A good idea for a MFC

Planet Xena?!?!? Why not planet Marvin?

Raging debate at "work": Longest properly formed Starbucks order.
Current candidate: Iced grande in a venti cup half-caf triple 2 pump mint 1 pump vanilla soy extra hot extra foamy latte

The cable company caught up to me. I downsized my service months and months ago to be only the over-the-air channels and they never removed most of the stuff I was getting. I haven't been watching tv at all, so I'm not sure when it happened, but most of the extra channels I was getting were gone as of last night. Brief panic when Channel 11 wasn't available, but it was later in the night, so all is good. Then again, as pledge week has been extended throughout much of the year, it wouldn't be much of a loss. For some reason, they took off the CSI/Star Trek/Ultimate Fighting channel, but left the whiners and the screemers. It's ComCASTIC!

Why not get rid of cable totally? I live in a brick canyon and rabbit ears don't work. Well, they sort of work, I can get two stations: Fox and 44. Besides, it's only $9/mo and include NECN and C-SPAN.

Our long national nightmare is over. Well, as least as it relates to me and my DSL line.

Result: all fixed.

The Covad guy came last night and had the problem diagnosed within about 10 minutes and fixed in about 20.

Verdict: Verizon totally botched the wiring. Wires were cross connected and other assorted mess. Basically, they had the DSL line cross wired to the voice line through two of the jacks. That means is was the guy who ran the new wire didn’t hook it up right. And the guy that came after him didn’t bother to even look at it.

Verizon: You owe me for a $199 service call.

I have the option to send the new modem back, pay for it ($99), or commit to another year. I committed.

So I came home from work last night and what do I find? The nice, big, healthy 10-inch tree in front of my house has been ripped out by the roots. It, along with another sickly tree, were cut down by the city while another wholly diseased tree was left standing.

Explanation by the city: "I don’t know. It was scheduled for removal." (a direct quote.)

Just another in the long and growing list of reasons why I don’t want to live here any more.

Trees
(Click to enlarge)

The explanation, that they will never admit, is they got the wrong tree. There are only four on the street -- two diseased, two healthy. What are the odds they could get the right ones?

I joined a gym today. It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing. A bit on the expensive side. Sort of. But not really. The price ($70/mo) includes everything, and it has a pool. The last gym I belonged to charged extra for everything including classes and towels. It'll give me something to do when the weather's to crappy to ride. Plus they have a cycling studio and spin classes that might help my riding. I also need to work on things other than my legs. Here's hoping my back holds out.

I had a couple of other things but they're on my laptop which is in my backpack and I don't feel like getting it out.

So there.