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Netfoot

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  1. Still no connectivity. Went to the telco. Again. "We are looking into it and hope to have it resolved today or tomorrow." But tomorrow is Good Friday and this office will be closed. So if it isn't resolved today, nothing will happen until Tuesday morning. And I can't even contact anyone for updates! "We are doing everything we can!" He wasn't pleased when I said "See you Tuesday!" And walked out. Last night the reflux went from bad to worse. Even after taking the Nexium, it continued to worsen. I eventually had to go and get two large cushions out of the van and combine them with four pillows so I could get some sleep sitting virtually upright in the bed. Once I wedged myself into that position, I was able to get some shut-eye. More due to my level of tiredness than to anything else. 5Kg of penne pasta for $18.99 as opposed $1.85 for 400 gr. Of penne. The bulk price is $1.52 for 400 gr. Savings $4.15 over all. Short pasta is easiest to cook up a batch of for Mo and I to share. Bears thinking about. Ok, got to go home now. Left Mo with a bowl of chow but he didn't seem too interested. And I need to eat something too. IV Deli is right there and open for business and a nice, fat roti would go down a treat! So I'm oudda here before temptation takes over my soul!
  2. It's the "Royal Plan". "Royal" as in "We screwed up but now we call it an opportunity, not a problem!" As in "You are scum but we call you something much more palatable so we can squeeze more ca$h out of you." And "Plan" as in the name they have given to the bundle of services they are offering. Like the "Media Madness Plan" for people who want to stream video & music all day. Or the "Royal Plan" for those who don't want their phone number reassigned to a different customer and their physical connection to the network taken away and given to someone else because there are a shortage of lines in the local exchange and a shortage of funds in the bank. I don't know what plan I was on before, but I paid $149.64 per month for one landline and 60MBit internet. This was a plan I signed up for years ago. It's no longer available, but I was on it, sort of grandfathered in. So they switched me to the Royal Plan to preserve my account and my line to the local exchange. It was $10 each to preserve the landline and the internet link. Hence $20 per month. And no, you don't get any actual service for that. The landline has no dial tone and the internet connection is not, uh, connected. So, after confirming all this (which I pretty much assumed from the start) I asked why my internet wasn't back on again. Well, seems there is something that is amis, but nobody is sure what exactly. Everyone seems quite sure a technician won't have to calls. But they are talking about "raising the incident" so as to get it sorted out ASAP. Well. It's been 11+ hours since I "raised" it with them, but still no dialtone, still no internet. Oh, and you remember my grandfathered plan which was 60MBit internet for $149.64? Well, that won't be an option when switching back out of the"Royal Plan". I'll have to accept one of the new plans on offer. Like "Fiber Lite". But lucky for me, "Fiber Lite" is $145, or actuallty $4.64 per month less than I have been paying. And the bandwidth goes up to 100MBit or 66⅔% increase over the plan I had before. Sold one book at the Book Den ($3) but the shop down in Batt's Rock was not interested. So I took the books to the RSPCA. They sell books upstairs. All their books for $2 each. I don't go often because they are on the other side of town. And these days I'm not buying books anyway. I stood around for 45 minutes waiting for someone to come and get the books but nobody gave a shit. Eventually someone told me to take the boxes of books up the stairs and leave them. I told them I was not lugging five boxes of books up the stairs without help. They then said that "Eventually, someone will come snd help you." So, once again, we accept your generous offer of $400 in books for free but entirely at our convenience and no consideration for yours. I considered scattering the books all over the parking lot and leaving for home. But I cooled a bit after two very nice kisses from Mozie, and carried the boxes of books onto the veranda, where I piled them up in front of the stairs. They can move them elsewhere, carry them up the stairs themselves or spend the rest of their lives jumping over them to use the staircase. I don't give a shit what choice they make. I hate the idea of throwing books out, because I'd much rather they went to some reader somewhere, who might extract some value from them by reading. But the RSPCA will never see another book of mine. And the Book Tent won't either, they already having inconvenienced me on the one time I tried to give them books. And the Batt's Rock guy won't see my face either. I called him this morning to find out if he was interested, but he took my call, told me he couldn't take my call and hung up. Forcing me to drive to Batt's Rock to have him tell me what he could have told me over the phone. No, from now on, if the old guy from the Book Den is not interested, they are going in the bin. The Magician's Birthday by Uriah Heep. I am suffering from reflux. Must go and swallow a Nexium before sleep. Got to shut the door anyway. Mo and I skipped lunch because we were getting dicked around by book shops and the RSPCA. For dinner, my little trooper had some pork scraps cut up and fried to give some crust, then stewed in a thin gravy. One of the scraps turned out to be a world record holder. For "World's Smallest Pork Chop, Ever". It's literally the size of the ball of my thumb. I set that aside for my own pleasure another day. My dinner was cheese & cucumber cutters. Mo is lying on the floor beside the bed. Wonder why he isn't snuggling with me? The tiles are cool, I guess. It is a bit warm, despite a light breeze in the window. Maybe I will fetch a glass of iced water when I take the Nexium. Maybe that would only provide a home for the acid. Most torches and batteries charged. Found the charger that does 4 cells at a time and the last four are in there charging now. One torch uncharged. It's my black Preon P1. It's around here somewhere, hidden amongst the desk clutter. I used it a few days ago on Garden Patrol. Here is a photo of my green Preon P1 with my black Preon P2. (The black P1 is missing.) The only difference between the P1 and P2 torches is the size of the body/battery tube. Head and tail switch are identical. The P2 carries 2x AAA cells for 3v of power. The P1 is supposed to carry only a single, 1.5v AAA but instead I use a single 10440 lithium cell for 3.7v of power. The maker states that the head of the torch is "not guaranteed" for use with a lithium cell, but I spoke with the designer who said that everyone in the factory uses a P1 with a lithium cell and they have had no issues. Naturally a P2 with 2x 10440 cells will burn prettily, the moment you switch it on. So don't do that. Meantime, my P1 Preons are more compact but more powerful than the larger P2 Preons and can be run at reduced (i.e. normal) power on a single AAA if necessary. By the way, I use the Panasonic Eneloops AAA and AA batteries because they have very low rates of self-discharge. The early ones offered 75% charge retention after 3 years on the shelf without recharging. I think the latest ones are 10 years, but I'm not sure what level of charge retention. Must google it and see. The reflux is getting annoying now, so I will go take that Nexium, lock the door and call it quits for the night. Of course, the moment I move towards the door the sleepy puppy at my feet will become a dynamo that simply must go outside for a prowl. So the locking up process might take half an hour or more.....
  3. I play sudoku. Usually sitting on a bench at Water Authority or standing in a line at BL&P. I'm not particularly good, but it helps pass the time. I only play games that can be solved by pure logic alone. Guessing shouldn't be allowed, IMHO! Well, you can't stop a guy from guessing, but I won't play if you are required to guess. I recently realized my OS on my desktop came with a Sudoku game. It can handle lots of different types of sudoku including Sudoku 16 and Sudoku 25. A 16x16 (or 25x25) board using letters rather than the digits found on the popular Sudoku 10. I tried the bigger boards and I was doing OK but I discovered that I was pencil marking the whole board and then deducing from the pencil marks what letters went to solve what cells. It was taking me an hour or more to do the pencil marks, which was a simple task but rote and tedious. Once that was done the real puzzle solving could begin. So I decided to write a program that would interrogate the game "behind the scenes" so to speak, to read the initial layout of the board, analyze & compute the pencil marks for each cell and push those pencil marks back "behind the scenes" again, to have the pencil marks appear automatically in the game. It was lots of fun figuring out how to fetch game info out of the game and into my own, home-baked program and write the computed pencil marks back again. And to figure out the valid pencil marks for each cell so I could save an hour doing it by hand every time. Took me a couple days before I could read the board from the game, run a routine to analyze the board and generate a list of pencil marks to be written back to the game. I noticed that by looking through the generated pencil marks, I would inevitably find some that indicated there was only one legitimate choice for a particular cell. This meant I could not only generate pencil marks but fill in the solution to those cells for which pencil marking indicated only one logical choice for the cell. This resulted in a new board with the initial cell values plus the ones I could now compute, along with the pencil marks. But the newly computed cell values would eliminate some of the pencil marks. No problem, I just run the board back through the analysis routines to produce new, improved pencil marks. Which indicated more cells with only one possible logical solution. Which required the pencil marks be recomputed again. Which produced results for more cells. Which..... ......means I generate a new puzzle, then run my program which completely solves the puzzle in under a second. So my efforts in auto-pencil marking make the game pointless to play. Once my software starts to help with the pencil marking, it doesn't stop until the entire game is solved. Sos all I'm doing is starting s new game and then I get to watch it solve itself. Pity. I had loads of fun writing the program. There were clever data structures and sophisticated algorithms and elegant passages of code. Oh well.
  4. Charging continues. All of the torches charged. That includes all the CR123, 10440 and 14500 lithium cells and quite a few of the AA and AAA NiMh cells. Only these spare NiMh remain. Unfortunately, I've misplaced my bulk chargers that can do 4 cells at a time. I'm charging using two chargers that do a single lithium or NiMh (or NiCd, for that matter) at a time. Out of the house now, trying to discover more about "Royal" telephone service. Sitting in the belly of the beast right now - the main telco headquarters building. Mo is in the car outside. If I'm never seen again, hopefully he can make his escape!
  5. More burrs & sweethearts in the bed this morning. Thankfully, there are more of the latter and less of the former growing in the yard. And will someone tell the landlord to get his ass in gear and cut the yard?
  6. Woken at five to let a little boy out. Returned to near pristine sheets. Gradually became aware of uncomfortable spikey things sticking into my skin. By time I finally got out of bed, Mo had transferred well over a hundred burrs and sweethearts from the lengthening grass outside, into the bedroom and on to the bed itself. I frequently have to grab him and pick sweethearts out of his wire hair. And (like Buddy before him) if you pick something off him, he demands you give it back. He eats the sweethearts (yuk!) but spits the burrs out onto the floor. Or your pillows. Some days I have what I call "metal-mouth". Whatever I put in my mouth, from an egg to a sip of tea, tastes metallic. Chemical. In fact, I don't have to put anything in my mouth; my mouth itself tasted metallic/chemical. Today was one of those days. I've sat around all day waiting for the telco technician to visit. No show. No call either, seeing as the reason for him visiting is to get the phone working. Nobody I've spoken to knows about their "Royal" programme and google can't find a single reference. I don't want to call the telco and ask because their caller ID will tell them who I am and may precipitate action on their part. I don't want any action taken before I understand how it works. Cut up a hunk of pork and cooked it in a brown gravy. Meanwhile, I made rice with carrot & cucumber. Mo and I split it down the middle for lunch. Dinner was ribs. Found a rack of 10 ribs starting with small and tapering off with each successive one smaller than the last. I took the largest three but Mo got the remaining seven which massed more than my share. Plus, I cut the skin/fat from mine and he got that too. I cooked some spaghetti to go with mine but that was a bad idea. Spaghetti & ribs is not a good combination and metal-mouth didn't help.tgevbones were more cartilage than anything else so I deemed them safe for puppy consumption. Watched the old Disney classic Jungle Book today. My problem with a lot of these old classics is that they are presented as musicals. Which I can rarely bring myself to enjoy. (If the story itself is about music, that is different.) So when bears burst into song, I tend to reach for the >FF> button. Trapped in the house, I've been charging all day. Battery bank is at four solid blue, and I've been charging all my torches (a dozen or more) plus all the spare batteries. The job is well in hand but not complete yet. Jingo by Santana, from their eponymous album (their first), frequently and erroneously called "Lion Face". The album's correct name is "Santana". But "Lion Face" is so commonly used everyone will know exactly what you mean if you call it that. Phone down to 12% so I won't dally. Garden Patrol completed, shower taken, cup of metallic tea consumed and book waiting. I'm speaking of A Man Called Intrepid which is a pack of cards and due to be regretfully thrown out, but not before I give it one more read. May finish it tonight but maybe not because I'm tired. Found a big tin of diced tomatoes in a cupboard. Unfortunately, it's blown. So I just went and dropped it from about shoulder height directly onto my right instep. The injured finger bone in my right hand now had a matching injury in my right foot. And, yesterday I managed to crick my back so now I'm hobbling about like Quasimodo, grimacing at every step, and howling with paIn if I forget and try to use my right hand, or foot, or twist, turn, bend or flex my back in any way. So. Done for today. Will pursue second hand bookshop in Batt's Rock tomorrow. May go to the telco main office, give my name as Fred Bloggs, and ask about Royalty.
  7. It is a tremendous weight off my mind and life is certainly much better than it had been this last week! But it is not the end of our travails. The next light bill drops in two days. Phone on the 21st, thankfully nearly a month away. Water who knows when. The gas cylinder for the stove must be pretty empty too. And the van could use a liter or two. So things are hugely improved, but challenges continue to surface. It's just great to have this breathing space before it all goes critical again. Re phone: I'm pretty sure there's nothing wrong with it other than that I need to be removed from "Royal Status". But the guy was very insistent that full service is part of that, so perhaps he is correct? On the off chance he is, I'm not going to insist they discontinue me. $20 is a much more comfortable amount than the $149.64 that I was paying before. I will let them diagnose the issue and if I'm right, well, the bill will return to normal and the service will be restored. If I'm in fact he is right, then I will let them solve the technical problem and restore the service. And I will happily pay them $20 per month until the entropic death of the universe, or until they decide to remove my Royal Status. Hurt by Johnny Cash. Not a fan, but this is a powerful song. Also have the Nine Inch Nails version, which is a very different sound. Should have bought eggs, bread. Now I have a spatula again, I could revisit eggy-toast!
  8. It's been a long day. This morning, my friend arrived at my house and handed over some cash that he and his wife have been urging me to take. I was conflicted about this as I've said previously. But I accepted with thanks because frankly, things were getting pretty grim around here. He also brought a gallon of gas, @Spunkygal ! So with cash in hand and gas in car, I did some arithmetic, then, scooted over and paid the phone bill at the mall. Then, the Book Den where I sold 11 books ($25). Next, Barbados Light & Power to pay the electricity and get juice back in the house. The supermarket next, because I'd lost my rewards card and that's where I remember seeing it last. They had found it and I now have it back. (I asked what is the procedure for requesting a replacement for a lost card. "Just dial the number on the back of the card..." Sort of difficult, if you've lost the card!) While in that supermarket I bought about 4½ Kg of "scraps". More later. Next stop, the Water Authority where I paid that bill. Water never did get cut off, but was convinced I was only a day or two away from that particular disaster. Finally Popular supermarket, which is cheaper than the one I visited earlier but don't (as far as I know) sell "scraps". Bought a few items, potatoes, onions, sausages, cheese, carrots, cucumbers, milk, etc. Returned home to find the power on, the water (still) on, and the phone off! Now that was very unexpected because their computer usually reconnects you instantly, upon receipt of payment. And it had been 5 hours, so... ?!?? Back over to the mall where the telco office is. "Did you try switching it off and back on again?" Well, it was off for almost a full week, then BL&P switched it back on for me. So a technician has to come and see what's wrong. Godnozewhen. But I don't think there is anything wrong. See, they switched me to "Royal Status". The guy in the office said this reduces my rate from $150 a month to $20 a month. "Surely," I said, "that's just a holding fee. To preserve my account. They're not going to provide actual service for 7½% of their normal charge?" Well, he insisted they would, and congratulated me on my good fortune for achieving Royal Status. But still not connected. So I'm pretty sure he has misunderstood, and that while I remain in Royal Status the service will not be reconnected. Let's hope the technician comes soon and we can clear this up because I'm still hanging out the bedroom window for connectivity. One thing. In each case, electricity, phone, water, the balance has been considerably less than I expected. It's true that I've been making small payments on account when ever a few bucks came along. I guess even small payments add up and bring down the overall balance. Obviously. I just wasn't expecting that the payments I'd made would have brought the balances down that much. In each case I went in, hoping to pay some of the arrears but found the balance low enough that I was able to clear all arrears and the current balance. History by The Verve. This is off A Northern Soul, a highly regarded album of theirs but not my favourite (which is Urban Hymns). Yes, with light comes song and a fan blowing on me in bed. Mo accompanied me upon my journey today. He returned home after hours in the car, hot and thirsty. We got back way too late for lunch so we had cheese on Eclipse for tea, switching to PB&J halfway through the pack of biscuits. Later, I gave him an enormous ostrich drumstick for his dinner. Well, it's supposed to be turkey but believe me, only an ostrich could have produced that! I flensed the meat off the bone and fried it up in a pan. When it was ready I deglazed the pan to make a little gravy and poured it over the meat in his bowl. I'd originally planned to cook it in rice and share it with him, but in the end I decided to give him the whole thing, unadulterated by any carbs or veggies. He was a trooper today and I thought he deserved the treat. I had a glass of iced water. Mo demanded his tax: he crunched up half the ice.... I will pop out shortly and brew up. While it draws we will do our Garden Patrol. I had to throw away another half liter of spoilt milk this morning, but I bought two fresh liters today, and with the fridge running again spoilage should not be a problem. Ok, it's nearly eleven so time for the boys to Patrol! BTW, while carefully spending money today, I did go and splurge a whole $3 at the mall: The old one will no doubt surface tomorrow. Tuckered out pupper takes afternoon nap. And hogs the pillows, of course!
  9. Oh, man. I think I've broken a bone in my wrist. You may recall a few weeks ago I hurt my right hand. I was saying my thumb, but it's actually the index finger but way back where it meets the thumb. (Checks Google...) Metacarpus? Of the right index finger? Just near where the thumb joins on. I don't know what caused it; I must have whacked it on something. Well, over the past several weeks the pain has slowly diminished but never gone away. Until this afternoon. I managed to whack it again in exactly the same spot. I saw stars. It felt like Wiley Coyote had dropped an Acme safe on it from a great height. It's now hurting more than ever before. And that's if I don't use it for anything. If I try to use that thumb (and what is a hand without a thumb other than an ape's appendage?) it gets even worse. So maybe a tiny crack in that bone? It doesn't feel tiny. But them I'm in a frail frame of mind today because my back has been giving me all sorts of trouble since last night as well. So it looks like tonight will be a Panadol night. Mo and I enjoyed rice & channa with tuna. We split it equally. I finished mine, all bar a spoonful for Mo to tax and he was right there waiting. After he'd polished off my leftovers I glanced at his bowl and there were several spoons left in it! Which he went back to when my bowl was gleaming. This was three plus hours ago so we may get hungry again before bed time. All I can think of is oatmeal which Mo is iffy on, or the last pack of Eclipse biscuits with PB&J again. My torch just went out. Don't need it for the phone and besides I have two more right here. Phone is at 94% and charging but this is from the battery bank which is obviously discharging. I'm gradually draining the life out of everything. (Same as the life is draining out of me.) I need to find a place I can put the bank and a bunch of torchlight batteries to charge. Just gone eight. Time for dinner meds, shower and sleep. Mo: Indefatigable.
  10. Maybe.... Will see who is receptive to that idea.
  11. Just threw out ½ liter of sour milk. But! In the process I discovered another unopened (and therefore pristine) liter! So tea! And I've been 'lowancing the milk, to use my mum's term. To make it last. Since this newly opened liter will be sour in 2 days at the most, I can use as much as I like. Very milky tea, 10 times a day! Milk in the pasta sauce for extra creaminess. Long, glasses of milk over cubes of ice to cool my afternoon! Wotcha gonna do? Phone back at 37% and the bank stuck at 2½ blue LEDs. Could continue to charge it from the van but if I can't run the engine to top off the battery that is a slippery slope.
  12. I will suggest that. But with the van not running - presumably due to insufficient fuel and not some other issue - just getting there on Wednesday will be a challenge. I've arranged to take 200+ books back to the Book Den tomorrow for him to look over and that won't be possible either. I could spend $10 out of the rent to put some gas in the car and replace it out of what I get for the books. But if he decides not to buy anything, how do I pay rent next week? And even if I decided to risk it, how would I get the van to the station to fill up? I don't have any fuel cans. Everybody borrows my cans and nobody ever brings them back. Except those who bring them back contaminated with paint or something, making them only suitable for throwing out. I should really stop lending out fuel cans. No tools, no records CDs, no textbooks... And now no fuel cans. ETA: Ironically, I now have to find someone to lend me a fuel can, just as I vow never to lend one out, ever again. Mo and I shared a pack of Eclipse biscuits with PB&J for lunch. Rice & channa with tuna for dinner, probably.
  13. Started the van to top off the battery. It ran for 2 minutes and died. Restarting, it will run for 1-2 seconds and die again. Tank is dry. Lucky to get home last time out! Made a cup of tea. The milk has spoilt. The shelf life of those cartons is 2-3 months but once opened, they must be refrigerated.
  14. Well, there aren't that many. The second-hand book store I have been talking about is a time little place, run by one guy. The other book stores around me I've already made inquiries with no success. The place down near Batt's Rock is new to me. I have to get down there and see if they will but any of the books I'm discarding. I will also ask about work. However, I've been asking around about the place and they only open 4 days a week. That would be better than nothing, but..... If I get down there on Wednesday (when next they open) I will be looking around in the neighborhood at any potential openings at any nearby businesses.
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