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Well, I’m writing this from my iPhone. My internet access has been out for most of the day. I went to bed last night and everything was fine. Got up, and it wasn’t working. I got someone on the phone pretty quickly — I suppose not many people call about their internet being down at 8:00. The put me in for an “emergency” appointment, which was great.

The tech shows up maybe an hour and a half later, and tries what I did — unplug, powercycle, and notices it not working. He unplugs the cable to test it, everything looks great. He then plugged it back in, and it magically started working.

The tech was really nice, and we actually chatted for perhaps 20 minutes or so. He left, and things were fine.

I decided today was the day to buy Metroid Prime 3, and went to the local GameStop. I get back and begin enjoying the great game when my wife says, “so the Internet is fixed?”

By the questioning tone, I could tell it wasn’t. I tried recreating the tech’s earlier movements to no avail. Finally, I picked up the phone and called again. Sadly, hold times were worse.

When I finally was talking to someone, I tried to shortcut the process, explaining that I had already had a tech out at my house a few hours ago, but the problem was back. No dice. He was trained for situations like these: follow the prompts.

Fifteen minutes later, he agrees there is a problem, and I get transferred to someone else. This guy was helpful, and got the tech contacted to make another stop here. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.

So I’ll be calling again in the morning. Wish me luck.

When I started this post, the iPhone’s autocorrect wasn’t working. However, at some point it started working. Additionally, wordpress’s edit field is much too wide when zoomed in. Finally, with this much text in a single field, each letter takes about half a second to appear, and clicks are actually buffered, just as a normal keyboard would. I attribute the slowdown to the autocorrect feature. Anyways, it’s annoying, so I’m calling it a night.

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Ok, it’s unforgivable, I know. It’s been nearly two months since my last update. But I’ve been busy, I promise.

First and foremost, myself and several others are now officially Alacatia Labs, Inc. It’s great working with other people on projects, because it seems that every time I look, there’s something interesting that one of the others did.

At my day job, I’ve been working with C# 3.5 and Linq, and I must say I’m very impressed. Today, I solved a the last of the harder problems that were bugging me. It involved a particular query that required three separate group by’s, and I was impressed with the outcome of the query. Yes, it was big, but Linq has a certain readability that doesn’t come with straight SQL. Perhaps it’s just Visual Studio being nice, but overall I think Linq is one of those technologies that will change how a lot of people work everyday.

In my personal life, Erin and I took a week long vacation up to visit my parents in Alaska at the beginning of September. That’s where the picture above is from. There are more pictures if you head over to SmugMug, but not nearly as many as I’ve taken in the past. It was a great, relaxing trip.

I’m learning Chopin’s Ballade #1. It is in many ways the hardest piece I’ve ever undertaken. It’s not nearly as flashy as a few pieces I’ve worked on over the past few years on my own, but technically it’s much more difficult. If you’ve watched The Pianist, this is the piece that he plays in the very dramatic section when he is alone with the German officer. If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend it — it’s a great movie.

Erin and I are taking a trip up to New Jersey next week to visit her parents, and that should be fun. We also get to attend a recital being put on by her best friend from college.

All in all, I can’t complain. Except for the allergies — they’ve been driving me crazy this entire week. And that’s even more reason to look forward to a trip out of Texas.

How’s everyone else been? Do I actually still have readers?

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