A much unanticipated update

Wow, it's been about eight years since I last posted. I now have several YouTube channels and several Twitter accounts. Neither of these were mainstream things when I was last active on this blog. 

I'm now a "technology" para-educator. I have been given the gift of sharing my technical experience with my students and fellow staff.

But enough about me, let's talk about what I want to talk about.

Twitter seems to have killed the RSS feed. I'm not sure when this actually happened, but it has definitely been a paradigm shift. Back in 2009 I remember having Twitter but not knowing how to use it. My RSS subscriptions, however, gave me everything I was interested in. 

What is funny is that most of the sites I followed now have Twitter accounts. Anyone can be on Twitter but not everyone has their own website. However, the majority of the Twitter accounts I follow now have their own websites. It seems to have flip-flopped.

It amazes me that a lot of these accounts will publish posts on their website but their readership depends on the sharing of their links on their Twitter account. In my opinion, Twitter has become a broken, less efficient version of RSS that allows for a brief post summary in addition to the blog link rather than just a post title and link.

A Long Overdue Update

WARNING: POSSIBLE OVER-USE OF PERENTHESIS (these things)

It has been some time since I last made a post to this blog, largely due to how interesting(crazy) the last three quarters of a year have been for us.  I was once told by a "mental health professional" that I had endured the three most stressful events a person usually goes through in the space of a year; getting a new job, getting married and having a child.  Plus we had bought a new car and a home. The last couple of years have given that time a run for its money. 

For those who aren't aware, or simply don't care to remember, two years ago we had moved to the beautiful(blah), vibrant(really windy) and culturally enhanced(almost everyone in or related to someone in the USAF) city(not really) of Great Falls(there aren't any falls anymore due to the dams), Montana(I actually loved living in Montana).

We were moved to Great Falls due to my wife's employer.  Our house wasn't really ready for sale so we(I) rented it out to a friend whom I believed to be reliable and have since discovered was not.  Luckily the second person I rented it to was vastly more mature and a very reliable tenant.  We were renting to them on a possible lease to own condition.

As most people who know me are aware of, I have been a stay at home dad since I left my 12 year job of working as a computer repair technician in 2009.  Since our youngest was ready to enter kindergarten while we were there it was time for me to look for a part time job.  Let me tell you, there is no shortage of people looking for part time jobs in a city which has a significant portion of its population military based.  After not hearing back from most jobs I applied for(which was very depressing) I finally landed a job as a teacher aide at my children's elementary school.  I loved that job.  I was really fond of the permanent registration on Balrog(my Suburban) too.

Oddly, my wife's employer decided it would be best for us to move back to Spokane, WA.  Ah, Washington.  The land of high minimum wage and proportionate over-taxing.  It kind of evens things out.  It cost us about $400 just to transfer vehicle titles and registrations.  Since our tenant was trying to buy our old house we lived at my parents' house for several months.  Unfortunately our renter was unable to buy our house in a suitable time frame and subsequently moved out and we moved back in this past August.  It's a strange feeling, saying goodbye to a home, thinking you'll never live there again, then moving back and some things are different because someone else had lived there and made some minor changes.

So that is basically where we are.  I'm looking for another part time job so I can still take care of the kids and try to pursue some creative endeavors.  Hopefully over the next few months as we settle in more and I can find some of my fun stuff that is still lost in packing boxes and get back into a few hobbies.  I have a corner of the basement configured as a workspace that I can use for some retro computer and AV projects but it's not quite there yet. 

If you've read this far, I'd like to both thank you and apologize.  If I had a budget for awards I would distribute them gladly.

Wow, lazy much? (a pathetic attempt to explain how I neglected my blog)

This has the potential of becoming a trend, my annual post about how I'm going to post more...  How does this happen?  How does something as simple as posting semi-regular blog entries slip through the cracks in my schedule?  Well, frankly, those cracks are kinda big.  Okay, to be honest, really freakin' big.

For most of 2012 I was kept pretty busy with mending fences (quite often) and minor automotive repairs (okay, once) and otherwise maintaining house and home while we lived in Great Falls, Montana.  Yes, I was a domestic technician, though from September of last year to February of this year I was employed as a Teacher Aide for Great Falls Public Schools at my kids' elementary school.  With Mrs. Astro Chicken being a professional in the retail sector and being exploited in the wonderful world of overworked and underpaid salary employees,  work, home and children kept me fairly busy, not to mention the hurried and scrambled mess of moving back to Spokane, Washington to keep her employment with the company.  Since moving back and not being employed as of yet, I'm finding myself with an abundance of free time.

So what's the deal?  I like to write.  I'm not too bad at it.  Sometimes I think I'm actually pretty good, occasionally, those times when I feel inspired and make the effort to fire up NeoOffice or open a browser and direct it to Blogger.  Yeah, I've been a bit lazy since the move back.  I felt like my back and knees were going to go on strike for a while, but that shouldn't have stopped me from writing.  It's a simple thing really, just a few clicks of the mouse, or lately, taps on a screen.  Since no one needs to be subjected to a deep self analysis by me, I'm choosing to blame my tablet.

The newest computer I have regular access to, I mean a traditional personal computer, is a 1.42GHz G4 Mac Mini.  Yep, we bought that baby refurbed direct from Apple just before they were switching to Intel.  Don't even get me started down that road.  It's a bumpy one full of potholes filled with diminishing Apple fandom, perhaps the subject of a future blog post, if I get around to it.  Anyway, as much as I like Safari, and it is a great browser, version 4.1.3 isn't really all that well equipped for modern web surfing.  Also, the kids are accustomed to playing on various learning websites they discover at school, so it was either use my G3 iBook with it's nice but limited 800 x 600 display and chain it to the wall with a power supply or find another alternative.  Enter the tablet.

Last year I considered myself fortunate enough to finally get an Android tablet.  Since I don't have a smartphone and wanted something that would kind of fit the same bill yet be a little bigger, I figured the 7 inch display would work really well, and it has.  But I'm not a touchscreen person, at least not when it comes to typing.  Oh, I can fling tweets like flapjacks off a griddle, but when it comes to really formulating thoughts into words, especially where more than 140 characters are allowed, I likes me a keyboard.  Don't get me wrong, I actually find myself trying to drag web pages using the mouse without the scroll bars, giving the page content a nice light blue highlight, but still, at heart, I miss my trackball most of the time.

The Blogger app for Android actually works really well for me, when I've used it, but there's something about typing on a touchscreen, for me, akin to driving over a spike strip.  It just isn't conducive to helping me retain my train of thought and, when that train derails, no amount of The Fugitive train jumping is going to help that conversation get back to where it was originally headed.  I love using my tablet for everything from checking email and tweeting to reading the news and watching Netflix and anything between, but I just need a tactile response that tells me I actually pushed a key.  It's similar to using the manual shifting feature on my wife's car.  I can bump the gears up or down, but it's just not the same as working the clutch and getting the satisfying feel of a manual transmission.

Do I ask for spousal permission to use some tax refund money and buy a new computer?  That would certainly help with my recent fondness of playing the DayZ mod for Arma II on my son's PC, but do I really need a new computer?  I'm really trying to employ the KISS principal as much as possible.  I've got my Raspberry Pi and a hip deep pile of retro-computing history to keep me satisfied with trips down nerd-stalgia lane, and I wouldn't mind a newer PC for doing some A/V projects I have in mind, but I really only need a computer that can handle composing email and writing, whether it be for my blog or more creative projects.

So what to do?  My tablet functions really well for watching Netflix and Youtube, shopping and casual web surfing.  As appealing as a new notebook sounds, it turns out my 366MHz Indigo iBook G3 with its 800 x 600 display, Airport card and an impressive 320MB of RAM running Mac OS X 10.4 actually works really well with Blogger and Appleworks 6, and while I could easily purchase a descent notebook for under $500, I can get a new battery from OtherWorld Computing for under $60.  Keep it simple, stupid...

Hold on, it'll come to me...

I've been thinking a lot lately.  I haven't really been thinking about anything of worldly importance, but thinking nonetheless.  This is a cyclical occurrence, by the way.  It doesn't follow any specific schedule, no truly predictable peaks and valleys on a perfectly crafted chart.  It just comes and goes.

Then I had this thought.  What if we only had a limited amount of resources for thought?  I'd be running out of CPU cycles long before my body reached its own limits and ceased to function.  I'm sure my autonomic functions would persist, but the rest of me would be a listless bag of meat and bones with an organic storage medium that had met its capacity with no room left to buffer or shift things around to make more efficient use of space.  That's a scary thought.

Imagine living in a world where we all know roughly how much free storage our brains had remaining, or at least had a way of guesstimating how much was left.  How many people would still go forward, eager to experience life to its fullest, knowing that at any point their capacity for retaining new knowledge could suddenly cease?  Would people be more careful about how much detail they exposed themselves to?  How would this effect the arts?  How many people would find themselves scrutinizing their choices for entertainment?  Would there be a home for people who can't take care of themselves because their brains are reliving seasons of Big Brother or Real Housewives?

I wonder how people would attempt to cope with this newly discovered reality.  Would people be trained at an early age how to filter input?  What do you remember and what do you forget?  Would there be people who, due to their self imposed criteria for data retention, simply choose to filter out color, brightness, or hue?  What about removing sounds from experiences all together?  Imagine a sector of the population that had been raised with a monochromatic filter, knowing only shades of gray and going to school to be mindless worker drones.  What about differences in tone?  Imagine the masses of people that avoid works of fiction, because it clogged the mind with artificial memories of events and places that never occurred.  I find that disturbing.

On the flip-side, though, if the human mind is able to delete items it sees as non-essential, I suppose that leaves a lot of wiggle room.  I'd like to think that all of those memory engrams are permanently stored, and that we just lose the little bits that tell which synapses to fire in order to follow the complex branches to reach minutiae like the color of the eyes of the checker at the grocery store, or that golden apple that is Junior's third word, rather than his first, which will hopefully always be a retrievable memory.

Well, screw it.  I'm just going to keep thinking.  I can't shut it off anyway.  Perhaps I have some sort of thought disorder.  Am I in a minority, a small percentage of people who are subject to thinking about things they don't want or need to?  I'm pretty sure most people I know just shift gears, but I find that difficult to do.  Hmm...  I should probably stop thinking about this so I can think of something else to post later.

If you have your own thought about this, or thoughts if you are more daring, feel free to share in the comments, even if it's just to tell me how crazy you think I am or to offer your mental health services.  Again, it's all just my random thoughts.

It's been a while...

Well, it certainly has been a while since I last made a blog entry.  Life is very full of, um, stuff right now.  I am hoping to start making more posts in the near future.  Since I have some varied interests, I've started a couple of other blogs.  None of them have any entries yet, but I am hoping to use them for more specific topics of discussion, mainly a retro-computing blog and one for traditional gaming, maybe some boardgames, but more of a focus on pencil and paper RPGs.  I'll still be using this blog for general topics, but anything in those areas of discussion will be on their own just to keep things less crowded.  So keep an eye out as I will be tweeting posts as they happen.  Oh, and one last thing, I'm going to be using my tablet to post from time to time, like right now, so please forgive any crude formatting or touch screen typos.  The Blogger app for Android is convenient, but not great. 

For now though, I need to get back to looking for a job and making sure the house is kept up.  You may now return to more interesting pursuits.

Happy Fat Tuesday!

In honor of Fat Tuesday, and since we will be fasting tomorrow for Ash Wednesday, tonight's dinner is what I am calling Joe-balaya. I don't use recipes and this is completely from scratch, so I'm hoping it turns out well. It's got clams, shrimp, sausage, tomatoes, peppers, chili powder, rice, kidney beans, black beans and some Louisiana hot sauce for kick. I have to keep it pretty mild for the rest of the family, so I'll be doctoring my bowl to taste. Happy Fat Tuesday!

Rant from the house of the sick...

I'm pretty sure Montana is a hot bed for strange germ mutations or something.  The kids have all been on a sickness rotation since we moved here and it doesn't seem to be letting up.  Some say it's the altitude, some say the wind, but I'm almost paranoid enough to believe in a government conspiracy theory.

In the four months we've been here we've had probably about four weeks of school missed between two kids.  That's not good.  Most of it is just cold symptoms.  Some of it may be psychological, just a case of the kids getting used to a new environment, but last week was serious.  Two ruptured eardrums in the same week!  First our fourteen year old had a ruptured eardrum last Monday, then his four year old brother had a ruptured eardrum in the same ear on Friday.  While at the ER, my wife was told that they have seen quite a few ruptured eardrums in the last couple of months.  What is going on here?  Is there some mutant strain of germs that is rampaging through Great Falls, MT?  Our oldest is no stranger to ear infections as he got them somewhat often as a little one, and the doctor at the time said it was probably better to let it heal on it's own as he hadn't been exposed to antibiotics yet, and he never had a ruptured eardrum then.  So what is happening here?  Is it the fluctuating weather?  The wind?  The elevation?  Whatever it is, it can leave us alone.  We've had more than our fair share.

And my next question is why can't antibiotics be purchased over the counter?  I would assume most of us are only going to buy them if we are familiar with the symptoms of an infection.  Why are they treated on par with narcotics?  Is there some nefarious way to misuse antibiotics that I am unaware of?  Do weird people take them for the diarrhea rush they can potentially cause?  Are they a popular recreational drug among the colitis crowd?  I have a sinus infection right now.  I haven't gone to the doctor because I know how my body reacts.  It hurts.  My sinuses fill, creating tremendous pressure.  So I usually take something like ibuprofen for pain and swelling and something else to help my sinuses drain.  It's effective somewhat long term, but I think it would probably be a bit easier if I could just throw some antibiotics at it, but I tend to avoid going to the doctor unless I have to.  Most of my immediate family is prone to sinus infections.  I've grown up dealing with this.  Why do I need to pay a co-pay for insurance, plus my deductible, just so a doctor can confirm what I said when I went in and write me a prescription?

The healthcare system in the US is obviously not efficient.  I don't need all my favorite drugs available over the counter, but I would like to avoid having to go to urgent care in order to get medication I know I need.  Why isn't there a more immediate level of healthcare that we can have access to?  The health care laws passed requiring all of us to buy health insurance is a joke.  Perhaps some of our tax money could go instead to immediate care facilities that can confirm the more simple ailments and dispense medications for them.  I don't want a free clinic necessarily, but why can't a nurse practitioner who works at the pharmacy swab someone's throat to test for strep or give me antibiotics for my sinus infection or dispense drops for my child's pink-eye?  All of these are pretty minor ailments that if we could avoid an $85-$115 office visit would make life a little less complex.  I'll quit whining now and get back to blowing my nose.

Throw the towel!!!

If the Retrochallenge were compared to boxing, my entry would be considered as lively as Apollo Creed in Rocky IV, after Drago beat him into a limp mass of convulsion.  I feel like I should have thrown in the towel a while ago.  I had such lofty goals, and looking back on the month, I should have been able to do this, but I'll take this opportunity to cop-out as much as I can.

This month was not a fun one, for the most part.  Not only have I been looking for a job, and dealing with various other normal adult obligations, but I have been trying to keep the fence from falling apart.  The wind here...  CURSE YOU WIND!!!  At least one section of the fence has been repaired more than once.  Several other sections blew down during the 74mph gusts we had a week or two ago.  Some of them are now so rotted and falling apart from multiple repair attempts that I am going to have to start adding new wood.  And the newer section of fence, well, it's crap too.  It looked pretty when we moved in, but it apparently wasn't built well enough to withstand the high winds in this area.

Back to my project.  This shouldn't have been a hard one, if I were a kid still living in my parents' house and hiding in my room, coding until the wee hours of the morning, just because I wanted to and could.  Being a father, husband, responsible adult, what have you, I have decided that my time is not my time.  Oh, there was plenty of down time in which I could have added up to a decent amount of project work, but I don't work that way.  My brain won't let me switch gears very well, especially on intellectual projects such as this.  However, I also think I could have planned this a lot better.  I didn't even pick up my Apple II from the old house until a week before starting on the Retrochallenge, and didn't give it much thought before starting except for, "Wow, this is gonna be so cool."  I'm still hoping to finish this project eventually.  I did a fair amount of planning on paper, figuring out what functions and procedures I would need to write, which were necessary and which seemed like extra fluff to make it more cool, and even wrote some pseudo-code.

Will I take part in the Summer Retrochallenge?  I would like to say yes, given the right amount of time and planning correctly, I would love to, but I may not do a programming project.  I'm starting to like the idea of playing through some games on the Genesis, or maybe documenting helping my kids play through an Infocom game or something like that.  I also have a couple ideas for implementing alternate storage methods on an older system, but I don't want to say too much on that until it looks like I may go that route.

Until the Summer Retrochallenge, I will continue to be my nerdy self and play with old hardware and software.  I may even mess a little with programming in Pascal, since I do enjoy the creative process with programming on older systems, but I don't see myself doing anything crazy cool, unless the stars align and "The Old Ones" return or something like that.

In the meantime, I look forward to making some more random blog entries, taking note of oddities I see, commenting on life after moving two states away, or just mentioning how cool my kids are from time to time.  I'm also going to try to make a more dedicated approach to my writing.  I've got several really nice story ideas that I've had back-burnered for quite some time, and I'm hoping to revisit those soon and hopefully make some progress on them.  I may try my hand at podcasting too, not because the world needs another nerdy podcast, but because I think it would be fun.  But right now, I'm gonna finish eating my chili.

Epic fail...

Sure, I know there's still a few days left, and I'll possibly still get a chance to tinker on my Retrochallenge project, but the last several days in particular have been rough to say the least. We had record high wind gusts the other day and lost several sections of fence. I almost got my hand torn off trying to brace it during the wind and decided to let it fall. We've had more wind since and some of the fence I had already repaired already has started to fail again, plus a couple more sections fell. Perhaps I'll do better during the summer Retrochallenge, but I'm thinking I'd need to prepare better and judge my available time better. As the RC comes to a close I'll try to give a full rundown of the lack of progress I made, which hopefully will at least help me plan better for the next challenge.

Montana is cold, and snowy...

It was -18f yesterday morning.  The day before that was -13 or so.  And yesterday we finally got the snow they were talking about.  I cleared the driveway twice before the Mrs. got home from work, then had to clear the driveway again this morning.  It looked like another 3 inches, maybe less.  My 7 year old missed the bus yesterday morning and I found out the hard way that your car can overheat in sub-freezing temperatures.  I think the thermostat froze.  Probably too much water in the coolant mixture.  Gonna add some antifreeze when it warms up a bit.  I was hoping to actually make some progress on my Retrochallenge project, but with missing busses, walking to and from bus stops in this weather, trying to keep the house warm and taking care of a 14 year old who refuses to get un-sick, I'm finding little time for anything else than chores and staring at my keyboard wishing I was smarter.  But, there is still time.  Maybe I can pull this project out of the dumper before the end of the month.

Pretty much the stupidest RC project ever...

I'm really hoping that I can somehow pull this project out of the crapper over the next couple weeks and accomplish something.  The last couple weeks have been a little more complicated than I had anticipated for fitting in work on the RC.  But on the bright side, I did reset the workspace file and started one line of code:

PROGRAM MOLDVAYCHARGEN;

I'm hoping this weekend I can finally dive into the Basic D&D rule book and plan some modularity and get an idea of the procedures I'll need to write.  It's been a looooong time since I've actually worked with Pascal so I'm hoping I can just dive into this and recall enough to salvage this project.  I'm just hoping it doesn't turn into a steaming heap of black and green poo.

Wishing I had more time - RC Update

Unfortunately, I haven't made much progress on my Retrochallenge project.  Between watching the kids, keeping house and still having to unpack, get a new driver's license and look for a job since we moved, I'm finding it hard to find motivation or devote a decent chunk of time to what I wanted to do.  But I'm not giving up!  Hopefully tomorrow or this weekend I will be able to make some significant progress.  It's been years since I did any real programming, and then only for school, so I think over the next couple days I'm going to do a bit of reading and catch up variables, types, constants, procedures, etc.  Plus, I've never really read the Apple Pascal OS manual, so this would be a good time to hit that and maybe post some ideas on it.

Retrochallenge Update

Since I haven't had actual time to work on anything, I thought I would at least post some pictures and provide some details on my Retrochallenge project.  I'll be using an Apple IIe with two Disk II drives and a Zenith Data Systems monochrome monitor.  I never had a chance to test the second drive out which was acquired in an ebay auction after I got the IIe and a Disk II with it from a friend at work a few years ago who picked it up at a recycler for me, but luckily I was able to test it when I picked it all up in Spokane, WA for a family visit last week and all seems to be nominal.

The Apple Pascal box I acquired from an ebay auction a couple years ago and I was excited to find it was complete, including the sheet of "16" stickers, manuals and disks.

The copy of "Apple Pascal: a hands-on approach" actually came with the box set. Not sure if that was standard with the set or if the ebay seller just included it with the rest of the set.  I'm looking forward to using the "Pascal and Precalculus" book.  It looks to have a bunch of interesting exercises in it.

The last two items we're looking at tonight are "A Primer On Pascal" and the "Pascal User Manual and Report" which is actually by Kathleen Jensen and Niklaus Wirth, both acquired in ebay auctions.

Hopefully I'll actually have time to work on something useful, but as time is kind of precious lately, I'll be trying to fit in chunks of code or learning here and there and small points in between.  And of course, everyone can read all about our family's experiences having just moved to Montana, so there should at least be stuff to read about.

I finally joined the Retrochallenge.

I've been following the Retrochallenge for a few years now.  Those familiar with me know that I am a nerd.  Timing seemed just right this year for me to take part in the winter warmup.  I'll be using my trusty Apple IIe to dink around in Apple Pascal.  I became quite familiar with Pascal while I was majoring in computer science, but as my college time fizzled out, so did most of my programming time, though I've always had a soft squishy part of my brain dedicated to the language.  Over the last several years I've been fortunate enough to build up my old computer collection to include a couple Apple IIe, an Apple IIc, Laser 128 and most recently a Franklin Ace 500.  Somewhere in there I won an ebay auction for a complete Apple Pascal box including all manuals, disks and even the sheet of "16" stickers.  I'm not quite sure what all I will do.  I had a lofty goal of writing a character generator for basic Dungeons & Dragons, but that may prove a bit too challenging for my rusty skills.  I was able to spend the last week re-familiarizing myself with the OS and did a little programming, so who knows, maybe something useful will come into being.  At any rate, I'm excited to be participating.  Future posts will have pictures, possibly some code and maybe even some audio recorded with the nifty TASCAM DR-08 audio recorder I got for Christmas.  For those who follow me on twitter (@Astro_Chicken), I'll try to announce blog updates when I can.  As far as tonight goes, I'm gonna get back to my gin and tonic and watch some cartoons with my kids.  HAPPY NEW YEAR!

CenturyLink and DirecTV - an unholy union

Could there actually exist an union more diabolical and so cleverly disguised as ineptitude as that of the unholy marriage of CenturyLink and DirecTV?  There are several things wrong with this partnership from my humble perspective.

First, when calling a service provider to move service, I would expect that since you are an existing customer it would be a rather simple procedure of the customer service representative changing your address in the system, but oh no, this is a sales opportunity. Can we interest you in a phone line? No thanks, we have Vonage.  Then they try to sell you on getting phone line insurance, if you ever happen to actually subscribe to a phone line. Yeah, sure, we'll think about that.  Then comes the cell phone pitch.  No thanks, we already have mobile service through an employer.  Then finally, the worst of them all, the DirecTV bundle...

Duh-duh-duuuuuuh...  Yes, that's a cheesy horror music cue.  First, it's a bundle, so you save money.  Okay.  Second, you get this great package, because it's a bundle.  Third, here's the extra's you can get, though it is worded so you think you're getting all of them.  Okay, so a little misrepresentation is normal in sales opportunities like this.  I'm sure it's in their training.  But then comes the install.

Two guys show up, one is training, great.  It's like having a medical student give you a proctology exam.  When their hand is in the middle of everything, it's a little too late for the trainer to ask do you remember what to do next?  Also, it's not really a procedure you would want to take longer than it needs to.

The house we are renting already had a dish.  It was already wired for DirecTV.  Should be a simple install, right?  Wrong.  No, they need to install a new dish, probably because they're getting compensated by CenturyLink for it.  And why did they need to reinstall line splitters?  The house was already wired for two receivers.  And, here's the good one, really, you guys don't verify the programming level?

We noticed from the beginning that we weren't getting most of the channels we were told we were going to get, but the installer did say that sometimes it takes 24 hours for programming to be complete.  What?  Don't the receiver number and account number take care of that?  So, the day before Thanksgiving I get volunteered to call... tech support.  I have never called tech support for anything.  I usually just fix it, or replace it and consider it an upgrade, but this is a service, and a new one with a convenient contract at that, so it has to be fixed.

The first call lasted almost a half hour.  I talked to three levels of tech support, the first two of which were unable to help.  The third level, though ultimately ineffective, finally said that everything would be taken care of but may take 3 to 5 days to take affect.  What?  Are their computers that slow?  Do they have to hang bananas to entice the monkey to climb the bank of witches to flip ours to the correct subscriptions? No, it's more sinister than that, though probably more a case of ineptitude than anything nefarious.

So six days later... Nothing has changed.  I get elected to call again, a call I had already been dreading.  This time the call still lasted about a half hour, though I only talked to one person.  Ultimately, this person was extremely helpful, but it was quite an enlightening call.

Did you know that even when someone from CenturyLink tells you something, then someone from DirecTV tells you they'll fix it, that ultimately you still only get what you are technically subscribed to? Okay, I can handle that, but why are we still not getting what we are paying for?

Okay, please select channel 290 on your receiver because that is Disney and everyone gets Disney.  Um, no, it says not subscribed.  Hmm... That's not right.  Yeah, I know...  Oh, I know what's wrong.  Go here, then here, press this, then press that.  Well that's what's wrong, your receiver is set to receive HD.  You only get SD.  I got a little pissed on the phone at this point.  Are you telling me we are getting a free preview that we can't watch unless we pay for HD(which is another $10 per month, by the way)?  No, it just means that we need to program your receiver to block the HD channel duplicates.  Wonderful, I said.  So someone installed it incorrectly?  Yes, either the installer or the phone representative when they called in activation.  She entered feedback into the system about said SNAFU...

So ultimately, we get a lot more channels that I was pretty sure we were supposed to be getting to begin with.  And, I learned that if you complain enough about services you were supposed to be getting all along but were not available because of an error on their part, you get a prorated credit on your account that you can either use to pay for renting porn or applying to your bill.  Thanks, we'll be applying this to our first bill.

First mobile post and the weather.

I've been trying to find a topic to blog about from my phone and the weather seems just as good as any. The weather here seems fairly eratic. We've had highs and lows fluctuate quite a bit and this morning, waiting for the school bus, I think my ears almost went numb. I think I picked the wrong day to wear a baseball hat instead of a stocking cap. And it wasn't just cold, it was bitter cold with wind blown snow, the type of weather that seems just that much more tolerable if you turn your back to it. The other kids at the bus stop were doing the same, and I'm pretty sure if enough people were there an alien observer would assume some strange sort of social phenomenon.

Well, that's all for this post. I Gotta get back to actively waiting for the Directv installer. A four hour window. One hour down, three to go. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact your local congressional representative, or you can just leave a comment I guess...

Stranger in a strange land...

Well, it's been just a tad over a week since I pulled up to our new home in a U-Haul, new to Great Falls, MT.  Mrs. Astro Chicken has been here for several months after accepting a promotion at work.  Finally we are all together under one roof.  The kids seem to be adapting well to school and unpacking is, well, it's unpacking...

The lovely Mrs. scouted ahead and rented the house, and the neighborhood seems nice to far, but we are a ways out of Great Falls.  Grocery shopping is going to need to be carefully planned as some sort of military aid operation as it's a good drive into town.  We have a gas station convenience store only a few blocks away from the house, but nothing else I know of for miles and heading into town involves a voyage into the windy badlands. Seriously, there's nothing between where we live and in town. It's quite inspiring, from a post-apocalyptic survivalist I need to get my Bug Out Bag ready point of view. And the wind is crazy.  At times I wonder if the house is going to blow away.  No cyclones yet, just sheer wind force.  The kids and I hang out in the basement a lot...

Amazingly enough, U-Haul does not make a truck big enough to carry all of our crap, even after many carloads of donation items and a pile of junk slated for the dump that took up half the garage.  The kids got to bring almost all of their stuff, but we have had to leave stuff behind for a second U-Haul operation sometime early next year. Specifically for me, I had to leave all of my retro computing stuff.  I was looking forward to finally getting a chance to learn some Apple Pascal, but that is going to have to wait.  I did at least bring all of my pencil and paper RPG stuff, so I'm looking forward to dipping my toe into that pool again.

Well, that's all I got for now.

Welcome to Monolith Burger

Welcome to my blog.  It's not much, probably never will be, and may or may not sporadically be updated from time to time.  It's largely going to be random thoughts I feel like exposing to the ever critical internet.  So check back from time to time and maybe there will be more.