Gah, I'm busy

So, this is a quick update. As you can see from this post's title, I'm really busy right now. The movie project I've been working on is making an appearance at a convention here in Portland this weekend. So I've been rushing through last minute layout tweaks, filling in content and editing massive amounts of graphics (which is much easier thanks to the RAM upgrade courtesy of Makal). There's more to come, too. I might need to pull a late night sometime this week (sorry Makal, but you can use my computer to play that nerdy Star Trek game ;). Luckily though, this project has finally taken a turn to where I can get back into some creative aspects of the website--mainly the content and making things "flow"--and finally finish up admin things. Nobody likes constant admin, not even sys admins. I'm so glad I can start to enjoy this work again!

Yesterday the maintenance guy came by and fixed our water heater. He was an entertaining fellow; really likes to ramble on. He spent the first five+ minutes he was here standing in the front area, telling me about how refrigerators (and other heavy-duty equipment) needs to "breath" and how people don't get that, stuffing things along the sides, and then it stops working, but it can takes months... Yeah. He's really nice though and seems kind of shy. So he took a look at the water heater, rambled on about water heater stuff and maintenance jobs and how he used to be a construction driver. There wasn't anything major wrong with it, luckily; just that the safety button dooly-bob popped out because something wasn't working right (you know, like modern hair dryers have). Withing a few hours after that, yay!, we had hot water again. I promptly did a load of dishes in the dishwasher. :)

Apparently, though, this is the week of things breaking, because hours after the maintenance guy left, the internet disappeared. I went and checked the Airport to see if that was the issue, but it wasn't. The modem was acting all funny, like it's been doing off and on since we got cable installed two months ago. I fiddled with it like I usually do, let it sit unplugged for a while and tried everything again, but to no avail. This was really aggrivating because at the time, I was working on a rather large project for Makal using Google Spreadsheets (given that the version of Windows XP that came installed on my comp had no spreadsheet program /lame), and I can't do that if I have no internet. And since the modem froze at about 3:30, I lost two hours of internet time before he got home. Makal called the cable company last night, and since there was nothing wrong with the service, they scheduled a guy to come out today. But another unfortunate for me: he wasn't coming until between the hours of 1p and 3p. So another 5 hours of lost work time. But it turns out that it was just the modem acting up, and the technician installed a new one and everything was happy. He left at about 2p, and after about half an hour of catching up on emails and various blog feeds, I was back to work. I got the project done under the deadline, though not as fine-tuned as I would have liked it to be. But shite, 7 hours of lost work time! All due to a faulty modem. Hopefully that'll be the last thing to break this week, /knock on wood.

Anyway, that turned out to not be such a quick update after all. :)