Frustrations

Frustrations
I use Earthlink.net as my internet service provider. I have their DSL product, which is way over priced and under supported. The signal is carried over Verizon copper wire to my place.

Verizon has always had crummy service in my general area. I can remember when I moved to the beach 35 years ago that my friends told me the local phone company sucked. I didn’t necessarily believe them but over the last ten years, since I have been online, I have grown to agree with them.

My latest frustration is not being able to upload the Prelude photos from yesterday. I tried again this afternoon and no success whatsoever. Every time I tried I ran into a server not found error message.

I was able to upload a photo of me that I added to My Profile. I think it is a better photo of me than the one from the Chuckay Dinner at Morton’s. You can go check me out and see for yourself. The small me photo was only 37 kb or so; it went up the line fairly quickly.

I think my best available solution is to add Doug and a team member so he can post the images for me. Of course, this is only a temporary solution. Another solution might be to copy the photos on a diskette and upload them over the T1 line at the office. The photos could be saved as a draft post so I could edit them later on. That solution is more permanent but it is also more cumbersome.

I had a phone call during my dinner one day last week from Verizon. They always seem to call during dinner don’t they? To make matters worse, the “Do Not Call List” does not apply to them. That really upsets me.

Controlling my emotions and my overwhelming desire to scream profanities into the receiver, I listened the sales drivel. The sales clown said that Verizon was better than my current carrier.

I said, “Oh really? How is that?”

The sales clown said that Verizon had superior technology and service. The sales clown also said some more stuff that made little sense to me.

I asked the sales clown, “How is your service so superior since you are using the same copper wire to run the final signal to my laptop? How is your service so superior since you are using the same phone company central office to switch the packets?”

The silence was deafening, even on this crummy circuit. I could have heard Sprint’s pin drop.

I finally broke the silence by saying why don’t you call me back when you have a really good answer for me.

I’m still waiting for a phone call.

Pants and Skirts
I noticed a cosmetics student in the courtyard this morning. It was hard not to notice her. I was in the middle of a dull conference call that was going nowhere.

I take that back.

Actually, it was going somewhere but the final destination was not what I or my client wanted to have happen. I think Doug would have called it the dénouement in the story line.

The sales person was being told by the technical and back office people who would have to make project work that it wasn’t going to happen. What the sales person had said was possible no longer was so; in fact, it was more like “it’ll never happen.”

Now, all I have to do is find a nice way to push all of the failure blame on the other party; that should not be too difficult for me.

Anyway, back to the coz student.

She was out there with some of her classmates for their smokers’ break. She was a smoker so that did not score many points with me. If I were to overlook the smoking, she would have interesting enough for me to want to spend some time with her.

But, what I had trouble dealing with and difficult moving along from was the fact that she was wearing long loose fitting black pants under a short red skirt. That costume made no sense; it certainly wasn’t cool or even cold at the beach today. Judging from the skimpy clothes that her classmates were dressed in or perhaps not dressed in, I am guessing the training room did not double as a frozen food storage locker.

I spoke to Doug later on and asked him about this fashion statement since he is also a more than casual observer of young women’s fashions. He takes long walks across campus when he is at school. It’s a long story and I won’t bother you with it.

Doug said that this fashion style was not new and that it has been around for a while. He had no explanation for the trend; it said it just happened and that he was already over it. Doug has moved on to shorty shorts which seem to make a much better argument, especially here in Southern California at the beginning of Summer.

I have my own theories why the coz student was wearing pants under her skirt.

I think she was covering up some really bad tats that she didn’t want anyone to see. One of my alternative theories is that she just had a bunch of tats put on her legs very recently and her legs are not ready for prime time viewing yet. The third theory is purely a Southern California theory; the coz student has no tan and was afraid to be seen with really pale skin.

Personally, I can find all three of theories plausibly deniable and therefore somewhat valid.


That was my day gentle readers. Perhaps I will get lucky tomorrow and the network gods will smile on my attempts to upload photos into the blog.

Be well and stay happy.