaquandor. The moral of the story is: if your dial-up modem is about to die horribly, order your DSL upgrade package ten days before it does.

Although there was one minor hiccup: The Wife actually left the apartment yesterday morning for about two hours, which is of course when UPS tried to deliver our modem. They left the little post-it note saying "We'll try again on Monday"; my response was, "Oh no you won't. I'm coming to get my package." Or, as I said to my fellow Wayne's World-quoting friend at The Store, "It will be mine, oh yes. It will be mine."

So at 7:00 on Friday night I'm driving through the East Side of Buffalo, heading for the UPS shipping center. And wow, is that place big. I figured it would be, but damn, it's a huge joint. I was amused by the little signs on the streetlight posts lining their long service road: "Leave yourself an out", "Make sure they see you", "Aim high". Refreshers from Driver's Ed for UPS drivers, I suppose?

Anyhow, I got the modem and had it fired up in about an hour after we had dinner (Chinese) and put The Daughter (not Chinese) to bed. The only technical problem that I ran into during the installation was that one of our other phone jacks in another room had an old length of phone cord still plugged into it, from an older phone setup of ours. Took me about half an hour to realize that was screwing things up and interfering with the DSL line, but when I unplugged that, everything started working.

And now my Internet connection is fast. Like, "I don't have to wait for YouTube stuff to download" fast.

All I need now is a cellphone, and I'll be in the 21st century.

Regular posting will resume later on, perhaps.