General

My phone & DSL is working again! A major phone line broke, so my phone was out since Nov. 8 and my DSL went down on Nov. 17. BellSouth promised it would be fixed no later than this Sunday, so they kept their promise. A few people got their phone back as early as last Saturday and many of them got the wrong number.

My phone is still not working and won’t be fixed until Nov. 27 according to BellSouth. To make matters worse, my DSL just stopped working yesterday. Right now the only way I can get online is using my cellphone as a bluetooth modem.

Someone from DirecTV was here before 9AM yesterday to repair my dish. He ended up replacing it with a new one since it was slightly damaged. It also appears to be mounted better than the old dish, on the parapet wall as it should be, rather than directly on the roof as the old one was.

It was working perfectly until a little while ago when I suddenly lost all of my programming and the info screen said my account was closed. After calling the service department, it seemed that there was a note that I called to suspend my account, which I didn’t. When I asked to have it restored, the service came back immediately, while I was still on the phone.

This may have happened when I switched the phone number on my account to my cell phone (which can’t be done on their web site), since my home phone is *still* dead. They told me they were adding a note that PPV (which I never use anyway) is blocked since it’s not my home phone until I get it fixed. It might have been mistaken for a request to suspend my account.

For the last week or so I’ve been getting a lot more spam than usual and most of it gets past both gmail’s and Mail.app’s spam filter. It looks like they figured out how to trick spam filters, but hopefully they’ll catch up with it soon.

I really like the Toyota Prius and I was planning to buy one in a few years but not right now since my Corolla is still new and in good shape. I now find out that I can get a big tax deduction for buying one, so I may buy it sooner rather than later. According the IRS, I can get a $2000 deduction if I purchase it this year, but the deduction drops to $500 next year, so I had better hurry.

My phone line (as well as my DSL connection) went dead this afternoon. Thankfully DSL started working again a little while ago although the voice line is dead. When I called BellSouth they said a major trunk was damaged and it may not be repaired until Nov. 27. I don’t really care about the voice line since I have a cell phone, as long as DSL continues to work.

My mother has been in the hospital since she lost power after Wilma because she had difficulty breathing and needed oxygen. They had to drain fluid from her lungs, and when I visited Saturday, the doctor told me they found abnormal cells in the fluid. He still didn’t tell her.

Yesterday she had a CAT scan and today she got the results and it wasn’t good (I still haven’t talked to her doctor). When I saw her today she was pretty upset and seems to have given up hope. I’m not a religious person, but she needs all the prayers she can get. It certainly can’t hurt.

I lost my cell phone a few days ago when I was cleaning up the mess from Wilma, so I went shopping for a new one today. I ended up getting another Motorola V551 after looking at the Rokr and seeing how horribly slow it was and seeing that the Razr had no real advantages despite costing $100 more than the V551.

Fallen Tree

Originally uploaded by mike3k.

This is the worst damage we had from hurricane Wilma – a tree that fell on one of the buildings.

My Motorola V551 phone is an example of very poor user interface design.

The initial function of the left soft button is display recent entries.

When you select it, the left button becomes ‘exit’ and the right button becomes ‘select’.

I very often find myself hitting the left button again, which is the most natural action, rather than going to the right button to select it. For the default action, you should hit the SAME button rather than switch to the other button.