[crouton] Nathaniel Trost: One for the Money, Two for the Dough

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Posted by Nathaniel Trost:
One for the Money, Two for the Dough
http://crouton.powerblogs.com/archives/archive_2006_09_03-2006_09_09.shtml#1157605278


   Coming home to DSL instability after a long day makes me a very very
   sad panda. The pathetic thing is DSL woes, coupled with the painful
   post-Labor Day surge in commuter traffic, results in my hanging around
   the office later into the evening. This is not necessarily better for
   my mental health. Experiment time, Iâd been brooding that one of my
   neighbors (in the evenings, only a problem in the evenings) was
   utilizing something that cranks out enough RFI to make sync
   problematic. However, given the temperature, Iâm wondering if the
   modem might be getting too hot. Cheap-ass equipment. Weâll see if a
   fan pointed at the thing helps at all, or merely makes the
   interference problem worse. I am very loathe to downgrade speed, itâs
   not that 3 versus 1.5 down is painful, but going from 384 to 128 up
   would hurt.
   On the weekend preceeding Labor Day weekend I ended up making
   something I hadnât made in many many years: cookie dough. While I
   occasionally indulge in cookie dough ice cream, going right for the
   pure fix hadnât been done since Bush I was in office. Yes, there are
   premade tubs of chip-laden goo available in the refrigerated foods
   section, but they always suffer from a displeasing tangy preservative
   aftertaste. Salmonella be damned, after a week of difficult project
   news, sore muscles from renewed exercise, Brazil-esque paperwork
   agony, I wanted chocolate chip cookie dough the way God and Nestle
   intended: from scratch from the recipe off the back of the Toll House
   Morsels package. Of course, over the next week, I only managed to eat
   a portion of the plentiful bounty, but a scrumptious bounty it was.
   In other indulgence news, I tried out [1]RiffTrax Monday night, after
   a rare trip to Hollywood Video to rent the infamous [2]Star Trek V. I
   always enjoyed MST3K, so it was sweet to hear Mike again, even if I
   was a bit more of a Joel guy. However, I think I am a bit spoiled from
   picking that particular episode since Kevin Murphy guest hosted along
   with Mike. Reading impressions, it sounds a bit lonesome with Mike
   solo (DisembAudio doesnât count, although I was amused the Kevin
   pointed out that he sounded like [3]Bob the Tomato.
   As to DSL, the experiment while I composed this blog entry has shown
   that no, the fan doesnât hurt, but it doesnât help either. The real
   kicker is that losing sync for several seconds at a time is painful,
   but what really is a kick in the groin is every once in a while it
   doesnât lose sync, but the connection must be getting confused and
   dies. When this happens, I not only have to power cycle the modem, but
   my router/firewall before PPPoE will reconnect. When that happens, the
   firewall does some QoS checks, which means that the downtime is
   upwards of three minutes. When that happens once an hour, keeping a
   download going, much less trying to play WoW with a connection blink
   every five minutes will result in homicidal tendencies faster than
   [4]photoshops of Suri Cruise hitting web forums.
   Speaking of WoW, my main character, an undead mage, now has a complete
   set of Tier 1 armor and exalted reputation with the Defilers. I think
   Iâm ready to do more productive things now.

References

   1. http://www.rifftrax.com/
   2. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098382/
   3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_the_Tomato
   4. http://www.adobe.com/misc/trade.html#photoshop