Twev1701.net 2002-2012

Halo 2 and EverQuest 2 launch today. If I had money, I’d be in real trouble!!!

I came home from work today and sat down at my computer like I normally do. I turned my monitors on and wanted to check on my downloads. For those of you who have no clue, I have dinosaur speed dial-up here. And don’t even bothering asking me why I don’t have broadband. I can’t get DSL where I live and my only cable modem option will cost me $76 a month. So, I stick with the dial-up, which leads me into this wonderful segue. Anyway, I have had MSN dial-up for about 3 years now. I can’t say that I hate it, but I can’t say that I’m trilled about it either–mostly the price and the lack of newsgroup access. I have tried other ISPs over the years in hope of shedding my $21.99 a month bill to the Evil Empire, but I haven’t liked any of the services. Either they would kick me off line too soon or they would have real shitty connection speeds. While it is true that MSN does tend to kick me off every 8 hours, I have my computer to automatically redial every 2 seconds once the signal is lost. Oh yeah, it’s also setup to do this 500 times. Ok, back to my point. Last week it was time to start shopping again for a new ISP. Christmas is coming and I was really hoping to shed my $21.99 bill. So I looked around online and read tons of review for about 4 hours, and finally decided on which one I was going to try. I went with the new Netscape ISP service for a nice $9.99 a month. At first, I was really put off by the whole ‘Netscape Toolbar’ that you need to use to dial in and stay connected with. But, after a few Google searches, I found a way around that (Hint: username@netscape.aol.com). After that, it was time to put this baby through the basic bane of all dial-up connection–large downloads. So, loading up eMule, I queued up a whole bunch of videos and let it sit overnight. When I got up the next day, quite a bit had transferred. So, I decided to just keep using it until I found something I didn’t like. Well, when I came home today, I saw something which had never happened before. When I checked to see how long I had been online since my last redial and how much had transferred, I saw this:

Never in my life have I ever been connected for over a day with a dial-up connection. I think my current record before this was like 10 hours, but 1 day and 8 hours is nuts!! Needles to say that if the connection continues to perform like this for the next 2 weeks or so, MSN will be getting dropped like 3rd period French.

I know it should be pretty obvious to you but I have brought my new site design online tonight. I have been wanting a new design for some time now, but I have not had the time to really sit down and figure out what I wanted to do. So, I sat down on Friday evening and started working on it. I just finished what I think are the final touches to the main design about 10 minutes ago. The only thing that I would like to add is an archive index of all the past webcam images. For that, I will eitehr have to lean PHP myself or enlist the help of my own PHP guru JP. Either way, it’s not really a priority or a nesessity at this moment.

Jess just left about an hour ago to go back to college, and it was really hard to see her go. We had an abolutely wonderful time together this weekend and I know that because of my schedule I won’t be seeing her again until next Friday night. I know it’s only about another 6 months until I get to live with her, but I just can’t wait! Everytime she’s here we just ‘click’ if you know what I mean. Nothing is a chore with her. We just have a great time and get a lot of things done.

I know I am always whining about missing her, but I really do miss her and it is my site after all!

Well, it’s getting late and I have to wake up early for work tomorrow. Later…

Tonight for me is a weird night. When the 2000 election debacle happened, I was living in this house for about only 2 weeks. I remember watching the election coverage on our little 27″ Sony Wega in the corner of the living room while unpacking some stuff from the move. Now, 4 years later, I am still here in the house, alone, but watching everything on one of my 17″ computer monitors while I re-install my OS on my main monitor of my computer. I tjust find it really weird since moving out on my own was such a big event in my life, and I remember it and the events surrounding it so clearly, and how things seem to be repeating themselves 4 years later, in that I’m watching what could possibly be another Presidential election debacle, and working on the house in anticipation of living with the woman I love. Very cool, and yet very strange.

For those if you wondering why I haven’t been posting lately or been online lately…it’s pretty easy actually. My computer has been fux0red for the past few weeks and I was just able to get around to fixing my main system today (i.e. re-format and install). But, things seem to be working now, I just need to be patient while I download everything I need over my barbaric dail-up connection. I NEED BROADBAND!!!!!!