It’s Not Me, It’s Him, Right?

The 12 Days of No Internet at Home…

…have not been pleasant ones. I was given four different “commit” times by Earthlink on when my internet service would be restored. To me, “commit” means “it will be done”. Only one commit time should be necessary. I will probably not be staying with them for too much longer, as the whole “Earthlink Experience” has been “a royal pain in the ass.” I have talked to more Indians than Gandhi.

I have a hearing problem, and I struggle a little bit with accents on phones. On my third call, I got a little frustrated with understanding the call and asked if they had a chat service. I was told their Level 2 service (TRON) did not have chat. I was told “that would be available soon”. Well, unless that was going to be made available that night, “soon” might as well be “2012”. I then asked if they have TTY service, since I actually own a TTY device. She had no clue what that meant.

But, now that I am wired again, I couple of notes.

First, for those of you who like to gamble on anything, I have something for you. My friend Walt is a scientician with the National Snow and Ice Data Center, doing a whole bunch of data gathering on global climate change. He is actually running a pool on the extent of sea ice in the Arctic for 2008. He does include some past data to help you make your prediction, but he still has not explained to me why the data is only to two decimal places but your entry has to be to three places.

Second, someone in our Scrabble club came up with the idea of “Double Scrabble”. Two boards, two sets of tiles, one game. You can choose to play on either board. He beat me 892-690. I am mostly the teal tiles, my opponent the purple. You had your own set of tiles to draw from, and if your bag runs out, you can start drawing from the other bag.