My gimpy leg

For the first time in years I went to the doctor due to an injury. As I mentioned a few post back I fell trying to skate that ditch I cleaned out. It's still hurting and the pain hasn't seemed to lessen. So I made an appointment to get it checked out. Now I have to get an MRI (I've never had one of those, heck I don't even know if I've ever had x-rays other than the dentist) but the early diagnosis is that I've torn my meniscus. Joy. The good new is that the ankle portion of the injury is healing nicely and is little more than a pull and bruising.

Of course, I managed to secure extra time off this week but I'm hesitant to go skate in the condition I'm in. Although, if I pop enough ibuprofen and wear a my knee brace, I imagine I'll be OK. The doc did say as long as I didn't try to do a bunch of crazy stuff there's no reason not to skate, well unless it seems to cause more pain actually.

So I think I'm going to take a little drive down to Canon City. It near the Royal Gorge and I've never been there. And there is a skate park there that looks like it could be fun. Plus there should be some good picture taking opportunities.

No matter what I'm just glad not to have to go to work for five days.

Spike'll getcha

For whatever reason that picture of Spike cracks me up. I called it "Spike in a box" over at Flickr. I think part of it is because she seems to have the temperament that she would just jump out of that box and get you if she wanted (although I'm beginning to think that some of that is just an act). Of all the cats she has the raspiest voice. She is also the most demanding when it comes to accessing the bathroom and as she is a princess the toilet should be referred to as a throne in her presence.

I wasn't the biggest cat fan before I met Phrank. Don't get me wrong, I was never a cat hater but I was fairly apathetic to them. Dogs were my domestic animal of choice. But I can see the advantage of cats. And considering that one, if not more of ours act like dogs, I don't even really feel the urge to get a dog right now (that and we can't have them in this apartment complex).

Which isn't to say I wouldn't like a dog but dogs do require a level attention that cats don't. When I come home late at night from work, two of the boys whine until I pick them up. A dog on the other hand would require a walk and perhaps a treat or two just to calm them down. Walking a dog after getting off work is probably not the first thing I'd want to do.

So for now I'll stick to the cats. At least until we move and I make the mistake of walking into the shelter.

Oh yeah, French Toast.

Teh Kewl!!1!

Somewhere in the back of my head I though about typing a whole post in l33t 5p34k but then I decided that the only people who would be able to read it were probably not going to find this little corner of the Internet. I'm sort of surprised that I can read l33t (well as long as it's true l33t and not that obscure l33t stuff), I guess it's mostly from lurking here on the Internet since before the days of AOL. I can only thank the BSU VAX/VMS cluster for that (scary to think that there are a few of you who remember that).

Enough geekery, I'm losing my kewl. What kewl you ask? Yeah, good question. Actually stuff like l33t fascinates me. Being able to witness a major shift in the way the world communicates as I've seen (and to a degree participated) in the last fifteen years or so has been pretty amazing. To watch this new forms of slang and idiom evolve out of the revolutionary changes in communication leaves me with a sense that I'm witness a major change in our evolution of a species (which I realize seems to be a bit of a bold statement but I think future history will back me up on that).

The fact that the letters we used to write that took days if not weeks to be delivered can be retrieved in a matter of moments many times is a big shift. That we can have instantaneous letter like communication through instant messaging software is also a big shift. I don't think we're at the point to know exactly how to use it wisely yet but it is here now and we might as well get used to it.

The wrap up to this is that when I use a typed slang like l33t, somewhere in the back of my mind I'm aware of this amazing shift that we as a species are going through. And in some twisted sense it give me comfort.

Special people

Today was special person day on the phones. Most of the special people were of the "might be riding short bus with the square wheels that go round and round" variety. I may get a bruise on my forehead from too much head-to-desk action but I can deal with these special people (and I think fairly pleasantly (especially when I remember that most people haven't the foggiest when it comes to computers)). But there is a second kind of "special" caller that usually ends in frustration and sometimes a supervisor call for me. I don't have quite a catchy name for them but it has something to do with entitlement and the false premise that the customer is always right.

The company I work for is not an email company. We offer email as a complimentary product that you can choose to use when you sign up with us or as the case with most customers the company previous to us. No matter which company a customer originally had, it was laid out in the Terms of Service that email was for entertainment purposes only and explicitly not for business use (there is a good reason for this and it goes back to the fact that we are not an email provider). As we all know, no one ever reads the TOS (myself included) but it's in there.

Anyway there are a handful of customers that come through that seem to think that the email is more important than their connectivity. Of course these people are the ones who (according to them) their entire livelihood depends on their email address they maintain with us. If email was truly that important to their survival, one would think they would invest a small amount of money into a plan with an email provider instead of our rinky-dink email service that was really designed for grandma and grandpa to get email from the darling granddaughter (who may or may not be named Nikki). It's like asking for Coach leather seats in an Escort. And are these people special, as in their time is more precious that everyone else and they are "model customers that you don't want to loose my business". Here's the thing, in the how many ever years they've had high speed Internet with us, they've never had a problem with it. And they're not calling because they can't get online.

I offer this up: a quick scan of my contacts in my Gmail account list a whole two who use an Internet Service Provider email address (and one is AOL the other is Earthlink). In this day in age there is no reason to be dependent on an ISP provided email address.

Perhaps it's just me. Maybe it's because I've had my Yahoo! email address for over ten years at this point and I don't understand the reason people are beholden to an email address that can change for any number of reasons (moving, canceling or the company selling). I don't get it.

I also don't get why people can get so work up over something they weren't even aware of just a few years ago.

Although I wonder what would happen to me if I had to go more than a day or two without the Internet.

Sufjan Stevens almost made me cry

So I'm sitting here on the floor in the living room and listening to Sufjan Stevens and I find it hard to write anything. Partly because I'm always at a loss of what to write about but mostly because I get lost in his music. Yeah, I know that his music is pretty much on the soft side and can easily be considered wussy music by some. I don't care. I've come to the conclusion that he's probably one of the most talented singer-songwriters and all around musicians creating music.

I know this much that when I listen to one of his albums, it moves me. Some times bordering on tears, other times what I can only describe as a feeling of joy. Beyond that the music has an intricacy resembling a spiderweb (and you can find yourself caught in it). The music doesn't rock but it has this quality to it that I can't put my finger on it.

Sufjan Stevens is from Michigan and there is a strong Midwest feel to his music. I can feel my Indiana roots when I hear his stuff. The fact that his two of his albums are about/entitled Illinois and Michigan is not lost on me as well. Not only that but there are reference to Christian symbols and stories scattered throughout his songs that leave yet another Midwestern feel to the music.

Watch this guy, he's going give us some nice gifts I think.

Go figure...

Well, I did make it to that ditch I had spotted. This time I showed up with a push broom, five gallon bucket and a dustpan with the intention of cleaning it up. Apparently there was a lot more sand in the bottom than I really realized. That and it really doesn't take that much to pile up as I discovered today.

So I managed to clean up the part closest to the road back to the ramp, which you may not be able to tell by the photo but that's a good amount of territory. I go put the broom and stuff away and grab my skateboard because I want to try it out. So what happens when I drop in the first time? Yep, I fall. My front foot stays on the board and my back foot drags and I pull a muscle and twist my ankle a bit. I didn't even manage to get to the steep wall. The thing is I'm not even really that surprised at all. Not that I expected it to happen but it is pretty typical. Oh well, maybe someone will stumble upon it and enjoy it. And I'll probably go back and try to clean the rest of it. Although it's going to take a few trips. So if your driving down south Hancock in Colorado Springs keep you eye out for it.

Oops, I thought it was only a couple of weeks

So I'm going for extended hiatus here. I just checked and it's been over two months since I've put anything up here. Dang. And to think I thought I'd start doing it more in 2007.

I really just haven't had the motivation to write anything here. It's not that there isn't anything happening, I'm just not into the whole recapping it thing. Perhaps it's because I deal with the Internet all day at work.

Speaking of work, I did get a promotion already to what's called Tier 3 tech support. It's a higher level of high speed Internet support and we do the digital phone troubleshooting (it's not VOIP). I'm also learning about the drawbacks of working for a large corporation as a opposed to a small or mom and pop type establishment. The flipside being the pay is really good and a great health insurance plan that allowed me to had Phrank (without going into detail, we had perfect timing getting on the plan). Another bonus is that I don't have to deal with video (or billing) calls if I don't want to. Those video calls are getting transferred out away from me. The only calls I get that escalate into supervisor calls are video calls (I actually had a lady demand a supervisor when I told her that it would cost her 29.95 to have a field tech come to her house and program her TV remote).

A month or so ago I got a new phone that has a camera, that's where the photo came from. What you can't make out is that one of those mountains in the background is Pikes Peak. When I took the pic I was more interested in the colors (and I was surprised how well they came out when I got the pic on my computer).

I did manage to get a closer look at what may be the best ditch to skate around here. It needs a bit of cleanup before I can skate it but it's nothing a push broom can't take care of. I'll try to remember to get a few pictures of it next time I'm out there.

Anyway, I'll try not to let three months go by next time. If there are any of you left that is.