1897 vs. 2021
Nerd
Dance from the Past
Beth and Tim came over yesterday. Beth dropped off a present for Lauren earlier in the day and stopped by to see it in action. But that’s a story for another time.
While the girls were trying it out, it was making a sound like this: tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick. Tim and I started dancing to the driving techno beat.
That reminded me of the last time I saw Tim dancing to a driving techno beat. So I felt like I had to share.
Unfortunately, he isn’t dancing to Russell Mosemann’s driving techno beat anymore. I couldn’t get Russ’ tunes to play automatically, so I had to punt. But if you can still listen to it.
Note: well, it looks like the audio doesn’t autoplay in all browsers. If you are using Safari or Firefox, you’ll probably have to click play. Sorry for the inconvenience.
No world wide web
The internet was (actually still is) down at Lincoln Lutheran for most of the day today. I told Windstream of our woes around 10:30 and bothered them every hour for an update on what they had found. Finally, at about 3:00, the 7th guy I talked to said that they had been, “really busy” and no one had actually even looked at my problem yet. Thanks Windstream.
Being without internet is more of a thing than it was even two years ago. Our teachers and students use it for getting assignments, working on them and turning them in. I spent most of the day in conversations like this:
everyone at school: When is the wi-fi going to be working?
me: The wi-fi is working.
everyone at school: Did it just come back?
me: No, it’s been working all day.
everyone at school: huh?
At this point I generally just walk off. Usually –here I’m just assuming– they figure out the difference between the wi-fi and the Internet. But if they don’t, I don’t really care at this point.
Eventually Jim from Windstream came by (I told the last Windstream guy I talked to to change our business hours to 8:00am to 8:00pm, because today was Awards Night, and I would be here anyway.) He couldn’t figure out why they had dispatched him without first doing some off-site diagnostics. I theorized with him that it was done mostly in an attempt to slow down the rate at which I was calling them.
Jim was nice, and seemed to know what he was doing, but a series of unfortunate coincidences (including, but not limited to a tornado warning) kept him from actually fixing the problem. He did, however, diagnose the problem. There was evidently a light that won’t light on one side*. He took it back to his workshop to fix it up there and bring it back here. He’s actually going to try to bring it back tonight.
I’ve arranged a secret knock between Jim and our custodian Todd, so Todd can, at least theoretically, let Jim in. Jim says that best case scenario is that our internet might be back up in about two hours. Worst case scenario is, in his words, “a while”.
*It is actually quite surprising how accurate a description of the problem this turns out to be. The SFP that converts the light in the fiber optic cable from light to electrical impulses is receiving light correctly, but is failing to turn the corresponding electrical impulses back to light for the return trip.
Typical Day
Lauren told me that I get to write today’s post. It’s never a comfortable thing when she says that, because I always wonder if I’m forgetting something. Is today Lauren’s birthday? Is it our anniversary? Is it some other day that, while not technically our official anniversary, is the anniversary of something that I should remember anyway? Did she recently do something really nice for me that I should have taken pictures of and be ready to tell the world? Probably yes to one or more of the above, but I’m not sure which one.
Instead, let me tell you how I spent MLK Day 2016. I like to think that I celebrated it in typical fashion. I started off by sleeping in, because we didn’t have school. I found out later that Seward Public, St. John and –and here I’m just guessing– Concordia all have school, so I was basically the only person in Seward with the day off.
Next I read a little bit. I’m still embarrassed to write that I’ve been reading some fan fiction. If you’re a passingly familiar with Harry Potter –and by this point I think that probably includes just about everyone– and if you’re familiar with Role-Playing games –and by Role-Playing games I mean the 3.5 edition of Dungeons and Dragons– then there’s a good chance that you’ll feel like Harry Potter and the Natural 20 is a complete travesty and makes both of those things you like worse. I myself am not a Harry Potter fan, and haven’t played Dungeons and Dragons for something like 20 years, so it all worked out for me. Your millage may vary.
After that I played Railroad Tycoon II, which is a video game for about 1995 where you, you know, build a railroad. I get a surprisingly large amount of entertainment value out of laying out some track between cities and hauling passengers and cargo around. I don’t actually have the manual for the game. So, while I think I’m doing well and things are coming along nicely with my railroad empire, eventually the game ends and the computer starts trash talking me about how poor a job I did. You don’t know, computer. I did just fine.
Eventually I had to do things like talk to the electrician who was adding another circuit to the room at school where the servers are, so we wouldn’t embarrassingly come to a screeching halt during the school day when we plug in 9 computers and 18 monitors in the Tech Center. I also did a little cleaning and made supper, but I do not consider those to be part of me MLK day celebration.
Lloyd saves the day. Again.
Our internet at work keeps dying. I do all that these weary hands can to fix it – trying to pump life back into a dying, aged router, helping it gasp for one last breath of Wi-Fi before it goes into that dark night (unplug it and plug it back in), but to no avail.
Then Lloyd swoops in with his ‘new’ router with ‘working parts’ and ‘passwords’ and ‘skill’ and just saves the day again.
No one like a show-off, Lloyd.
Sundays with Samith
Samith brings Brighton into Seward on Sunday evenings to play basketball at Concordia’s youth basketball program (there’s some other name for the program, but, yeah). While Brighton is basketballing it up, Samith has been coming over to our house for what we have affectionately been calling, Sundays with Samith™.
We mostly just sit around, eat dinner and talk about things. But this time Samith came bearing gifts. Sometime ago, Samith was lucky enough to purchase a Bag of Crap™. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to purchase a Bag of Crap at the end of a Woot Off™, but I’ve never been quick enough.
One of the items in the Bag of Crap was a TruGuard (presumably also™) screen protector for an iPhone5. Samith knows that I like to live dangerously and don’t keep a cover on my phone, but this is just 0.3mm thick. He thought I could maybe live with that.
The instructions were so brief that we did a lot of assuming about how we were to do things, but it all turned out okay. Their selling point is protection, but the most amazing thing is that there doesn’t seem to be any fingerprint smudges on the screen anymore. That’s really pretty neat.
Thanks Samith, and thanks Bag of Crap.