People In Hell Want Icewater
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December 25, 2005 - 9:52 a.m.

I am now in starch overload. It's Christmas morning, I'm on the road in Batavia, New York, and I've consumed my holiday breakfast here at the Comfort Inn: a fresh-made waffle, some Froot Loots, a mystery egg puck, and a lot of orange juice. I am now back in the room, rumbling as I do when I eat things in the morning. Not having commonly eaten breakfast at any time in my life other than college (when it was paid for and available without need of preparation on my part), my body has no idea what to do with it.

Hopefully, I will get the stomach rumbling done with before I drive over to my parents' later on.

I had the road to myself last night driving up here. For miles, I didn't see anyone at all. And this wasn't midnight or anything -- at midnight, I was here, doing email and safely watching the Hawaii Bowl -- it was normal evening hours. If you want uncluttered roads, it appears that the two days to be out driving are Thanksgiving afternoon and Christmas Eve, when all the stupid people are elsewhere.

I found the last iPod in Baltimore for my brother-in-law. He was the name I drew for this year's gift thing. I have no idea who got my name, but it's a safe bet they will have had no idea what to get me, and since I lack a spouse they might email to ask about hints, they will probably find me something they think is just perfect and for which I have no need. Six or eight years ago, it was an air-hockey table. Nancy and I never even brought it into the house... we took it back to the now-defunct Service Merchandise and got a new television in its stead.

I did up a new podcast... all Christmas stuff. I got all inspired after DJing the other night, and when I discovered my "missing" USB headset in my suitcase (where it's been since Thanksgiving) I decided to put a podcast up, so you all can go enjoy that. I will be doing more podcasts again, I am quite sure.

Next week, I've decided that my mission is to pay off this one credit card that annoys me. They've been generally OK, but lately they've decided that for my "protection" they've instituted some extra and rather annoying layer of "security" on their website. Presumably most people are too fucking stupid not to fall for phishing scams, so the bank has added some arcane site-verification thing that I am absolutely certain won't save me from anything but will involve more time, hassle and browser incompatibilities. Once again, I'm having the scope of my world circumscribed by what stupid people might do.

The hotel I'm in has wireless. When Penny and I stayed here a couple of years ago, the only net access was down in their "business center" (which appears to exist primarily so the young guy who works the desk overnight can surf for porn), but now they have wireless. The connection sucked pretty badly, even in the middle of the night (see also, "overnight desk clerk surfing for porn") but it worked well enough for me to check mail, chat with Heather for a bit, and FTP my podcast up to the server.

I got a truly unexpected Christmas gift yesterday morning. It came in the form of a wrong number.

On my wireless phone.

In my house.

This has never happened before, because I do not have wireless coverage at my house... or at least, I didn't until yesterday morning. I woke up (late) to hear the wireless phone ringing. It was some guy looking for "Dennis," and it wasn't until after I told him about the total lack of Dennises there and hung up that I realized, "hey, we get signal!! Main screen turn on!!!"

Sure enough, there it was: "T-Mobile," and three bars of signal. When I left the house to get on the road, the signal got stronger as I drove down the valley, leading me to believe that T-Mobile leased space on a tower Cingular uses to provide coverage in the valley. The tower is actually across the river in Virginia but readily visible for miles up my valley.

The first person I called was Mary, who told me she's got a new job lined up.

I may finally get to dump my wired phone, though I would miss the interesting number it has.


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