So I've been gone way too long. But I've got my reasons.
Let's go back to June 19th. I got home from work one night and I was watching TV when it shut off. On its own. I turned it back on and the volume started to max out. On its own. Then it started changing channels... you guessed it. ON ITS OWN. Efforts to exercise control with the remote were rebuffed with extreme prejudice. Finally I unplugged it and went to bed, baffled at what was going on.
The next day I plugged it back in. Same deal. So while it certainly wasn't in a vegetative state, it clearly wasn't capable of making rational decisions. I declare it dead and buy a new 26-inch flatscreen because it fits both my price range and my size range.
ONE WEEK LATER.
After getting a few too many blue screens of death over a period of three days, I started to panic and start my annual computer backup earlier than I normally would have. During the backup, I got another one.
And that one turned out to be the last one.
I don't remember how long I'd had that Dell desktop. Maybe since 2002? Did I move down here with it? Who knows. So I've just replaced my TV and now my computer's dead. (The wonderful irony here is that I had been considering for a while what kind of new computer I was going to get, maybe within the next year or so. We'll be coming back to this.)
So I went out the next day and bought a new laptop. Brought it home, went to work, came home and set it up. Couldn't connect to the Internet. Checked the cable, checked the modem, checked the connector cables. Nothing. After a combined hour or so on the phone with both the cable company and Dell support, it was decided that the laptop had a bad motherboard that wasn't recognizing anything that was trying to connect to the Internet.
Which meant that they'd have to replace it. And I'd have to stuff it in a box and ship it to Mississippi or Indonesia or wherever. (It might have been Arkansas, actually. Let me check. The label says Houston but I doubt it was the final destination.) I also have a metric assload of boxes piling up in my apartment because of all this, added by my purchase of a small bargain-basement laptop just so I could keep everyone updated on my progress quickly.
Got the Dell back a week from that Monday (we're in the middle of July now) and after fighting with it some more, I figured out the other aspect of what had happened: The cable modem the cable company game me was so old ("How old WAS it?") that they'd stopped updating USB drivers for it about two years ago. Thankfully, that problem was easily solved with the purchase of an Ethernet cable, which the comp happily recognized and chugged its way onto the Internet.
The speed of this thing is mind-blowing. Seriously. Why didn't I upgrade sooner? ("Because you're a broke idiot.") Easy there. I'm not broke.
ANYway, you'd think that'd be it. But last week - last Thursday, actually - my dad tried to call me with the news that my mom had been laid off from her nursing job that she'd had for about as long as we've lived in New Jersey. I say "tried" because my phone was busy. And my phone was busy because there was a problem with the line.
Of course, I didn't find out about any of this until Dad e-mailed me the next day. I figured - and hoped - that maybe it was just the phone that I've had for close to 20 years breathing its last breaths. So on my break from work that night, I went and bought a new phone, which, again, I'd been telling myself I was going to do for a year or so and never got around to it.
Turned out the phone wasn't the problem.
Two aborted attempts to contact the phone company later and I had an appointment because their remote test couldn't determine if the problem was inside or outside the apartment and somebody would have to come look. In the meantime, I actually had to turn my cell phone on for a week straight. I drained the battery on it. That's happened maybe one other time since I've had it.
This was finally resolved today. The guy showed up at about 8:30 this morning (!) and pokes around inside and outside for a while before finding the problem: a short in the wiring. It's possible that something related to last week's thunderstorms had caused the wiring to short out, but the outside connector box was pretty old anyway (Aside: The next building I move into will be much, much newer than this one. I've had a toilet and water heater go down on my watch and now this.) and probably just conked out on its own. It was a surprisingly easy fix - of course, they're trained professionals - and he was on his way before 10 and I set up my new phone, alerted everyone, and went back to bed.
(Though, to be honest, the telemarketers? The static? Didn't miss any of that.)
Anyway, I'm back, and it's almost football season to boot, so TJD business will definitely be picking up. (Among other things, the JackSux 6 draft is Saturday unless it isn't anymore.)
P.S. - This has been my ringtone for the last week.
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