---

    While I downloaded yesterday's Las Vegas show, a couple guys were uploading my own SHNs of the Detroit show. The traffic really slowed my connection, so I left my computer running overnight for them. They didn't finish till late in the evening. I started taking down decorations as soon as I got up. The Dickens Village and the outside lights got taken down, but the tree is still up. That will probably come down tomorrow though. So much for the holidays.
    P.S.: One new calendar we have is about skyscrapers. The picture for January is none other than the World Trade Center. Instead of a pang of grief or regret at seeing the twin towers, I instead was pleased to see them again. I felt a sense of satisfaction. So, to start off the new year, the Trade Center as it should be...

---

    Can't say I was eager to get back to work, but I didn't mind getting back into my routine. It wasn't till I got to the building I realized my ID badge would not Work. I'd forgotten all about how it would be deactivated with the new year. I was able to get in, but I could very well imagine getting locked out of my room tonight. Sure enough, I stepped out of the room at 7:00 PM and forgot all about propping the door open. I had to walk to the other side of the building to get the securty guard, and of course he wasn't there. I paced around for about twenty minutes until he showed up. He let me back in, I spent the last halfhour in the office, and then went home. The day had been pretty quiet otherwise, with just a few phone calls. Finally got lucky tonight on eBay, winning the Liv Tyler's autographed LOTR card and a LOTR press kit.

---

    Today was pretty quiet too. My ID badge still did not work, but at least I didn't lock myself out of the office in the evening. Reid and I talked about adding Flash to our respective websites; I did some research online but nothing really came of it. I'd ordered some more CD holders and accessories from American Digital and they showed up today, back at home.

---

    My badge suddenly became active about halfway through the day, which was a relief. I stopped at Comics Oasis, in Allen Park, on the way home. I was hoping I might be able to get some LOTR autograph cards from them, but unfortunately no. Guess I'm stuck paying big bucks on eBay. Burned a lot of CDs when I got home, now that I have all my mutli-disc holders.

---

    Got both my Liv Tyler and Viggo Mortenson autograph cards in the mail. Did some writing on the computer and ended up watching How the West was Won on Turner Classic Movies for no real reason. Got Taco Bell for dinner, of course, and bought some new inkjet cartridges from Office Depot on the way home. I;m curious why I haven't gotten any messages from the U2-Wire listserv, so I dug around Yahoo! Groups to see if something was messed up. Looking forward to seeing the AFI Awards tonight, and wouldn't be surprised if I'm the only person to say that in their online diary. Let award show season begin!

---

    I have to admit I did not expect (but wanted) Lord of the Rings to get the nod as best picture, last night. Thus it was quite a pleasant surprise -- especially since the AFI had a big list of ten nominees. I intended to do some work on the website but was too lazy. I watched DVDs instead. I realized that before I can start The X-Files season four box I should finish season three, so I watched three episodes from it. Ah, seeing Mulder and Scully together again. The glory days. I also finally finished one of my NetFlix rentals, thank God.

---

    Checking my mail this morning I suddenly realized I'd forgotten to add one of my accounts to Outlook. It's the one I used to use for ordering stuff online. After adding it I was inundated with ninety-eight e-mails, almost all of them from X-10!
    I got screwed big time on eBay. I won another LOTR card, but two auctions I'd been keeping track of ended prematurely. They weren't supposed to end till the weekend, so I hadn't put any bids in, but on one "the seller ended this listing early because of an error in the listing" and for the other "the seller ended this listing early to sell to the high bidder(s) at current bid price." Gee thanks. It ain't fair I tells ya, it ain't fair!

---

    Had another special broadcast today, but we got more calls about some other (surprisingly popular) program. Got another list for a special show next week, even though we'd been told today's show would be it for the month. We had seven pages of sites to authorize; I finished three sheets by the end of the night.

---

    I'd left my P2P program running all night, so some guys could download some SHN files off me. They finally finished this morning, so I was able to power my computer down at last. Dennis was in today, giving us some news on the Mexico situation. We've being trying to consolidate all our broadcasts to one satellite, but the Mexican government has been dragging its heels in allowing the change. It looks like it might finally happen, within weeks.
    I got two more of my LOTR autographed cards. One of the expensive cards, Orlando Bloom's, would be ending soon on eBay. I put in a bid just for the heck of it; I was surprised no one counterbid, and it looked like I might actually win and have to pay up. It felt odd hoping someone would outbid me. And, a short while later, I found myself stuck owning a very expensive piece of cardboard.

---

    The Corporation would have a big announcement tomorrow, so there was lots of to-do to make sure all this would work out right. Dennis took Reid someplace and I hadn't come in yet, so Dave was stuck sending out e-mails and answering the many panicked phone calls. Things would've gone fine except for one division of the Corporation whose satellites were set up differently than the rest. This had never been a problem before, but it might be tomorrow when they tried to watch that broadcast. (The story is actually kind of funny, but it's too involved to get into now, especially since without being able to name names.)

---

    The big broadcast went over all right, but we had other problems to deal with. Our main hardware took a big dump, about an hour before the broadcast. One channel was acting up, and when Reid swapped encoder cards the entire network started glitching. This time it was Reid's turn to solve things singlehandedly; Dave was on his way in and my shift wouldn't start for a couple hours. Things were further complicated since the production department kept calling over, asking Reid when he'd fix the problem -- while Reid explained that if they stopped calling he might be able to work on it.
    Reid finally got the system back up and running by faulting the same board back. This was odd, since one would expect the original problem to return; but we didn't argue. Our tech support in San Diego is reportedly sending new board out Monday.
    I didn't find out till I got in that I'd have to stay late tonight. The special announcement would be replayed at 3:00 and 9:00 PM, which required me to stay to ten:thirty. To make up for it, Dave offered to late me come in an hour and a half late on Monday. Regular programming ended at six, so it was a long night.

---

    I got three new DVDs from DVD Planet last night. Spent most of the day listening to the Star Trek: The Motion Picture commentary. Got a nice surprise in the evening, when I received an e-mail from my Illinoise penpal. She hadn't written me since Thanksgiving. She also included some photos of her son, who will be two in a few weeks. Even better, she'll be coming up here the first weekend in February, so we might actually be able to meet up at the Li'l Stubby concert in St Clair Shores.

---

    I stayed up quite late to listen to the Almost Famous bootleg commentary. Didn't get up til twelve:thirty. I'd been looking forward to trying a new Stouffer's Lean Cuisine Thai chicken entree. It made sense to start offering Thai food, the same way they offer Mexican food; but I was very disappointed. The chicken was mush and the sauce was no spicier than a spicy spaghetti sauce. Finished up the Almost Famous commentary before dinner. Worked on my webpage in the evening. Created a special page, by popular demand (accessible through my FAQ page), as well as typing up a week of entries for this page.

---

    I sat through some of The People's Choice Awards last night just to see if The Lord of the Rings might win. I was flabbergasted to find out it hadn't even been nominated, and downright stunned to find the three "favorites" were The Fast and the Furious, Pearl Harbor, and Shrek! Who are these "people" and how can they be stopped?
    Things were pretty bad at work. Dave had come in early just to see if the encoder was operating all right. He ended up putting in a twelev hour day. The whole broadcast network went down for a couple hours, around eight. Tech support was called, but they were slow to offer any help. We were able to restore the day's schedule through our back-up tapes, which provided a little stability to the system. And by the the end of the day we were able to input tomorrow's schedule (which was a relief since we have another special show tomorrow). Still, we were on pins and needles that there might be another hardware failure.
    Dennis offered us pizzas for lunch to console ourselves. And by the way, the board San Diego promised us did not arrive. Instead, they were assuring us we'd get two boards tomorrow.

---

    We got a lot of phone calls during today's special show. Thank goodness it was only an hour long. Dave came in late, so he could swap the new encoder boards after programming. I was able to get a Christopher Reid autographed LOTR card today on eBay. I only need one more to complete the collection, but, sadly this one is the most rare and is going for almost six hundred bucks! So it looks like my collection will stay this size. I watched my NetFlix rental of Moulin Rouge at night.

---

    I was really upset this morning by something I read in the paper. The gossip column had a blurb about Nicholas Cage's Porsche being stolen and the authorities finding it in a lake. The item's headline read "He should of used Lojack!". I couldn't believe such a dunderheaded mistake had made its way into print. Although I couldn't help feeling a bit like Grandpa Simpson, I actually sat and wrote an e-mail to the Free Press:

Since this column deals with the antics and excesses of celebrities, I'm used to reading things that upset or displease me. But something that really disappointed me was the sentence this morning (pertaining to Nicholas Cage) which read "He should of had Lojack!" What exactly is "should of"? I can only suppose the writer meant "should have", which is the nearest equivalent I can think of in real English. "Should of" is the kind of junk I'm used to seeing posted by illiterates on some Internet message board. It's a shame this kind of phonetic writing has made its way into a daily newspaper, whose writers should really know better. As I said, I am very disappointed.

    Things were getting sligtly back to normal at work. It was fairly quite too. I was shocked to discover, when I left, that it had snowed heavily. Good thing I remembered where I parked or I wouldn't have been able to find my car. The parking lot was a mess but the roads weren't bad. My glasses got wet though so I braved driving without them.

---

    We were supposed to have our power shut off today, for some repairs to the neighborhood grid. but I guess this had been postponed because of last night's snow. Probably the biggest news that I found my cell phone. I hadn't seen it since my Las Vegas trip. I knew I'd brought it safely back, but couldn't remember where it might've wound up after unpacking. I finally spotted it, lying on the floor in a corner, still plugged into a power strip where it had been recharging for two months!
    My friend Joe e-mailed about X-Files asking me which season one episodes he should check out. Ironically this was the same day I'd later find out the series had been canceled. Dennis came by, spending some of the afternoon with us in preparation for the Mexico "migration". Evidently he's interested in getting a Mini Cooper, a sports car he saw at the Auto Show.

---

    Dennis came by again, to try some tests in preparation of Mexico's changeover to our satellite. He also brought me The Godfather Collection on DVD, loaned from his video library. It was a very quiet day, perhaps because Monday is a company holiday. Stayed up late, downloading.

---

    I watched The Godfather, with commentary during the afternoon. Although I've seen the TV version of The Godfather Saga, I've never seen The Godfather Part II on its own. I watched that, without commentary, during the evening. My downloading continued as well. And I also paid off some bills, some unfortunately a little late.

---

    My brother Rick went to the Auto Show, so he dropped Jake off for the afternoon. And in the evening my brother Mark and family came by. We watched some of The Golden Globes together. I was very disappointed that The Lord of the Rings got shut out. I also couldn't help thinking that the big winner, A Beautiful Mind, got all its awards because it fit the cliché of an award-worthy picture: a true story of a man with a disability. Perhaps I'd be less cynical after seeing A Beautiful Mind, but I kind of doubt it.
    Speaking of Lord of the Rings, I'm getting really tired of reading about the list of its mistakes at movie-mistakes.com. Did the webmaster of this site hire a PR firm? I'm seeing it mentioned all over from newspapers to magazines to high-profile web sites. What irks me even more is that the majority of mistakes in the list are bogus, the product of inattention if not invention -- while the others are pointlessly trivial. Take this one, for instance: there's supposed to be an anachronistic car in this shot.

Do you see a car? I don't see a car? Where's the frigging car?! What, you mean the faint little cloud to the right? That's a smoking chimney, you morons! There's no frigging car. Stop talking about the frigging car. I'm tired of frigging reading about this car!
    Thank you.

---

    All I can say is "Aw, crap."
    I saw the frigging car. After going off on a tirade yesterday about there being no frigging car, today I see the frigging car. I've heard about this rumor for weeks, and it figures I finally see the car the day after I publicly denounce the story. But, anyway, just to prove I can admit when I'm wrong, here's evidence of the frigging car. Note the picture above, and then note the glint of reflection on the horizen line of the photo below.

    That's the car.
    Had a to go in to work today, even though it was a company holiday. It was pretty quiet though. Went to Best Buy afer work and finally bought a battery charger, since my Rio needs new batteries every week. Also bought the Moulin Rouge DVD. Updated my homepage, putting up a survey -- which is something I haven't added in quite a while.

---

    Went to Target to pick up a limited edition U2 CD. They had no copies on display. Tried to order the CD from Target's website when I got in to work, but they were sold out. Figures. Dave was not in, due to a doctor's appointment, but Dennis spent much of the afternoon with us. I gave some thought to swinging by Target again on the way home but lazily decided against it.

---

    Our San Diego support group was dialed into our system, so we were unable to take any trouble calls for a while. Dave however discovered we were able to use our software after all, as long as San Diego was still running it. This was good news. However, later in the afternoon, the program stopped working. I realized San Diego must've logged out, so I had to log in locally, and I thought it was rather rude of them not to call over and let us know. They called later -- during the few minutes I was out of the room. I got their message, which suggested I fault one of our channels after hours. I did so and it did not go well, since the equipment is getting so buggy lately. The channel was black for about ten minutes (even though it didn't matter since it was after hours).
    I saw a page at DVDFile.com I really liked the look of. I could imagine using its design for my homepage. I toyed with the idea at night, but nothing came of it.

---

    The office building's front yard was full of wild geese this morning. I see these geese so frequently I wonder if they ever migrated. I found out today is Dave's 30th birthday. His wife had come over in the morning with helium balloons (although this alarmed Dave more than anyting, because of the CO₂ sensors by the ceiling) and cupcakes. Dave was away when I came in, since Dennis had taken him to lunch. Reid had had one of the cupcakes, a red one decorated like Elmo; the frosting was piled on so high, he said, he'd gotten some in his nose. I had a blue one, decorated like the Cookie Monster. The dye was so strong my fingers were blue for the rest of the day; it made me look like I'd helped Ed Harris retrieve his wedding ring. (A movie reference.)
    The hardware failure last night caused a flurry of e-mails today. It was suggested litigation might even be used against our San Diego company because of their lack of timely support. (Breach of contract, I suppose.) We'd been CC'ing our whole string of bosses on each e-mail, but one of the bosses told us not to, since we shouldn't bother the higher-ups with every problem -- probably because it suggested he was not able to handle the situation himself. We found it rather humorous then when one of the higher-ups evidently got wind of this and wrote to say we should indeed continue to CC all the bosses.
    I gave more thought to renovating my homepage. I checked out a few more sites and did some research on CSS and DHTML. I found another page I liked, and I spent much of the night stealing and working with the author's code.

---

    Some new replacement boards showed up today, from San Diego. Dave was not in, since he planned on coming in after hours to physically swap the boards. It was a quiet day. After work I went over to Borders and bought a couple books, including one on CSS. Just as I was about to leave, I remembered I wanted to check for any Lord of the Rings magazines. I stepped over to the periodicals, squeezing past a couple women. Near us, in the corner, some man loudly and rudely broke wind -- not once but twice, so it's doubtful it was an accident. The women looked at me suspiciously, and I realized I'd said "Excuse me" to them just as the guy had been letting off. So they thought I was the pig. I was tempted to point to the other guy and loudly declare it was him, but the women were actively ignoring me now anyway.

---

    William Burnett, who runs greatlakesships.com, has been asking me for a copy of my photo of the Edmund Fitzgerald for quite some time. It's difficult to make a print off the original slide we have, but we finally settled on my making a new scan of it. I sent this off to him tonight, at long last. (Currently he's using a heavily compressed version of my original small scan.)
    I spent most of the afternoon trying to finish Dennis's Godfather DVD box. Later I got a call from my brother Rick to see if I could babysit my nephew Jake. I spent the evening over there. I found a really interesting ptogram on the History Channel called The True Story of Black Hawk Down. I thought it was quite disturbing how these troubles began a year after US involvement in Islamic Somalia, when the Somalis suddenly decided that our presence had gone from involvement to occupation. And it made me wonder if the same crap is going to happen in Aghanistan in a year. The scenarios look the same. An uneducated populace, feebly-minded on drugs, being swayed by overlords that the US soldiers want to either convert them to Christianity or kill them. It was chilling to think the same thing might happen again. So, to use this website as a soapbox, I would like all followers of Islam to know that as long as you live peaceably I do not care who you worship and I have no intention of killing you.
    Following their meeting, Rick and Debby invited some guests over, so I hung around to watch the end of the Red Wings game with them.

---

    A rather lazy day. I burned a lot of CDs, but didn't do much more. I watched the Criterion Collection DVD of Peeping Tom in the evening. I also watched another episode of The X-Files; this finished off season three, so I am now finally able to start watching the season four box.

---

    Dennis usually works from home on Mondays, but I ran into him outside the office building. Moments later I ran into Dave in the stairwell. He'd come in early, for some final tweaks to the encoder system following a not too successfull weekend, and he was already on his way home now. I got to read about Dave's experiences in the e-mails he'd sent out. It was decided that the channel overrides I schedule would be extended from eleven to six (as opposed to midnight to five). I made the change, but stupidly typed in "11:00" instead of "23:00", which made the software think the override was two hours old and should be running now, and which knocked three channels off the air before I corrected it!
    I had to stay a halfhour after to fault one of the boards, as requested by San Diego. Worked a lot with that CSS book too. I'd finished The X-Files season three box last night, and tonight I finished my Fawlty Towers DVDs, although I still have to get through some of the commentaries.

---

    Dave assumed new boards were being sent from San Diego so he didn't plan on coming in till late. It turned out San Diego had second thoughts on whether hardware was to blame, and they hadn't sent anything out. So Dave got a free day. It was suspected that our system had been improperly shutdown during a remote shutdown on the 14th. We'd been running in an unstable half-state since then, it was believed, so I was asked to reboot the encoder system myself after programming. I, and others I informed, couldn't help noting the use of the word "remotely", which would suggest San Diego themselves screwed us up.

---

    We got four new boards delivered to us -- and had no idea why. We called over to San Diego and were told a field engineer was flying out to us, to give us on-site support. He was leaving tonight and would be in tomorrow after programming. Dave was in, but he was with Dennis in a big teleconference with San Diego all day. It snowed steadily all day, with large fat flakes, so I hope the field engineer doesn't have any problems flying cross country. The snow turned into a drizzly rain by day's end, and my car was icy when I got to the parking lot.

---

    The power went out at the house at around eleven in the morning, right after I sent up this webcam photo to show how icy everything is.

I assume some branch must've knocked down a power line, since all the trees were encased in ice and gleaming. It rained steadily all day; luckily driving wasn't bad when I went in to work. The field engineer was stuck in Dallas, but was still trying to make it to Michigan. By the end of the work day I received word he wouldn't be able to make it till tomorrow, so our maintenance plans were changed. I sent out e-mails and made calls to let everyone know. Once again, Dave and Dennis were not in, since they expected to do most of their work overnight. So, without adult supervision, the stage was set for Reid and me to get into trouble.
    This happened when we got a call from one of the big bosses to take one of the shows off the air. We did, and then immediately got a call from a programming boss demanding to know why we'd taken the show off the air. And for the next couple hours we were involved in what was later nicely described as a "turf war", ping-ponging between conflicting orders.
    In the meantime I found out the San Diego field engineer was delayed in Dallas, due to hail, and wouldn't be able to arrive till tomorrow.
    The power was still out when I got home. Thank Heaven for my battery powered TV, so I was able to watch most of my shows. But the night was terribly cold.

---

Next Month
Back to Trouble Loner homepage
To Bitter Old Man site
To SFG World