Grande "Lack Of" Communications

For almost 2 years while living at my apartment, I used Grande Communications for my phone and internet. Oh how they have fallen out of favor with me now. About two weeks before moving from my apartment, to my new house, I call them up to notify them of my upcoming change. Their customer support guy takes my information and tells me everything is in and the service should go live on the day I need it to. Great! Im all set. I then tell him I will also need my DSL internet to be moved on the same day. He begins looking for my account information, but cannot find it anywhere in his records. He asks me, "are you sure you have DSL internet?" I tell him, yes... I am sure of it. Turns out, somehow my internet account got listed as a business account handled by a different department. I'll have to call back to get that changed. So a couple days later I finally get through to that department and get that transfered on the same day as my phone stuff. Now... I am all set.

I move into my house and thank goodness, there is a dial tone. I have a phone. The next day, the DSL technician is there to hook up my internet. Im online again and life is good. But things were only good for about 3 days. I quickly find out my phone features like call waiting and caller ID are not turned on! So, back on the phone with Grande customer support. He says that he can see the order was entered but somehow didnt get all the features transfered to the new address. Um.. ok. Strike one. He turns them on for me and phone-wise, im back in business.

Then the real fun starts. And with it, the start of the downward spiral of my faith in Grande Communications. I come home from work the next day to find out I have no internet connectivity. My first thought is maybe there is a problem with the Grande network and their DSL service has been interupted in my area. My system worked just fine the night before when I shut everything down. I quickly double check all my settings, modem and equipment to make sure its still set up as it should be. Everything is the same as always and should be working. So I call up Grande tech support. I ask him if there is something going on in my area and he tells me there are no known problems. I tell him whats going on and of course he tells me to "reboot my computer and that should do it". To humor him, I do it. He then walks me thru the level 1 tech routine of resetting the modem and removing any routers that are connected. Oddly enough, I can connect at a slower speed when hooked up directly to the wall thru my modem, without the router in the mix. I tell him this and he say's he'll have to get a field tech to have a look. Finally they get someone out there on the next saturday afternoon. Actually 2 techs show up. They go over everything Ive already done and then run a few more tests. He gets on the phone with some special people from Grande and they try to figure it out. None of them can figure out why I suddenly cannot connect to my DSL service through a router. Finally he tells me the problem isnt on my side, its on the Grande equipment side of things. They recently took over internet service in my area from another smaller company and now the equipment and information transfer between the 2 companies has made things messy. He then goes on to tell me, the network bridge in my section of the city is flakey and it could be 8 to 10 weeks before its replaced!! Then, he says something to me that was Grande's nail in its coffin as far as im concerened. He turns to me and says "well, do you really need to use a router?" I clench my jaw and fists trying to remain calm... I look around my at the 3 other computers that share my internet connection and then back at him and reply "yes, I really do need to use my router". He then says "well, I'll have to talk to some people and I'll call you back on Monday with more information". Monday has come and gone, no call from Grande, still no connection through my router. I am now shopping for a new ISP. Goodbye Grande. You failed.

Gulf Gettaway

This past weekend Emily and I hoped on a Southwest Airlines plane and visited our good friends Mike and Cheryl in Galveston Texas. I always like going down there. The ocean, palm tree's and warm weather are an easy tropical gettaway from the rather dry, scenic-less area I live in. Not only was this just a normal visit, we were also there for a mission. Two missions to be exact. We were up early saturday morning and in the car, headed back up to Houston where Cheryl and Emily were going skydiving!

We arrived at our scheduled time of 9:30am so they could check in and go watch the instructional video and meet their sky-diving instructor. Turns out, the place was so far behind with other reservations, they didn't even get on a plane until 3:30pm. That left us with hours of watching the same plane take off over and over and watching wave after wave of jumpers land in the designated landing field. Lucky for us, the weather was great all weekend. With temps in the upper 70's and cloudless skies, it was kind of nice to just hang out in the shade and watch the action. I took the opportunity to bring along my Digital Rebel and take some action shots of all the sky-divers as the landed. Finally it was Cheryl and Emily's turn. They suited up, boarded the plane with their instructors and took off! The plane climbed for about 15-20 minutes until it was no longer visible from the ground, which is about 14,000 ft. I just laid on the ground scanning the sky for any signs of falling people. Suddenly, parachutes begin to open far in the distance. Slowly, people from their flight begin to reach the ground. I notice thought its all solo jumpers. The tandum jumpers went last. Finally I can see Cheryl and Emily, attached to their instructors, drifting back down to earth. First Cheryl lands, then Emily. Both skidding gently across the grass for fairly soft landings. They did it! Mission one, complete! See this link for pictures from the day! ---> SKYDIVE HOUSTON

The second mission of the weekend was planned out long ago by Emily. Her entry form had been picked to allow her to try out for the game show Jeopardy! For weeks leading up to this trip, I had helped her study questionaire books, state capitals, presidents and information on foreign countries. Now it was time to take their test. The first level she had to get through was a quick fire round of questions. Ten questions with 10 seconds to answer each question. No multiple choice, you had to write it out. So either you know it or you don't! From what she told me, she was immediatly asked a couple questions over topics we had studied, so she easily got them correct. When that phase was done, and scores were graded, she didn't make the cut unfortunatly. The few that did, were taken to another room where they would compete in a mock Jeopardy show. This was to see how they did under pressure and on camera. That would have been interesting to see.

Later that afternoon Mike and Cheryl took us back to the airport for our flight home. The flight to and from Dallas and Houston has to be one of the shortest ive EVER been on. The plane takes off, reaches altitude and then begins the decent to the next airport. The flight is barely an hour. It was a great trip and I really needed the get away. Thanks to Mike and Cheryl for having us down. It was a lot of fun! I look forward to a summer trip so we can hit the beaches and swim in the hot south Texas weather!

Its Official!!

As of Friday, March 25th I am a new homeowner! After months of watching the construction and then signing a sky high stack of papers, the house is mine. Good bye apartment. Good bye paying overpriced rent. Good bye noisy neighbors and their dogs. Good bye having to park a mile from my door when I come home late. Hello tons of space and front door parking! Ah yes, these are good times.

FireIE

About 2 months ago I conducted a computer experiment. I was wanting to switch from Internet Explorer (IE) to the new Firefox web browser. But I wanted to find out if all the rumors were true about it being able to avoid spyware and adware so much better than IE. So I first ran a cleaning scan with Adaware and Spybot - Search and destroy. Each one found about 15 suspicious or malicous items living on my system, which was currently runing IE as its web browser. Once the system was clean I loaded up the latest version of Firefox. I continued over the next month and a half to surf the web as I usually would. I just finished running my first Adaware and Spybot scan since that last one a month and a half ago. Adaware found one (1) suspicious item. Spybot found ZERO! It seems the punks that design the spyware just arent targeting Firefox, yet. So, the verdict seems to say that if you want a solid browser that wont clog your system with adware and spyware... grab Firefox over at www.mozilla.org. And, Fire IE.

Almost...

The countdown is nearing an end. T minus 3 days. Then and only then will the official announcement be made. Stay tuned.

Sunday Action

Today was another paintball Sunday and the weather was a perfect 65 degrees and sunny. We had a decent turnout of 8 players which made for even teams. We got things started off at around 10am. The action was slow to start but heated up fast.

A couple games into the day a funny thing happened. Well I'm sure Tod didnt find it funny, but the rest of us did. Tod was on the defending team and had been almost surrounded by my team, as the rest of his team was getting eliminated. Derrick, on my team, laid down surpressive fire which allowed me to move wide left to Tod's right flank. With Tod clear in my sites, I fired off about 8 to 10 quick shots from my Tippmann. He quickly put up his gun to signal he was hit and stop the 3 way barrage he was getting from me and the others. But as he puts his gun into the air, one of other teammates rounds, clips the lid on his paintball hopper (the container on top of the gun which holds all the paintballs). When this lid is clipped, it's spring loaded design flips it wide open into reload mode. This causes all of his remaining painballs to flood out and over his head. To make matters worse, my shot that tagged him out, hit him just below the protective area on his mask, on his neck. It looked like a giant red hickie! LOL He went on to tell us later that he has an important meeting at work on tuesday and now he has to explain the giant neck welt. Too funny!

Later in the day, we had switched to a game type we call "Rush N' Attack". Two teams start at different ends of the wooded field. When both teams are ready, the signal is given and we rush in to attack the other team. The team who covers the most ground the quickest, usually gets the upper hand and the best wooded cover. Well this time, my team got the jump and took a good position. Quickly 2 of the other team were eliminated. We knew this just left two players. Derrick and I found one of them, left without support and pinned down in a pile of logs and brush. I worked my way around to behind his position and gave the signal to Derrick to pour on the covering fire. I moved in and fired as fast as I could to prevent him from turning towards me. By the time I could see him, he was curled into a little ball trying to stay low and avoid the hundreds of rounds of paint being fired at him. Finally a couple of my rounds hit him in the back and he was out.

We knew there was just one guy left. John, the new guy was hiding out still. We knew he might be in the thick brush and small trees just behind where Brandon was just eliminated. Derrick approached from the high trail, I came in from the lower trail to prevent any escape. Suddenly, I see puffs of the white smoke and the popping sound of a paintball gun being fired directly at me. I couldnt see a person though, he was burried so deep in the tree's and brush. I hit the ground to take cover and yell to Derrick to direct him to John's location. Derrick begins advancing into the brush. I sit up and stay low as I move down the trail. Im moving while firing back at him. Figuring I can draw his fire while Derrick gets right up on him. I can hear the paintballs zinging over my head so I try to keep moving and firing fast. Derrick is so close, just a few second longer! I slide down behind a small shrub on a slope in the small trail. Im now closer than ever to Johns position and the paintballs are getting very close. I begin firing my gun in full auto mode, hoping one will get thru the brush and find him in there! All of a sudden my gun stops firing!! CRAP!! It mis-fires, leaving the bolt closed and no shot in the chamber! I give the gun a shake to get paintballs to fall into the chamber again and reach up to pull back the bolt to clear the jam and chamber another shot. Right then I look up from my gun. Its too late. I see it coming but I cant think to move fast enough. Splat!! My field of vision disapears and is replaced by bright pink paint. Im hit right between the eyes on my facemask. I yell hit and drop to my knees to catch my breath. Seconds later Derrick tags out John and my team wins the match. If only i'd held out for 4 more seconds! Oh well, such is the fun of paintball. :)

Belated Bday Announcement!

Happy birthday to the greatest girl in the world, my Emily! :)
Don't worry babe, you look great for 26.

A Surprise Vacation

I got a call last week from my buddy Roger, the one working as a contractor in Afganistan. Which in itself I found odd. But when I looked at the number, it was from a local cell phone number. Huh? He was supposed to be there for a full year before coming home. Did he get fired? Did he quit? Well, neither. He gets a one month paid vacation back here in the States. Must be nice. So last night I ventured over to his house across town to hang out. Emily came along because I wanted her to meet his sister Melissa and see where he lived. One of the first things I noticed when I arrived was Roger had dropped probably 20 to 30 pounds. He was a real Stay-Puff marshmellow man when he left 6 months ago. I guess it's a good thing the food at his base in Afganistan sucks. LOL He then showed me something pretty interesting. He took out 4 or 5 CD binders and handed them to me. I opened them up to see each of them filled completely with DVD movies. Upon closer inspection, I saw these weren't retail versions. Turns out, over in Afganistan you can buy new release movies for $2.50. Of course they are illegal burns from store bought DVD's. But for some reason, I dont see the Movie Picture Association sending agents into Kabul Afganistan to put a stop to the problem. Roger tells me he has bought 80 or 90 so far. Nice!

We left Rogers house around 11:45pm and headed home. I was stuffed from all the snacks Melissa put out. There were several other people there too. Neighbors along with Brotha James who showed up just after we did. It was a really fun time and it was nice to see Roger before he goes back to work overseas.

The Countdown

Big news is on the horizon. I can't announce it yet, so stay tuned. :)

Spare Yourself

That is, spare yourself paying $8 to see the movie "Constantine" in the theater and wait for it to come out as a rental. The special effects were decent, the plot and topic... somewhat interesting. But the movie just had WAY too many "drag on forever" scenes that really slowed things down. It turned a decent 1.5 hour movie into a 2 hour 10 minute marathon. I give it a 5 out of 10. Good rental, not worth full movie price. Ah, who am I kidding... skip the rental and download a pirated version from online. :)

The Day From Hell

Normally my work days are pleasant, busy and fulfilling. Yesterday was a day where all of a sudden the reason why people go postal at their place of work, became all too clear. For certain reasons, I must be vague about certain details. But you'll get the picture.

Its Wednesday morning and my co-worker Karl and I are in one of our buildings setting up whats called a VLAN. Basically this requres us to move all the PC's and printers in that building to a new IP range on the network. For instance, everyone connecting to 10.1.x.x will be moved to 10.7.x.x. Ok, enough techie talk.... you get the idea. When we move them, they temporarily lose connection to the network and any printers. We then quickly get them back up and running while on site.

In this building, are certain "special people" who believe they are too important to be bothered by my work. One in particular, who already despises anyone and anything to do with I.T., computers or networks. This person who I had forgotten about was a timebomb awaiting our arrival. About 30 minutes after moving a printer to the new network settings, I get a call from another co-worker. I could immediatly hear the panic in his voice as he told me I need to get to that persons office ASAP and fix their printing. He then told me this user was now irate and "freaking out". Great. Just what I needed to have happen. As I begin climbing the stair back up to the offices where this oh-so-special user resides, I could already hear screaming echoing down the hallway. The user was on the phone with someone and was screaming at them about this printer being down. And I dont mean controlled anger, venting frustration. I mean screaming at the highest level possible. Voice quivering, bordering on tears-screaming. My first thought was, "this can't be caused by a missing printer... can it?" I stop outside the users office to wait for them to hang up the phone and calm down. I hear them scream into the phone, "these IDIOTS of screwed everything up!!". This persons admin assistant looks at me and says, "I dont envy you right now". Gee.... thanks. The irate user hangs up the phone and I enter the office with a smile and say "hello, I'm here to get you up and printing again". Immediatly I'm met with more screaming. The user tells me to get out of the office and since they are on a deadline, this mess will have to wait till tomorrow. By now we've spent almost 20 minutes waiting for them to stop screaming at people, get off the phone and calm down. To fix the users problem would have taken me no longer than 1 minutes and 30 seconds. This was ridiculous. So I turn around and walk out of the office. The screaming begins again. Later I find out this user callled all the way up the chain of command screaming and crying to anyone who they could make listen. This was simply an attempt to make my department look bad. In the end, it didn't but it did put a heavy dark cloud over the rest of my day. I really feel sorry for anyone who has to work around this person on a daily basis. They only have two personality modes, quiet and working.... or enraged and screaming. What was that line for The Wizard of Oz.... something like "Careful, someday someone may drop a house on you too".

Movin on Up!

My Thursday B league soccer team scored another win last night to move us up into a solid 2nd place. I scored 2 goals in a 8-4 victory. This was our first game with our new goal keeper since our last one had the melt down and recieved 4 red cards. Needless to say, he's out for the season. The new keeper did fairly well. Except for early in the game when he tried to dribble the ball out and then lost the ball allowing the other team to put the ball into an open net. Luckily we bounced back and won the match!

So Much Potential, So Little Quality

After a huge advertising blitz on TV and in the theater, I finally get my chance to go check out the new movie "Assult on Precinct 13". Yes this is a remake of the 1970's version where a big city gang assults a police station to free some of their buddies. But in this remake, the bad guys are cops trying to kill a big time mobster who is in Precinct 13's jail. Now, I'm all for a good shoot'em up action movie. And I can even overlook most gaps in reality, plot or continuity to get through and enjoy a movie. But this one was just too much. Call me a nit-picker. One of the first plot fall-outs that bothered me was.... well the premises. So, Im supposed to believe that when the countries top mobster is finally captured and sent to jail, the police would only assign 2 officers to ride with him on a lone bus thru a snow storm? No heavily armed guards riding shotgun, no escort units following the bus, just a driver and one guard transporting the most dangerous crime boss in the country. Strike one. Then, they are forced to make an emergency stop at Precinct 13 because of the snow storm. Knowing Precinct 13 is about to be closed down and is on minimal staff, the police department sends no one else to help out. Later, when the bad cops "jam" all the radio's in the area, it seems no one from back at the police station ever tries but fails to contact Precinct 13 for any type of a status report throught the night. If they had, cops would have been all over the place.

Once the siege starts, the bad cops surround the building with snipers on all the surrounding factory buildings. Yet, throughout the movie they all sit infront of the windows looking out for an up-coming attack. Im thinking this would have been a determined snipers dream. To have your targets continuously sitting infront of all the windows with the blinds up would have made for a short movie I guess.

Then, at the end of the movie, the action moves from in the police station into what appears to be a dense forrest. Yes, a forrest near downtown Detroit. What next, the characters become un-phased by hours of exposure to the subzero temps of a Michican snow storm? Oh wait... they did that too. This movie is barely a rental.

Clownfish, Grouper and Sharks... Oh My!

This past Sundays trip to the Dallas World Aquarium yeilded some great photo's! Everywhere I turned there were cool fish to snap shots of. Be sure to visit my photo gallery and have a look!
---> Dallas World Aquarium <----

Whole Lotta Nuthin

For the first time in a loooooong time, I have a whole lotta nuthin going on this weekend. Paintball has been cancelled because lack of peeps able to make it and Emily has her sister in town visiting, so they are busy. Im just cleaning house and relaxing. Which is pretty nice. Tonight may have something brewing. A bunch of us are planning a bowling outing. Should be fun. Also, I may be going to the Dallas Aquarium tomorrow. Now that sounds like it could really be fun and give me a great photo opportunity this weekend! I'll be sure to post any good ones I take. Which reminds me, I need to take some time and update my website again. Maybe the aquarium will give me a good reason and some good material to update with.

And Then There Were Four...

Last weekend, Emily and I ventured down to the local pet store to look at fish for her new aquarium. I had no intentions of buying anything... until I got there. I happened to walk by the hermit crab section and take a look into their tank. I quickly noticed they had a large Purple Claw hermit crab, who looked healthy and active. This is rare at this pet store. Normally they only have very young and small hermies, who look sick and reclusive. So I quickly got someone who works there to pluck him out and put him in a to-go box. I got him home and placed him into my crabitat with the other two hermies I already had. I then realized, there are not enough shell's for the 3 hermit crabs to share. I need more! So Emily and I headed off to the mall, where I knew they had hermit crab supplies and shells. I found the island kiosk in the mall which sells the crabs. I began to pick out shells when I noticed a nice big Purple Claw hermie running across the sand in their pen. I quick bought him.... along with 4 shells and some hermit crab treat mix. I brought everything back home and put my new hermie into the tank. Now, with four hermit crabs scurrying around exploring, it was some fun to watch! The first thing the newest crab did was start trying on new shells. He switched three times while I was watching, finally settling into one of the new shells I had just bought. I could tell the new guys were happy to be out of their petstore pens and into a truly well designed crabitat. I sprinkled some of the hermit crab treat food into their food dish to see if it was something they would like. I came back 15 minutes later and sure enough, one of them was on it chowing down! So far, I havent had any shell fights or scuffles between any of them. This is a good sign that means they are all getting along well and adjusting to their new surroundings nicely. I will hopefully post some good pictures of them soon.

A Big Win!

Tonight my B Division soccer team, Trouble FC, scored a win over the only undefeated team in our division. We pulled it out 2-1. I didn't get any goals in this one and really I dont feel I played very well. It was one of our late games, 11:15pm. By then, I just felt so tired from a long day already. But I was proud of my team for getting the win and pulling us up to a 3-2 record! We are on track for the playoffs.

Downward Spiral

Im not sure what our problem is. My defending champion soccer team is having a lousy start to the new season. We are now 1-3 after another loss 7-5 loss tonight. Last season, we had the lowest goals against total and the 2nd highest goals for tally. This season we have the MOST goals against and have fallen to 3rd lowest scoring. We're getting beat by teams who shouldn't be beating us. As of now, we have to win the rest of our games this season to even have an outside shot at getting into the final. It will be extremely tough.

Personally, I didn't have a bad game tonight. I didnt get as many shifts as I would have liked to, but thats alright. I scored an early goal to get us back in the game in the first half, then got a very nice assist in the middle of the second half to keep it close. The other team was very quick and didnt miss many chances they had to score.

One thing I can vouch for. If you want a little extra "umph" in a sport, drink one of those Red Bull drinks about 45 minutes before game time. When researchers said they found a 20% gain in an athletes performance after drinking one, they weren't kidding. My legs rebound sooner between substitutions, my energy lasts longer on the field and I generally feel more energetic the entire game. Try it, you'll see what I mean.

Abra Kadabra!

I got to see something really cool and fun last night. Emily bought tickets to magician David Copperfield for me her and her mom. The show started at 8:30 so around 5:30 we hopped in the car and headed south to Grandprarie, about 40 minutes away. We easily found the Nokia Live concert hall and went up to get in line outside. Once the doors opened, we had to kill a bit of time until they would let us to our seats. We found where we were to be sitting and got comfortable. It was a little high up to the left of the stage. But we could still see pretty good. To make sure, Emily and her mom brought some small binoculars to help us see.

At about 8:35, Mr. Copperfield took the stage. He made a very impressive entrance. His assistants rolled out a large box made of white sheets on all sides. They opened it up to show it was empty and spun it around on its wheels to show there were no openings on the back sides. Then, they held bright lights to be the backside of the box so you could see any sillouettes inside the box. All of a sudden, before our eyes, a shape appeared inside the box. Then you heard a loud engine roar up. Then the front sheet of the white box drops down and there is David Copperfield on a large Harley Davidson motorcycle. It was pretty cool.

The rest of the night, he did various tricks that defied explanation. He would pick people out of the crowd and pretty much read their minds. You would think he had arranged the people he picked from the crowd. But the way he picked them would make that almost impossible. He toook frisbees and thru them up high, randomly around the crowd. After they finished bouncing around all the grabbing hands, he asked the person who ended up with it to come onto the stage. He later made a a lady and then a group of people disapear. It was a very fun experience. I wish I could have taken pictures but they didnt allow cameras and it was too dark for my camera phone to get a good shot.

If you ever have a chance to see David Copperfield live, i'd say dont pass it up. It was a great time. The only advice I would give would to be get seats as close as you can. That way you can really see every move he makes on stage. Perpahs you will catch him on a slip up!

Fire Fight!!

This past weekend was a paintball Sunday again. I had awaited all week to play and was excited to try out some new gear. I knew we might have a large group of players, which always makes for a very fun day of games.

I woke up at 8:30 on Sunday morning only to look out my window and see it pouring rain! No!! So I started calling all the guys and they seemed to still want to head out to the field and wait for a break in the rain. I quickly checked accuweather.com and their radar showed a small band of storms over my area but moving out quickly! I grabbed my gear and ran out thru the pounding rain to my car and I was off!

I get to the woods lot we play at and a few of the guys are already there. But the rain is still coming down hard. Shortly after, Courts arrives and we sit in my car waiting for the rain to let up. Suddenly, the hard rain turns into a drizzle... then the drizzle stops completly! Game on!

My buddy Steve had come out with his new paintball gear for his first game ever. I think he was a little taken back by what he saw. Steve arrived wearing a black long sleeve shirt, running pants and some football cleats. He was amused to watch the rest of us lace up combat boots, button up camoflage shirts, strap on remote air tanks and tune our tactical radios to different frequencies. We had a full 10 players and 5 v 5 would make for some intense fire fights! Later in the morning, Tod showed up and added another to a team. The action was back and forth with both teams taking wins. Everyone had a ton of fun as usual and now we have a larger group ready to play the next time.