Miscellaneous notes and more.

September 3, 2003

I thught I’d hold off on posting another entry for a couple of days because Comcast, my ISP here has been having email troubles and so the notifications weren’t getting sent out. In fact, I’m not even sure how many of you got the notification about the last entry I posted. I got an error message when I did on my end, so I didn’t even know if it went through. My apologies if you got it twice. If you didn’t catch my last entry, read it–it’s pretty funny. The email problems have made my auction management pretty difficult, since I would send out emails to winners, not hear anything back from them and just assume they hadn’t gotten them, and then 24 hours or more later, get an email back from them that had been sent the day before. Good thing I was monitoring PayPal, the payment service I use, to make sure that people were paying, etc. What a hassle. It also means I haven’t gotten any of my email newsletters in the last few days, at least not on time. That goes for news alerts, daily comics (which reminds me…I have to read today’s Get Fuzzy), etc. It’s sort of dismaying getting up in the morning and finding your inbox totally empty. I usually have at least four emails every morning from various sources, but not a single one in the last 24 hours. Stupid Comcast. And now today I’ve been browsing troubles, too, and everything is moving around the speed of molasses in April. Well, I still have a cable modem connection, but it sure ain’t going as fast as it has been.

I have some housekeeping things that I’ve been meaning to bring up. I renewed my domain name for another year last month, but I also purchased www.andrewself.net. I realize that agshender.net isn’t very easy to remember for some people unless you talk to me online all the time and constantly see AGSHender in a conversation, so I figure that andrewself.net is slightly better. I’m not switching my email address, website name, or anything like that, but if you go up to your address bar and type in “www.andrewself.net” it’ll bring you here. Easier to tell other people too, no?

I haven’t heard anything back from anyone about my Mozilla proposal of a couple weeks ago, so I’ll assume it was a total bust. Oh well, I tried. The offer still stands, though, if you can’t download it for yourself due to size, I’ll send it to you on a CD with the stuff you need to get started.

I have an interesting week coming up for me. Tomorrow I’m headed over to my Dad’s house to spend the night and be able to head own to Salem much easier than if I were at my Mom’s. Heck, I’ll be able to save a good 30 minutes in drive time, but I’m still leaving about 90 minutes before my interview to make sure I can get down there through traffic, find the place, and find a parking spot. Ooo, gotta bring change, too. I think last time I was there I had to feed the meter all day. It’s too bad the whole bus thing didn’t work out, but it’s just for commuters.

After my interview on Friday, I’m headed back to my Dad’s to spend the night again, and then Saturday morning, we’re headed over to Lincoln City with some friends of his to go to a new McMenamin’s. Pretty much just hang out there for a bit, have a nice drive over and back, grab a pint or two, that sort of thing. I’m going to spend the rest of the weekend at my Dad’s, and then on Monday I’m playing bartender to a party my stepmother is throwing. I can’t imagine I’ll be doing much besides pouring wine and popping the lids off bottles of beer (tapping a keg, maybe?), but I’m going to put out a tip jar nonetheless. Can’t hurt, right? Then to top off my weekend, on Tuesday I’m going with my sister on a jet boat ride down the Wilamette River with some people from her work. That oughta be a blast. I’m not too clear about the details yet, but I can’t imagine that I won’t write about it.

Well, I have another $150 in my pocket from my eBay auctions, so it looks like I’ll be able to fight off starvation for another week or so. I do have to spend some of the money, though, since I found out yesterday that I was still two DVDs short of fulfilling my Columbia House DVD club membership obligation, and I have to buy two DVDs by…today. I bought one yesterday, but now I need one more today, and then I can cancel. I can’t believe I put it off so long. I don’t know what happens when you don’t fulfill your membership obligation, but they might send some guys to break my thumbs. I think I’ll stay on the good side of multinational media corporations and their lackeys, frankly. I like my credit rating in the bad state where it is already, thank you very much. I’m undecided, though, as to what DVD I should get second. I don’t have a whole lot of money to blow since the bulk of the money I earned from the eBay sales remain in my PayPal account, and Columbia House also has a nasty tendency to not let certain DVDs count towards your membership. Drat. I would pick up a copy of “Scream” for $15 and be done with them if they’d let me, but noooooo, I need to buy one of their $20 ones. Or more. I picked up “Equilibrium” for $22, which was more than I wanted to spend on that movie (I had hopes of picking it up used somewhere since finances are tight), but I figure if I’m going to pay through the nose for a DVD from them, it might as well be one that I really want, right?

The problem now is finding another one that I really want. They have a decent selection that’s gotten better in the last two years, but they’re still lacking some key titles that I guess they haven’t gotten the rights to resell yet. None immediately come to mind, but I remember which ones they are every time I search their website. I’m sure I can find one other that I can’t live without. Then I cancel my membership and wait for another opportunity in the future to fleece them of five DVDs with no other obligations like I did earlier in the year. I think that’s how I’ll get all my DVDs from them in the future.

So that’s about all I have to say right now.

I’m waiting until Friday morning to shave. Until then, just call me Lumberjack Self.