March 2, 2004

I had to get myself out of bed this morning and get moving at a reasonable time because I am working in Ithaca all day. I got up around 6:30 and did some work around here before I took off to drive east. I got into Varna around 10:30 or so and spent most of the day working at Lifestyle’s office in Varna. I was lucky that my timing was so good, Time Warner’s technician pulled into the parking lot right in front of me and I got to be there to make sure that things got done. Time Warner has been denying that they have been at fault in any way for Lifestyle’s Internet access having been down for the last month or so. Originally we thought that the problem must be a bad cable line but when Andy and I were in town last week we discovered that it was almost for sure the modem. We were able to prove that the problem wasn’t with any equipment that was in the office but Time Warner and Road Runner wouldn’t believe us (because it is cheaper for them to deny fault and never give you your money back.) So, of course, even with me standing there talling the technician exactly why the problem had to be the modem he just kept saying “That isn’t possible” – but eventually I convinced him to swap out the modem and, as expected, the problems went away immediately and everything was fine just as we said that it would. What an awful company to deal with. Even if their prices were good (which they aren’t) I would never do business with them because they treat their customers so rudely. It is like they actually enjoy treating you like crap and not letting you get service. I think they are offended because even their top techs are horribly unknowledgable compared to their average customer. It is a real problem when you have a technology company without anyway to train their own incompetent people about the technologies that they provide to their customers. None of their techs must be able to get Road Runner at their own homes because everyone I know has had to troubleshoot their own cable for the techs so that the techs could know how to fix it. If a tech owned his own house, he wouldn’t have anyone there to explain how cable works to him!

After working in the office all morning and getting some vegetable fried rice from Ling Ling, I headed up to Trumansburg and met with Steve for a little while. We did some work at the house and then went with some friends to Ron Don’s for a light dinner. We had a good time and got some work done. Then I hit the road to get back to Geneseo.

While I was in Ithaca, Dominica and dad spent the day hanging out together while dad worked installing some electrical in the basement so that we can get to work moving the servers into the dedicated alcove for them. They have been horribly in the way since they came up here two and a half months ago. Dad finished up just before I got home and had taken off. Min had eaten dinner while I was out. Min got called this evening so she knows that she is going to be substitute teaching in Nunda tomorrow for high school math. So she knows that she has to get to bed at a reasonable time. We watched more of Gilligan’s Island – we are almost through the first season. There are a lot of episodes to wade through and it isn’t the kind of show that you can just watch hours and hours of in a row. Bob Denver’s character of Gilligan is so obnoxious that you just want to kill him. He is really way too much like a spoiled little brat than a bumbling idiot that it makes his character seem more malicious than inept. I think that that was a major mistake on the show. It would have been more funny and more watchable if they hadn’t made him so in your face.

After that, we watched Secondhand Lions which we borrowed from dad last week. It was pretty good. Duvall rocks as always and Caine is really good. They really should have thought twice about casting that pathetic Haley Joel Osment as the kid in that though. I think that it was supposed to be a neat kid that you feel sorry for but you end up really hating the kid because he is so stupid and obnoxious. He is the most vacant actor I have ever seen. There is a reason that they picked him for that retarded AI movie, because he didn’t have to act, he is really creepy and vacant like an android. He delivers one of the worst performances I have ever seen in this film. But even he isn’t able to ruin this movie, the story was interesting and the professional adult actors all gave great performances they more than made up for Osment. Although it was obvious at times how disgusted they were to be working with him, in my opinion. They seemed to get lifeless and disgruntled when reading their lines against him. Perhaps Haley Joel Osment isn’t a real kid and it actually an experimental computer generated 3d model that they are throwing into movies to see if we notice because we are getting close to having technology like that these days. But I think that a computer generated model that they were putting that much effort into these days would do a better job at seeming like a real kid.

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