Longish day.

May 18, 2004

I thought I’d take a moment and pimp my email provider to everyone who reads my blog, partially because I have had such good service with them over the years, and partially because I have a free account and I don’t want them to think that I don’t ever acknowledge that fact if they check on why I’m getting free service. My provider, Runbox, is a Norwegian company that offers webmail services like Hotmail and others so that you can access your mail anywhere, but unlike most of the other service they also allow you to use an actual mail client like Eudora or Mozilla Thunderbird to download and check your email, among other things. They have anti-virus protection at the server level, so messages infected with viruses will neither enter or leave their server, and they also do a pretty good job at filtering out spam. Spammers usually find ways around the filters (and indeed, I’ve been getting more and more spam as of late, but I blame the spammers and their ways of exploiting the software that Runbox uses and not Runbox), but at the very least, basic protection from those ailments is nice.

If you remember, I ended up with a free account from Runbox because I have the link to them over on the side, and even if no one from my site has ever gone and checked out their service, I’m grateful that they’ve comped me an account. I find it humorous to listen to my family complain about the same issues with Comcast’s email servers that drove me away from them in the first place, even now more than a year after I switched from Comcast’s email to Runbox full-time. You’d think they would have fixed them by now, wouldn’t you? Oh well. I have 100 MB of space to fill up with Runbox for my Sent email, and even seven years worth of email on my local computer hasn’t approached that amount. I’m sure with Google’s entry into the email world offering a gigabyte of storage, Yahoo upgrading to 100 MB for all their accounts, and other email providers scrambling to stay competitive, Runbox will probably upgrade to 200, 300, or even 500 MB of storage eventually.

OK, done with my ad. I’ve been wanting to mention them for awhile now since I’m getting a $30 service for free every year, but I keep forgetting. Right now I’m drinking my second cup of tea today, but the kind I had yesterday morning was all gone, and all that was left were a coupel of varieties I don’t care for and Sleepy Time tea. I found humor in the fact that not only do we have Sleepy Time tea in the break room, but that it’s right next to the coffee. One wrong brew, and bam, everyone’s asleep. So instead I’m drinking some sort of “No More Stress” variety of tea, which I’m not certain is helping in that regard or not. I’m not under a lot of stress right now, but as I’ve alluded to before, I’ve had a lot of things on my mind in the last month or so, and as a result a lot of things, included my sleep, have suffered. That, and I’m out of Diet Coke at home and so the caffeine that normally saturates my bloodstream is beginningt o thin, and so even now I’m very, very tired. I could drink coffee, but I hate the way it makes my breath smell. Perhaps now that I have some money I’ll order some nice caffeinated tea from ThinkGeek or run on down to the store after work and grab some Morning Thunder or similar variety of tea so that I can stay alert and buzzy all day long. I don’t like the feeling I get when I oversaturate my blood with caffeine like I’ve mentioned before (I believe my exact entry title was “Caffeine makes me buzzy!”), but I do like the pick-me-up. I have precisely three vices in my life that I allow to affect other things, and those are caffeine (preferably in the form of Diet Coke), beer, and my computer. I can and have in the past give up most of the TV I watch, and I can forego all sort of other things, but if you either A) take away my caffeine supply, B) prevent me from enjoying a good pint of beer now and then, or C) break my computer, I guarantee that I will not be very happy and everyone around me will know about it. Of course, most people who know me fairly well know these three simple rules already, and so they try and stick to them. Although it’s also a good idea to watch out for those times when I’m out of caffeine, it’s too early for a beer, and I break my own computer.

Speaking of breaking computers, last nigth I got extraordinarily angry with both our power provider and our Internet provider for good reason, though the stream of expletives that exited my mouth were probably a bit over the top and unnecessary. You see, I got home from work, went and exercised, and then I thought, “Gee, I’ll sit and play my game for a little while.” There was something I’d been thinking of doing all day, and so when I logged on, I was surprised to see soemthing else going on in the place where I’d left my character. Occasionally the developers of the game like to throw in things for people to come across and participate in that aren’t set events or quests. As an example, if you go to X place on Y planet, you’ll always find Z person offering a quest, without fail. Some of them don’t move. But from time to time the devs have done one-time things, like when a bunch of the battle droids from the first and second Star Wars movies (Episode I and II, mind you, not the first and second movies made) rolled into the cantina I was in at one point and started attacking the players that were there as a prelude to a bigger event.

Anyhow, since I’m sure that there are about three people who are interested in all of this, I’ll cut to the chase. I discovered that there was a computer-controlled Dark Jedi Knight just outside the base I was in, and a few players were already fighting with him. This guy was powerful. Everything that we could throw at him just bounced off him, though sadly it wasn’t because he was a Dark Jedi Knight, just an insanely strong character. In fact, I didn’t once see him use any Force powers. Anyhow, I pulled out my blaster and called my Graul Mauler (a giant creature I control about the size of the rancor Luke killed in Jabba’s palace in The Return of the Jedi) and joined in the fight. Just as we were about to defeat him, CLICK. All the lights switch off, then back on. We lose Internet connection in the house, and it doesn’t pick up again for at least 15 minutes. I just wanted to see what happened afterwards, but no, PGE and Comcast had a difference of opinions with me. No, it wasn’t that important in the grand scheme of things, but still. Consistent power is something that I tend to enjoy. Glad I don’t live in California.

I saw something advertised at the Cedar Hills McMenamins the other day, that on an upcoming day $30 will get you into a tequila tasting party. I assume that the $30 covers your unlimited tequila and food, but I’m going to ask anyway. That might be interesting to go to. I’m not a huge fan of tequila, but it would be interesting to taste a few different kinds instead of just drinking a shot of it. Free McMenamins food would be nice, too. Now that I’m working I can afford the $30, too. I’ll have to get some more info, though, before I fork over my hard-earned cash. Well, earned cash, at least. Oooo, that reminds me. I need to send an email to Martin about getting paid for the work I did for him a few weeks ago. He ended up not being able to use the data I collected because I wasn’t abel to get enough responses, but I did spend three whole days collecting the data for him. If I’d had more time, I’ll bet I could have gotten more responses, but I was limited by when he actually got the assignment to me and when he needed the results by.

Today has been a tough day at work. I’ve taken two fairly long phone calls (neither of which I can really remember right now since I’m just now finally injecting caffeine into my body and I was running on pretty much nothing), and I took lunch close to two hours late. Not to mention the fact that a product I’m testing pretty much doesn’t work at all right now, and I have to find some reproducible bugs to report or else a lot of my work today will be pretty useless. Maybe I won’t get distracted again by the phone. I did decide to have a real lunch today, though, and not just cereal since my lunch was late and I was really hungry. So now my bellies full of teriyaki chicken bento and I’m slowly raising my blood caffeine level back to the level where it should be.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to tape the “ER” episodes this morning. Sigh.