My Son Hates Being Homeschooled

OMG Furries… homeschooling… furry hour… barking at teacher… brain hurt… where to… start… fzzt grrp!

::thud:: 

At some point the last fews weeks EVERY voicemail we've gotten the last year appeared back in our saved voicemail box. Time Warner Digital phone FTW!

Took me an hour to delete them all… ugh!

Blew my knee out the day before I was to go to Pennsic, thus why I am not there. OUCH, Majorly OUCH. How did I do it? It's been sore past few weeks, been crunchy for 20 years thanks to a misguided landing off a theater stage, then after a shopping trip I put my hand on a wall to steady myself as kicked off my Birks. BAM! Just like that. Standing still.

I'm so talented.

Now I have to figure out how to convince Mr Man to unpack the car for me. (yeah right)

Think the 2003 movie with Jessica Alba from a few year back was bad? Try the one made in 1993. Made by Roger Corman - do I need to say more? Rger Corman is the Home Shopping Chanel of movie makers in my opinion.

So bad, Avi Arad with Marvel (behind the recent Marvel blockbusters like Spiderman, Hulk and Ironman), gave Corman the money he paid out making it and orderd it burned and had everyone's memries wiped. (Okay I made that one up.)

The pictures are cringe worthy. My bro has seen a bootleg of it and he said it was incredibly bad.

Dr. Horrible, if you haven't seen it, is a three part (so far) surprisingly brilliant musical web series from Joss Whedon and his brothers and pals. I've never been a big Whedon fan, sorry guys, my geek cred is tarnished, but I do like this. Top it with Neil Patrick Harris, who is awesomely cool in a way that no one quite understands, and it's just great. 

It was free for a short time in July on the website above, and is now on iTunes. But thanks to Hulu.com you can still get it free for a few more days on the Dr Horrble Site, but you can't take it with you on your ipod (which I like for those boring times). 

It's been a MONTH since I posted? Wow. I've never gone that long, just been busy and not much has been happening. Waiting for Bush to implode into a pile of fiery dung beetles, or January, which ever comes first.

 aw this video today and decided I had to spread the word, all font geeks will snarf. Of course anyone into WWII might too. I know I did. Har!

Anyway, just catching my breath from all the etsy sales, had a ton last month and I am finally finishing them, thank god.

Maybe I'll share some pics of the nephew while I'm at it… he's a cutey.

This pic is cute int hat he looks so bored, and so much like my brother. That's even before you realize this is a suit that my brother wore at this age. (There is a pic of him in it but it's not online)

This one just cracks me up with the hat. Looks like a little comedian from the 50's.

Have I mentioned his mom is a photographer? There are more pics here, including some of my brother with Nick so you can see the resemblance.

"Had this is fish bones cable winder, Earphone wire in above, Adjusts the suitable length, Nearby two firmly arranged ok, Convenient, practical, is artistic, Suits each kind of earphone use, The exterior dexterous is popular, After the use the dirty dirt may with ease clean.
The color is stochastic"

Want to know what it is?

There are some real good commercials on and I thought I'd share a couple, and one awful one.

First, Burn Notice is back in 4 loooong weeks and this new promo for it is freaking hawt.

Second, the series of commercials for freecreditreport.com are catchy, likable and never annoying. He sings about his house, job and car and how these are effected by bad credit. I never find myself annoyed by them

Which is completely oppsite to my reaction to the Esurance crap fest that I hate with an all comsuming passion. DIE DIE DIE squeaky whiny songwriter I've never heard of. DIE!

I twittered a little of this, consider that the teaser to this.

Mr Man is a good sport, you have to be to be married to me. Trust me on that. 

Knowing I needed maxi pads (i was going to run out for some later tonight) and he was out he stopped in at Walgreens for me on the way home. Now, in about 15 years together I have NEVER asked him to get them for me, I know it's not a task men are really familiar or comfortable with. It's my problem I do it, I think he appreciates that.

After many minutes of telling him the brand, and style I wanted, and him not being able to find them, flustered he asked scanning a huge aisle of maxipads "How the hell do you find the ones you need?"

"P&G used to have icons on the packaging like sailboats and clovers I think put there to help husbands find the right ones I think, but I think they stopped it." I said over the phone.

He started to list off various varieties. "Why do you girls need so many of these anyway? Don't they all do the same thing?" I can hear the frustration his voice.

I try to translate it into Man-ese. "It's like trying to buy screws, each one does something specific or has a slightly different thread. It's like that."

 "Oh, I see. How do I tell if these are these metric or SAE?"

God I love that man. 

Seems my VBB feed is being used over at DaytonOS blog, along with many others, without permission.

 WTF? And worse of all some of them have comments, over there.

 This fucking sucks, I think. But there seems to be no way to contact people there without a whois.

Do I have to be labelled a anti-feminist, ageist, sexist or racist because I don't like a political candidate?

Can my not liking Hillary just be that? It's not anything specfic, it's not that she's a woman, it's not anything realy, I just don't like her.

Okay okay I hate the wide eyes possessed smile she gives people when shaking hands in crowds that seems to say "here is me acting to pay attention to what you're saying, or caring that you're here". (It's if anything a bad politician face and she should really try harder.) And that she's acing like she didn't vote for the war… it's okay to admit you were fooled with the others Hil. But My not liking you has nothing to do with what isn't between your legs.

And of course I can't vote McCain after Bush, and his recent efferts to snuggle with him. I do genuinely like the man, her reminds me of my deceased father in law,  I hold him no Ill will. I actually in some ways even admire him - but I just don't like this politics and recent moves to seduce the far right when he started doing a couple years ago and leaning away from his moderate stances. It has nothing to do with age.

I'm just sick of the blamescaping (did I make this word up just now?).

A&E Television Network  - Andromeda Strain

Tivo lists only one title, not which PART it is, and the show doens't say in the decriptions. So I went to the tlink above. Helpful except… there is no Wed 28th 1am airing… ther eis a 11pm and a 3am.

Now what programming geniuses? You're plugging this to high heaven how about letting us in one whaen it's on or what parts are on!

Does ANY one else watch 'Reaper' on CW?

We freaking love that show, it's a highlight of our week since I discovered the first episode (I was watching i ton tivo and when it restarted in reruns I got Mr Man hooked on it in one ep) and I have to say I called Sam's little secret like three weeks ago… but his "parents" are demons? It looks so. Eeee!

Please tell me I'm not the only person watchign this. It's a great show.

Also good show on CW is Everyone Hates Chris  - that's a little gem I tell ya. Everyweek is fabulous. 

Both of them I think are being done a disservice by not getting on a bigger network. They are every bit as good as the stuff I watch on the big Four.

• This blog MIGHT blog look diff. I updated to the new  wordpress and the old template is…limited at best. So it's time for a new look. Trying to find a template with good bones that I like to start anew with. Don't be surprised if it changes on you between visits. Whatever template I go with will end up majorly edited and regraphic'ed . I'm trying out various ones trying to decide which one works the best for me…

• Everytime to go to post something anymore it seems too much trouble and other times I realized I've posted it before. I've been keeping busy on small things, selling more pincushions than I can make and thats the main reason for not posting, hard to type when you are handsewing.
• In other news I'm still doing the Scifi Cast - week seven who'de thunk it? We even purportedly have some listeners! If you watch Battlestar Galactica we're the nerds for you, no minutia left untouched! And I only wax poetic about Baltar every OTHER week or so.

That's all for now, I'll post more this week honest!

This Belt Buckle for Type Addicts makes me wish I wore belts.

I am big a Battlestar Galactica fan (I even do a podcast on it with two other geek pals) so when this came over the Google alert I knew I wanted to post it…

Commander Adama has a shaving mirror in his cabin. This mirror is made by IKEA, and is a model called “Fräck” (spelling according to IKEA Web site). This word is similar to “frak” (spelling according to the subtitles with an “a” and without a “c”, which is the primary vulgarity in the Battlestar Galactica universe. Link

Now that’s funny. I know one of the set decorators had to do it on purpose… love it.

I forgot to post the link to Ep III then we released EP VI…

But no fear we’re now on iTunes and if you are realy bored you can subcribe!.

Aren’t we special???

A few years ago there was an article about how a survey compiled about how people hate being in a circular “touch 1″ customer service phone hell. Sunday night I actually was a screaming, crying, ranting she-weevil to a TS guy. They broke me.

So my Mother in law has been having issues with her internet and it looked as if the router, and possibly the modem were both bad. She’d had a cable tech out to look at the modem and they said it was fine but there was SOMETHING wrong. So Mr Man finally broke down and bought her a Belkin N1 Vision (which if it works is supposed to tell you everything from how fast your internet is to how to make Paella), and we took it over to install Saturday. The modem didn’t work, didn’t see the network and so I called Belkin Tech Support.

Two hours later I finally got them to deduce something must be wrong with the modem. The fact that it might be the modem was not out of the question so no biggie.. So Since was going to be in town again the next day for a family thing, no biggie, I packed it up and took it to the local TW office and swapped it for her on the way home. Easy peasy.

I come back the next day, 5pm or so, and reset it all up with the new modem. Router still does not work. Argh. So I call Belkin - again.

This time I spent THREE plus hours with them on the phone across five calls (after getting disconnected twice) stuck in the hold line from hell for most of it listening to the same 60 seconds of the SAME Mozart stanza (not even a whole song! Just one little part of it). Let me just tell you this… I’m here to say it feels like torture. Real torture like Guantanamo Bay.

Finally into hour three they give me what I wanted 5 hours and two days ago - an RMA. They would call me the next day to set it up (more on this later).

So that done, I start to pack up to leave, the MIL pops open her email - Not taking her password now. No access. Internet is fine, just no email. WTF? So I call Mr man and tell him to fend for himself, it’s now eight o’clock pm, and I call Time Warner.

First and second call: on hold for 30 minutes waiting to talk to someone, and I’m disconnected. Thrs call I get someone, do a bunch of butt simpe reset and junk, and get bumped to level two. She thinks she knows exactly why were having problems since it accompanied a modem swap, and she puts me on hold to try to get it done. Over an hour later I’m STILL on hold waiting for her to come back.

It was somewhere about the 40th ad for I Am Legend on Pay Per View that something in me snapped like a burnt twig. I realize I’ve been dumped I got mad, but I also started crying like someone who couldn’t take any more. but also mad. The mother in Law is urging me to hang up and call it a night, it’s nearly 11pm now. I should go to bed. She wants me to stay over now that it’s so late.

Through tears and clenched teeth I say that they are NOT WINNING and call back, twice more trying to circumvent the hold times and get ANYONE to rant at. Finally I give up and call the regular tech line again.

When the guy comes on the line I actually felt almost bad for him as I began a all out frontal assault cursing at him between sobs. I tell him under NO Mean was he putting me on hold EVER. He was going to solve my problem if it meant taking his headset and HANDING it to a supervisor, but he WAS NOT putting me on hold. I had had all I could take. I hissed at him for five whole minutes that it takes A LOT to break me, but they had done it. I told him I knew what Guantanamo Bay must feel like, because after “five hours of headset assholes” I was not even the same person and repeating messages put the shiver of hell into me. I told him that I am pretty unflappable and I get angry before anything else, so for me to be crying like a wussy girl meant they had done me mental harm, and goddamn them for that. (I am NOT a crier. I just don’t do it. I have three moods: goofy, happy and trigger happy, thanks that’s it. When I get to trigger happy back away slowly. I had surpassed my previous peak of “I’ve had it” level.)

The last time I cried that completely from my soul it was when Mister Man’s cousin shot her Mom who was suffering from Cancer in the hospital and turned the gun on herself last October. Yeah. That bad. (Did I blog about that? I can’t remember.)

Anyway, I have to say it though, he could see the writing on the wall and was going out of his way to try to work around my refusal to be on hold, and trying to talk me out of the bell tower. Finally they know what happened, talking to a supervisor on IM across the building, that I needed to go to level two - again. I said no. I said “end me to level three”. He agrees, but says it means I have to go on hold again, but the upside was the wait time was shorter for level three since they had far less call volume. I sigh and begrudgingly say okay. I tell him that If I’m disconnected, they were truly going to wish they were never born.

I only wait ten minutes this time, and a young man answers. I tiredly ask him what level he was, I barely have the brain to even mouth the words. He said three. I begin another exhausted rant, being sure to tell him that I’ve been trying to fix this for for going into my third hour and sixth call, twice being disconnected and once being abandoned entirely for an hour. He is aghast and sets to work solving the problem, which only his level could have done anyway - Reinitializing the modem. Email works again. It’s now a little after midnight. I thanked him for fixing it and then me and my MIL did a happy dance of victory.

See, seems the local TW office hadn’t done it it’s job. The modem was not taking her password because it hadn’t been cleared from the LAST person it was owned by. Only the email app checks into the server, so it was sending it in and erroring since we weren’t who it thought we should have been. It wasn’t the problem we started with, but it also sure the hell wasn’t our fault. It was a massive error on their local branches side, and I’m thinking Wednesday I’m going to call and raise holy hell about it to the office in question.

All this time my Mother in Law , 79, is steaming mad seeing me go through all this - she is raving how she doesn’t need the internet, how she’s had nothing but trouble (and it’s true she has), how she was regretting signing up for two years to save a few bucks and and how what they were doing to me was absolutely reprehensible. She was as stomping mad as I was broken.

So that is how my 15 minutes job on the way home turned into 6 hours of pure 7th ring pf tech support phone hell the broke my will to live and now why Mozart makes be burst into tears. (Yup till does, I was trying to find the song in question for this post, but can’t do it… )

So to pick up on the Belkin half of the saga again, Monday their “staff” was supposed to call me at MY house to set it the return, but managed to call my MIL instead (opposie what I had directed) and left a voicemail, but not a phone number. Of Course. So I had to call Tech support AGAIN. As soon as second the 30 second clip of the same stanza of Mozart starts again, (that god damn clip that I can’t find the name to) I lose it, entirely. I’m crying when Mr Mac calls through on call waiting. That stunned him a bit, as he knows I’m not a weepy pussy girl.

I come back to the hold just as they are picking up and I’m still crying. At this point he starts to explain how they do the exchanges. I have two options: pay in advance for a replacement to be refunded later after they get the broken unit or send mine in first and wait 20 days or so for a new one.

20 days!!! And he can’t even do it for me over the phone, I have to go to Belkin’s website to fill out paperwork for it. I tell him there is no way after this treatment I’m giving them my credit card number and I’ll fill out the stinking form. Thanks for nothing and making me call in for this again.

I hang up and get an idea. I call the place I bought it from, techonweb.com. he answers immediately I and tell them my saga and the guy doesn’t hesitate that of course they’ll take it back as long as it’s within 20 days. (only had it a week). I wanted to kiss the techonweb.com guy on the mouth. I hadn’t called them earlier since most times the internet places won’t take back warranty items making you go to the manfacturer, so I didn’t even think if calling them sooner. Within 12 hours the modem is being shipped, it’ll be here tomorrow. Techonweb.com rules! (many links for google love.)

Yesterday I call Time Warner, and only a few minute son hold I get get billing on the line and demand my MIL be comenstaed for all her un-service and MY time. I said someone is going to pay and she’s getting the money. They can only offer a measly $20 credit. I take it for now and tell them to apply it to her bill. It’s not a head on plate, but I’m not done yet. I’m sending this post to BOTH of my torturers.

Belkin and Time Warner SUCK!! (and I did that so it shows up in Google Searches. Bastards.)

Hancock looks to be another AWESOME Wil Smith movie for the $th of July weekend. Already planning to see it day one.

We had a lot of positive response to the last one, so we did it again!

S4 Episode 2 of Battlestar Galatica aired Friday and the next day myself, Dave Kaylow, Ged Maheux, and joined now by Krystyn Heide, all got together to record our reactions again for Sci-Fi Cast Episode 2.

Why would The Olympic torch for the China games would only make one US stop, and that would be San Francisco?

Why in the hell would you pick a city with one of hte largest Chinatowns in the country, and one filled full of activist hippies you KNOW will protest Tibet, something China doesn’t want discussed especially not in thier “time to shine”? I hope they weren’t surprised by the huge protest. Well hell, maybe they were, maybe they just don’t assume protests will happen like we do.