Following the leak of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I'm going to start my off-line time today. I have a lot to do in preparing for invalid_userid's visit anyway, so I shouldn't be spending much time online anyway.
I should note that while I won't be reading anything from online for the next few days (email, comments (due to possible trolls), wikipedia, or my friends list), I may still post using Semagic does not risk seeing spoilers. I guess "very limited internet use" is more accurate than "off-line".
I was spoiled before I got to read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. In order not to be spoiled for Deathly Hallows, I plan to stay off line starting Thursday and until I finish the book.
“Things are going well at the new place. Then unpacking is going well. the cats adjusted well. The birds have adjusted well. Lake and I have adjusted well. We getting internet access tomorrow which is very good, I've felt very cut off from the world. It's amazing how addicted I am to being in touch with everything. That's about that's about it.”
“I'm sitting on the front porch of the house of clocks. I disconnected my computer early this afternoon & I don't know when the next time I'm going to have internet access is. Still got quite a lot to do today, tonight. Got to finish up the packing. Movers are coming first thing in the morning. Ugh, I'm SO stressed out. Guess that's about it.”
The phone and DSL are back up and the ice is melting a bit. However, we're supposed to get a few more waves of ice later today and early tomorrow. After my voice post this morning, I went outside to take some photos and in the few minutes I was out there I heard a tree collapse in the woods nearby. My brother tells me he could hear several large branches or whole trees falling every this morning near him.
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I ordered my bus tickets online last night, but ended up with the wrong time for my departure from London. The confirmation has me leaving at 3:50AM, but there is no way I can get a ride to London at that hour. I was planning for my departure time to be 8:00PM. Talking to a Greyhound Canada representative on the phone, I was told that I could use the tickets for any departure time as long as they are for the same day and the same person. I should be fine
We got some more ice last night, the top of one of my parents trees came down. And while we have electricity this morning, we have no telephone or dsl. I'm calling in on my cell phone which apparently still works...
I... got my tickets last night for the rest of my trip. Two tickets to London, where I'll be picked up, and then go to Saint Thomas from there. And er, then tickets back from London to Boston.
And I guess, well. I'll fill you in on yesterday. I had a good time. We all, felt great to be here with my brother and sister, Maddie and Jonas, Christian and Heather, and of course my mum and dad. It's been the whole family, it's something that hasn't really happened in a long time.
i've been having a great time. The ice makes it a bit surreal, but if you know me surreal is good.
I guess that's it for the update this morning. I'll probably do more updating because, you know, I'm addicted to LiveJournal. I make lots of updates. So... that is all.”
I had a wonderful thanksgiving. In yesterday's post on thanks giving, I wrote about one aspect of thankfulness. However, there are many aspects of thankfulness and there is much I am thankful for. The following is an incomplete list:
I am thankful to have been able to spend a holiday with my sister, brother-in-law, and niece. I am thankful to be able to call them family.
I am thankful for the rest of my family, both found and blood.
I am thankful that I have a home to head to, and that when I get there I will not have to worry about having enough to eat.
I am thankful that I can express my thanks online.
I am thankful that, even if I have problems with it sometimes, I have access to medical care.
I am thankful that I live in a place that I can leave my house anytime day or night and be relatively safe.
I am thankful for the kisses I get from Skye.
I am thankful for Spy Pond.
And, I am thankful that I am not so bitter and jaded that I could not be thankful for the blessing I have received.
The internet has been out at the house_of_clocks all week. Comcast was supposed to be over today "sometime between 7am and 7pm" to fix it. However, Comcast decided the problem was with the utility box on the poll and not with our cable modem which they had earlier concluded was the problem. They didn't call. After we waited for them all day, recoiling called them a half hour before 7pm and they then told her that they had rescheduled. Now they will be coming by Monday some time between 7am and 7pm.
I'm going to talk to merryperseis (who handles the cable bill) about switching to RCN when she gets home. From what I've heard, RCN has changed a lot since I had the billing problems with them many years ago. I think it's a good time to try them again.
DOPA, or the "Deleting Online Predators Act" is one of the more horrifying and dangerous pieces of legislation in a long time. It would force libraries and schools to block access to "commercial Web sites that let users create web pages or profiles or offer communication with other users via forums, chat rooms, e-mail or instant messenging."
Essentially, DOPA would permit nothing that allows the user to publish or broadcast their views or tell stories. This bill does not target online predators, instead it censors those who are most likely to have negative views of the government. This bill would effectively silence large groups of disadvantaged children and adults whose only access to such online forums are schools and libraries.
The internet, especially blogging sites, threaten to break Marx's observation that "freedom of the press belongs to those who own one". The old monopoly on the press is being widdled away as more and more people are able to tell their stories. Those in power, while not acknowledging Marx's observation, have understood it to be true and have understood that it benefits them.
However, both Marx and the power brokers in Washington share the belief that information should be controlled. The only real difference between them was how this control is best administered. The internet offers a new world where information is controlled by no one. Where all are free to talk and tell our stories. We are still far from that world, but it is within our grasp.
The future is closer than we think, and what we do now will dramatically change what that future will be. We need to expand the press to everyone, not limit it to the few.
I am your child's live, online journal. I also go by other names like Xanga or MySpace or Facebook. Your kids post their pictures on me. I don't think you have seen them because I doubt you would have approved. But lots of other people have seen them.
Oz is alive again! I brought it back. Not on Linux as I was thinking of installing, but Windows 98. Oz is currently the only working computer at purpleglitter's place. Her computer died yesterday. The motherboard is shorted out, and it is essentially unrepairable. By cannibalizing the parts I needed from purpleglitter's computer and expending a lot of effort and time, I was able to get Oz working again. Oz was at the point where it wouldn't even make an attempt to boot. Starting it up is still a bit like starting an old lawn mower. You have to give it a few tries before it catches. Most of the time it just starts to start, but quickly dies. Five or six attempts usually does the trick. Oz has other quirks as well, such as not being able to store any information in BIOS when the power supply is disconnected. None, not even the time and date. But it still gets online and that's what matters.
I hate screensavers. There used to be a point to them: to prevent screen burn it. But now it just serves to crash long-running processes. And you can't turn it off in safe mode on XP. You can't even change the settings. It goes off at 10 minutes and that's that. If your running something longer 10 minutes that that will potentially crash if the screen saver kicks in, you have to sit at the computer and jiggle the mouse at an less than 10 minutes intervals. Later today I need to see if Oz, a somewhat stripped and aging 200MHz Pentium II, actually still functions at all. If it does I'm going to install some form of a Linux system on it as soon as I have money to buy cables to connect it to the internet, which probably won't be for over a week. I'll have to see happens when I turn it on.
I did some data entry for purpleglitter. Entered half the items and will do the other half in the morning.
I've gotten Severus running again, and it's playing music for the first time in a long time. The problem now is that the cord I was using to hook my computer up to the router has died and I don't have a replacement and I won't have any money to buy a replacement until I get my check which comes Friday. So until then I still have no internet in my room.
dalious picked up a wireless router a while ago, and I plan on installing it the next time I have a chance, which will involve dragging Severus into merryperseis's room and setting it up there for the installation process. I also need to get a wireless card before I myself can benefit from it's installation.
I don't know anything about securing a wireless signal, as I've never actually dealt with setting up a wireless LAN. I'm hoping I can guess my way through it, but I can't estimate how much time it will take me.
I feel wonderful right now. I'm actually getting things done. I haven't really doing anything in months. I feel a change. A shift. A movement out of my rut. My motivation is back and I want to keep it.
Severus is currently out of commission. It has been for the last few days. I need to hard reinstall Windows XP or install Linux. I'm haven't been really motivated to do either as depression really saps motivation. I'm leaning towards Windows XP, simply because I have only limited experience with Linux, and don't think I'll have the energy to set up something I'm not used to the workings of. Hopefully I'll soon find the motivation to fix it, as not having internet access in my room sucks.
severus (my computer) has been experiencing a problem for some time: it loses the ability to resolve urls after sometime of being on and has to be restarted in order to use the net. i have now figured out that this problem occurs when the computer is idle. to combat this, i simply leave music playing. it seems to work so far.
Room available immediately in 4 bedroom on Mass Ave in Arlington. We are 3 very queer non-smoking individuals and 4 cats (even one of the cats is gay). Enclosed back porch with view of Spy Pond in winter. Beautiful hardwood floors, bay windows. Cable modem internet. Off-street parking. On 77, 79, 89, and 350 bus routes. 15 minute walk to Alewife redline stop. 30 minute walk or 10 minute bus ride to Davis Square. 2 floors. 2 bathrooms. Very spacious. $400+
I don't know what I did, but somehow, I fixed my computer. It works again. Somewhere between deleting regedit and a system restore to a time that it still didn't work and resetting my firewall everything works again. I'm not sure which step fixed everything. But it's fixed. I can get online again!
my computer is having much problems first comcast erroneously shut us down sunday claiming they never got the check they cashed they put us back up, but somehow at the same time winsock became corrupted on my system in an attempt to fix it, i put the install cd for windows xp in the drive and run the repair reinstall routine this should take 38 minutes but it is still going it says 6 minutes remaining it said 7 this morning and 9 last night it slowed way down at 18 and has gotten progressively slower but if i stop it all that means is i'll have to restart the process i already restarted once, and i'm not going to do it again i'm just going to wait maybe my computer will be usable tomorrow maybe i'll give up and install linux who knows
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invalid_userid's visit anyway, so I shouldn't be spending much time online anyway.
awake
mellow
excited
thankful
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house_of_clocks all week. Comcast was supposed to be over today "sometime between 7am and 7pm" to fix it. However, Comcast decided the problem was with the utility box on the poll and not with our cable modem which they had earlier concluded was the problem. They didn't call. After we waited for them all day, 
pissed off
hungry
accomplished
depressed