I swear I have a technology black cloud over my house. I’ve been having issues off and on with my home network for MONTHS. It has to be more then half a year since my trouble started and this week… it got worse.

My setup is not an simple one, but it’s also not a complex one. I had a linksys setup, a cable modem, a wireless router, a VoIP box, a switch and an AirPort express. I suspected the Wireless Router, which was old as dirt, was going bad so I replaced it with a Belkin wireless router, which then lead me to think maybe the cable modem was bad too, so I replaced that as well. Things seemed okay but I’d lose my connection to the Belkin router often. I was frustrated to say the least.

We recently acquired a Slingbox as well, which requires an Ethernet cable connection, so I grabbed another Belkin Wireless router and bridged them together. And that’s when the trouble just doubled. The bridge would go down often and then finally, the other day, one of the Belkin routers, just lost it’s power. It won’t stay on. It’s dead.

I hooked up all of the old Linksys stuff (I’m such a pack rat) and that’s when the latest drama began. For some reason I could NOT get the VoIP box to work behind the old Linksys router. So I put it in front of it and then… the internet would go out every 20-30 minutes. Sigh.

Last night was spent on the phone with Pinoyboy, troubleshooting, testing and triaging my network. The final decision? New router, again.

So far so good. Next… the wireless bridge for the Slingbox. Wish me luck boys and girls!

Who has any cube etiquette left? I blogged about this before and today, I’ve reached my boiling point.

My coworker who sits in the cube behind me had not one, not two but THREE conferences calls on his speaker phone. Just dialed right in and listened to the calls as if he was the only person in the office. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to go tell him to stop but I’m not sure I want to be “that person” but it was annoying.

Now I know what you’re thinking… what about your iPod? Well normally it’s on and CRANKED up but today I was working on some documents and music or podcasts would have really distracted me… well I guess the music didn’t as much since I did have to crank up the volume!

Grr. I wanna go home.

I’m guessing not much more than it did. I tried to have a positive day. I even took steps to get away from the suckiness and put it back on track but… at every turn, frustration, confusion and suckiness.

Of course I will not bitch about work on my blog. Too open a forum. Suffice it to say I spent the day chasing a problem, trying to resolve it, uncovering another problem that if it was fixed, could have helped with the first problem. Another problem brought to my attention , which I thought was being caused by an existing problem turned out to be totally unrelated, and fixable. Good right? Well not when you figure out that I didn’t come to that realization until 9:45pm. Thank goodness for Pinoyboy asking “is it writing to a file?”. If he hadn’t who knows how long it would have taken me to realize the log file was/is corrupted.

I was on a high at that point, but again, a happy eve was not to be. I’m not even going into what happened, but confusion and frustration found me again.

F*ck it. I’m going to bed.

In the what the f*ck file…

Tomorrow night on NBC, they have put together a live action version of the Christmas classic “The Year Without A Santa Claus“. I’m not kidding. Starring John Goodman as Santa Claus, Delta Burke as Mrs Claus and Harvey Firestein as the Heat Miser.

I can’t imagine WHO thought this was a good idea and I’m tempted to watch to see if it is the train wreck that I think it will be, but hmmm I just don’t know.

Check out the website for yourself here.

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After my run in last May with DHL, you think that I would not be surprised by the ineptness of delivery folks. Well you’d be wrong.

So, I drove my ass home from New Jersey last nite and was rushing to beat the UPS guy to my domicile. They usually show up around 7pm, except of course when I’m awaiting a delivery, and then they alway show up hours early. Today was no exception. The cat’s out of the bag now, I’ve ordered a new toy. That’s right fellow gomos and gomettes, I’ve ordered a new Mac Pro. Thanks to you know who for his help and discount! Along with my new Mac Pro, I ordered a new 24″ Acer Monitor which I got a great price from NewEgg.com. Now we chose standard shipping on both and figured the monitor would get here just before the Mac Pro (which has to be custom built). WRONG. The freaking monitor came practically over night. The Mac Pro…ah that’s not scheduled to show up for almost two weeks, but that’s a different post.

So rushing home yesterday, I got home just after 6pm. About an hour before the UPS truck usually makes the rounds. Just in cast however, I decided to check the front door for a “We’re Sorry We Missed” you note. And instead this is what i found…

That’s right, my 700 dollar, 24 inch flat panel monitor just LEFT in front of my door with my door mat propped against it like some weird suburban camouflage. I mean really, anyone could have strolled by, picked it up and strutted off with it. I about fell on the floor laughing my arse off. I mean, when Amazon shipped my Garmin iQue, in a tiny box, they wouldn’t leave it, but a 24″ monitor, well that’s just the thing to leave on a doorstep.

I bitch, but I love the monitor, with the Mac Pro being weeks out, I had to check the monitor to see that it wasn’t defective, so I hooked it up to my Mac Pro via the Mini-DVI to DVI adapter and damn does it look good. Bright, clear and did I mention HUGE?

24″ Acer Display, 13″ MacBook, 20″ iMac G5

I don’t often complain about my Macs, since I so infrequently have issues with them, but this weekend was definitely an exception.

I’ve been having some issues with iChat. Something, perhaps my network keeps disconnecting, which would not be that big a deal except for some reason my iChat doesn’t seem to realize I’m offline and leaves me looking like I’m logged in, when I’m not. I was at a loss as to why this was happening, so I thought perhaps I’d do a rebuild and see if maybe that would help. I chose to do an Archive and Install since that should only replace my /Library and /System folders, leaving my User and Application files intact. I also did not want to affect my Boot Camp install and I figured that would be the outcome. How wrong I was.

I did the Archive and Install and when I was reinstalling my third party plug ins etc, I went to set my iChat preferences, I notice that iChat was reporting that my iSight was in use by another application, it of course was not. At a loss for what happened, and after some discussion with Pinoyboy, we decided that a rebuild with a fresh install of OS X would be best. So I set about backing up my data, erasing my partition and reinstalling the OS. Twenty-five minutes later, I was ready to start installing my Apps (hey I had to get a pro Mac statement in somewhere!). Before I did that tho, I decided to check iChat… and lo and behold… the same thing. The iSight was in use. WTF!!! I had no clue at this point what the issue could be!

Frustrated, I turned my attention to the most off the wall ideas to solve the problem. I am not sure how I decided that perhaps my Boot Camp partition was the culprit. It made no sense whatsoever, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand what could be tied to the Boot Camp install but I ran the Boot Camp Assistant and restored the partition to a single partition. After a reboot. Damned if the iSight didn’t work perfect! I have no clue at all how it all tied together, but I’m just glad it’s fixed.

I hope he doesn’t get mad, but a good friend of mine chatted me up last nite about something that happened to him and I felt compelled to blog about it. As it is NOT my story, I will be vague.

My friend has a new gadget that he is very excited about, and I’m sure like me, when I have a new toy, doesn’t mind when people are interested in your new toy. Needless to say “Can I see it was uttered” and with that dude promptly dropped his beloved new gadget right on the concrete and scratched it. If that wasn’t bad enough, my friend said dude kinda FLIPPED the gadget in his hands. WHAT? He flipped it around, wasn’t just turning it over in his hands? Nope, flipped it like a moron. Now my poor friend has a gadget that has had quite a bit of the “new” nicked off of it by an inept friend.

I write about this because I have this issue with people all the time. As you all know I’m a GADGET WHORE. Anything new and shiny… I want it. And I show it off. Like a said a GADGET WHORE. And people often want “to see” or “touch” said gadget. And my rules are strict. I’ll let you see it but it has to be where I say and under the conditions I dictate. And if you give me sh*t, then sod off. My brother is a prime example of that. He’s been thru TWO Ogos, one he dropped out of his car an drove over… and one he smashed against a wall, and he wonders why I wouldn’t let him see my Sidekick 3 outside in the driveway. I made him go in the house, over the kitchen table and when he got up… I snatched that b*tch right back out of his hands. I don’t play. I know that all gadgets end up eventually nicked and scratched and imperfect, but should I be the one to put that first scratch in?

Yes please note the severity of my words. No asterisks or normal editting. Today has been SHITE so far.

Late out the house, boyfriend disgruntled, no headphones for the iPod, department meeting and I’m bloody knackered. This afternoon can not come fast enough.

However…bright spot… thanks to Pinoyboy for trying to cheering my arse up.

Cheers for that.

Okay kiddies, it’s lunch time. I’m taking my baby and my best hag to Five Guys for a burger. iPod? Check. Keys to the Volvo? Check. Sidekick? ummm… oh yeah… what’s this my RAZR? Grumble Grumble… isn’t it June 28th yet? Bah.

Enjoy your lunches…