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    Looks like @Home is completely dead. I had to check the Comcast.net help pages to set up my e-mail account. I refuse to download their Comcast.net software, which is complicating my attempts to use their newsgroups. Fortunately I use other servers to help feed my MP3 addictions, in the meantime. Darryl e-mailed us to say he wanted to spend a couple days with us to get a feel for what we do. He assured us he was not checking up on us, but just wanted to get a better understanding of our day-to-day duties. Nevertheless, I couldn't help wondering how I'd manage to get through those days without sneaking online! Another quiet day at work. Shows ended at five today, so it was tough to stay for the full shift!
    Still no futon, but I'm assured it's being unloaded now and will be available tomorrow at the warehouse or Sunday at the store on Eureka. Got an e-mail at night from the LOTR fan club, asking me to double-check my address before their introductory packages ship. Was quite puzzled to see me listed as a Regular member, when I should be a three-year Charter member. I sent them an e-mail and hopefully we can work this out. It's too bad it took so long for this discepancy to come to my attention.

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    My futon was in, so I got my brother Rick to drive me in his big pick-up to the Futon Shoppe warehouse on Ecorse Rd. The frame and mattress fit in nicely. He helped unload everything, but had to leave to watch his middle son perform a bit-part in Annie at the high school. After figuring out how to put the frame together, I discovered they'd given me the wrong mattress. Called up and was told they had no no idea how the wrong (and cheaper) mattress could've been given to us, but that we could take this one back and get the Simmons Beautyrest we'd paid for. However, Rick was at the high school and no longer home! Called back to try and talk them into delivering the mattress to us; but was told this couldn't happen till Monday (but they'd at least let us use the current mattress till then). Or I could try getting hold of Rick if he's home by six.
    I got the frame together at least. The instructions were in recognizable English (the frame is from Indonesia) but they still weren't all that helpful. I managed to reach Rick at four:thirty. He picked me up and we went back to the mattress store on Ecorse Road. He youngest son was with him, but he nodded off and slept the whole time. I don't think I got to say a word to him. The guys at the store said the mattress had been in the wrong pile. They gave us the right one this time, Rick drove me home, we hauled the mattress in, managed to get the cover on it, and had to wrestle with it to fold it in half to fit onto the frame as a couch. When we were done, we found little Jake standing on the porch looking in through the storm door. We had no idea why he was standing on the porch, since the door had been unlocked.
    I watched The Phantom Menace and The Matrix for the heck of it. My cable modem lost connection again. The cabling was secure so I think it could very well have been the Comcast network this time. I tried out the futon. It was comfortable, but at the same time it was different, so I still did not sleep well.

---

    To break in the futon mattress, I tried sleeping on the frame with it still set up as a couch. This was a bit too confining so halfway through the night I opened up the frame into a bed. This was a lot better, but now I couldn't sleep because I was congested enough to be coughing all night long.
    My cable modem is working again, but it's showing a lot of activity when I'm not even online. This reminds me of when I had accidentally programmed someone else's IP address in. I wonder if my IP got messed up again somehow. I pretty much complete spent the day working on my November page, which I hadn't touched in many weeks. I wrote up entries for my last Buffett concert and almost got completely through my big Las Vegas trip. (I at least got through the U2 show.)

---

    Spent the morning reading up on ABC's Letterman deal in the Letterman newsgroup. I never did get a response from the LOTR fan club. I tried posting a question on the message board, but the replies did not help me. So I finally called up their 1-800 number to check the status of my membership. They still had the city of my mail address wrong but I was assured I was a three-year charter member. So that was a load off my mind.
    Amazingly the DVDs I'd ordered only Friday had shown up already (including A.I. which wouldn't be released till tomorrow). I also got a postcard that I had another package waiting at the post office. I finally got my confirmation e-mail from Comcast about my account with Giganews newsgroups (I was supposed to get this within twenty-four hours, but it took four days). I started my account immediately. I checked out some of my new discs, but mainly I forced myself to watch Thirteen Days. I needed to finish this last viewing and then I could finally send the disc back (which I'd had in my possession since early November!).

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    I got my package from the post office this morning. It was my copy of the 2-CD Oscar promo of the music from A.I.. As I'd suspected, I'd been sent CDRs rather than a legitimate copy, but the music still sounded great. I finally forced myself to get my oil change; I arrived at eleven:thirty but sat waiting in line for twenty minutes. By eleven:fifty I realized that I might have time enough to get inside one of the bays but I would not have any time left to actually get the oil change; so I surrendered, backed up, and took off, spending all that time for nothing.
    As promised last Friday, Darryl had come in today to watch Reid work. He was already gone by the time I got in though, but he'd left donuts. That night, even though I'd paid a lot of money for the A.I. CDs, I started sharing the promo contents in the soundtracks group.

---

    I stayed up late watching my new DVDs, but I deliberately woke up early this morning. Finally got my oil change and I got in to work early so I could donate blood to the Red Cross in the cafeteria before my shift. I'd been full of good intentions last September, but it had taken me this long to actually do it. Dennis got us lunch again. This time we got Buddy's pizza. I chose a Greek pizza, since it sounded interesting; however it had spinach on it, which did not taste (or smell) very good at all. (I'd mainly gotten it for the black olives and feta cheese, neither of which I could taste.)
    I was unsure if Darryl would come back, but he did, at around twenty after three. I guess I was more interesting than Reid since Darryl stayed two hours. I had to stay much later because we had a special show running from six to nine:thirty. I'd been spoiled these last couple months, being able to leave around eight or eight:thirty.

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    I tried adding some CGI stuff to my site, but the scripts would not work. I was intrigued enough by them to do some research. I ended up getting a new search engine script, so I could run searches right off my site instead of relying on Atomz.com. This seemed to work better, but still not quite. At least I could the input forms to work, but I could not get any results on any searches.

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    Programming ended at around five today, but I hung around till seven:thirty. I went to Best Buy after work, starting my shopping for my home entertainment audio system. I was disappointed with their selection though. I'd expected Best Buy would have a lot to choose from, but the only stuff on display was Bose. I ended up only getting some more rechargeable batteries as well as some new RCA and RF cables. I also bought a new RF splitter. I installed these when I got home, and was quite pleased that these cleared up my VCR problems. I finally finished the Thirteen Days DVD, which I'd had from NetFlix since November!

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    I started looking for a CGI script to improve my Guestbook, but in the end I just made cosmetic changes to it (making it resemble the look of my homepage). I finished uploading my A.I promo, which had taken four days, and I finally got around to e-mailing the company from which I'd gotten my search engine script.
    I was terribly windy today and in the middle of the afternoon it suddenly rained so hard that I couldn't see across the street. This seemed like prime time for the power to go out, but amazingly it did not. The lights flickered, but we retained our electricity. But then, an hour after the rain cleared, then the power went out, at around four:thirty!
    It was still quite windy, so I went out to the backyard to watch the trees whip back and forth. While I stood there watching, a huge bough snapped off and slammed straight down onto the chainlink fence!
I refused to sit in the dark all night, so I went out to Target to get some new pants and then to Southland Mall for the evening. I shopped at Borders, but the loud giggly Mallrats even showed up here. I picked up Fast Food Nation, a book I'd heard a lot about. I tried driving around for a home entertainment store, but couldn't remember where it was. I returned to the Mall just to go to Ruby Tuesday's for a bit, for a Killian's. I stopped at Meijer's on the way back to stock up on flashlights and then killed the rest of the evening at my brother's house. I got back home around midnight or one; the house was cold, but not nearly as bad as before. I tried the DTE number, but they weren't giving any kind of estimate on when the power might come back on.

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    Thank God the power came back on at around noon today. My brother Rick had given me directions to the home entertainment place, so I went there for a while rather than sit around the cold house. The store wasn't as good as I'd hoped. Not only did I leave empty handed, I still had very few possible leads on what system to get. I spent the afternoon working on this here online Diary. I finally finished up all the entries for November 2001. I spent the evening watching the SAG Awards.

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    I was alarmed to find the pants I'd bought Saturday did not fit. The second pair I bought did, and since they were the same size I assumed the first one must be mismarked. I didn't have time to go back to Target though. I was so pissed off about losing power again -- while the subdivisions to the north and south of us had power -- that I contacted the township. I got a message that the liaison from DTE would be contacting me.
    Some network guys had wanted to switch us over to a new Cisco router over the weekend. So as to be after-hours, it had been decided to make the switch at six in the morning Sunday. Reid had volunteered to be at the office, not expecting the switch over would actually last eight hours long!
    Reid showed me his website now has a message board. I got a response about my own website's search engine; I needed to download a patch, and this did indeed clear the problem up!

---

    I watched Evolution last night, before bed. I spent most of today trying to fathom why the movie wasn't better. There was nothing bad about it, so why hadn't it been good? We found out Mexico would be changing transponders again; and we were shocked to find out there would be no Easter shutdown at the end of the month! I did some work on my search engine HTML pages, now that the CGI was working.

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    In a cruel twist of fate, the day Dave would've flown out to Vegas to start his week and a half vacation was in fact the day of his surgery. Dennis spent the day at U of M's hospital. He called me up at around quarter to five: the news was not as good as hoped, there would in fact be need of another operation in a couple weeks, but Dennis refused to give up hope. We discussed possibly visiting Dave this weekend in the hospital.
    Speaking of Vegas, I heard a rumor Jimmy Buffett might open up a Margaritaville bar in the pool area of the Flamingo. So I guess I went there a year too soon.

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    It seemed my best leads at researching home entertainment audio systems was online. The trouble with most Home Theater in a Box kits is that they include a DVD player. I already have one, so this narrowed my options. I found a couple possibilities though and then checked them out at the Circuit City by work. I ended up ordering one, but doing so online. I bought the Pioneer HTP-710 system from a store in New Jersey which had a good price and relatively low shipping.
    There was a small calamity this morning when some unauthorized tape was aired during one of the shows. The tape was innocuous (just a bit of filler) so we couldn't figure out what the big deal was. Eventually it blew over.

---

    It should've been a nice quiet Friday, but all hell broke loose. There was a special broadcast on one of the channels, but it should not have been a big deal since it was supposed to be accessible to all of North America. However, one minute before air time we got a phone call saying this had all changed and the show was only supposed to go out to one division. I was so tempted to tell them no and to invite them to become initimate with my nether regions, but instead we tried to do our best. The phones didn't stop ringing for a half hour (about half the show). I hoped phones were ringing elsewhere too; I was just waiting for the producers to complain, so we could tell them this is exactly what you get when you pull crap like this.
    At least Dennis bought us lunch, and things had died down by the time it arrived. We decided we'd visit Dave tomorrow, and that we'd meet here at work at eight so we could stop for breakfast on the way. A card was passed around to sign, and on the way home that night I stopped at Meijer's to pick up some lottery tickets to include. I tried to find some with Vegas themes.

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    I hate getting up earlier on the weekend than I do on a weekday, but I had to get up at six so as to meet Dennis and Reid at work at eight. We all showed up within seconds of each other. Dennis agreed to drive. We went over to City Tavern (where we sometimes get our lunches) and then headed onward to Ann Arbor and the U of M hospital. Dave looked rather bleary eyed, but he was probably groggy from the medication. His parents and his wife Sue were there too. (The hospital has a hotel right next door, so they're able to stay there.) The nurses had been amazed when he'd been up walking around the day after his surgery. He walked a bit today while we were with him, and he made a full lap around the fifth floor hallways, albeit slowly. ("This is the lamest parade I've ever been in," I said as we all took baby-steps behind Dave.)
    We met up with Dave's parents again on the way out. Everyone felt Dave would pull through just through his innate stubbornness. Illustrating this, his mom told us how he'd gotten his arm stuck in a vending machine as a child, convinced he could reach in and get change out of it. Dennis loved the story, and knew that Dave would hate the fact we knew it, along with the fact I just typed it up here.
    I'd been wondering if I might be able to discover pre-release MP3s from the new Buffett album. It turned out I was able to listen to it through legitimate means. AOL was downstreaming it. I made a WAV of it and burned it to CD, just so I could listen to it until Tuesday (when the CD would come out). I IM'd MIke Loftis during the evening, whom I hadbn't chatted with in a long while. And I remembered to watch Ian McKellen host Saturday Night Live. This was probably the first SNL I watched from start to finish in a few years.

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    The new Buffett material reinvigorated my interest, and I spent some of the morning downloaded some old RealAudio concerts from the Holylands site. I went to Target around midday. I did not return my pants since I discovered I'd mistakenly bought the wrong size (and not two pair of the same size). I decided to keep the pair, just in case I might somehow miraculously lose some weight; and I went back to Target to buy a replacement second pair. (It's hard to believe I've jumped up two sizes!) I did nothing for St Patrick's Day.

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    I wrote my first letter to The One Ring.net to correct one of their articles. I was getting restless about my Pioneer HTP-710 so I actually called up that store in Rahway, NJ. I phoned from work since it was a toll-free call. I was put on hold and remained there for several minutes but finally had to hang up when the other line rang. I got a call from Jeff Lebiecki, the drummer for Li'l Stubby, saying he was trying to get the band booked at some different bars and wondering if I could send him some of my CDs. When I got home, I found my lithographs had finally shown up from the LOTR fan club.

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    Sadly I didn't have any mailers to send out the Li'l Stubby CDs. I stopped at Office Depot on the way to work to get some, but this meant I couldn't mail the CDs out till tomorrow. Instead, I only had time to go to Best Buy and get the new Buffett album.

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    Things were dull enough today that Reid and I got into a flame war on the Fark.com message boards. Since were using aliases we were able to engage in personal attacks on each other. I spent the evening gearing up for another special show this Friday. We had to authorize nine pages of sites; I got six pages done before I left. One of my shipments came in and I had three DVDs waiting for me when I got home.

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    Some construction started on my route home. Orange and white barrels were up in the right lane of Dix Rd, right by the I-75 on-ramp. Inexplicably, these barrels start right before the on-ramp -- so I have to merge into the center lane for about two car lengths just to go right again onto the on-ramp. It's the stupidest thing I've seen in hours! They've got those eight barrels sitting out there for nothing -- just to piss me off and to force traffic heading to the expressway to zig zag.

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    Got a call from Jeff Lebiecki, asking about the Li'l Stubby CDs, but he called back later in the afternoon to confirm they'd shown up.
    At long last, a poker night! I'd missed the last one (in November) since it coincided with my Las Vegas trip. And it seemed like ages since I'd been to one. This one was at Mike's house, so I took the long drive westward on Ford Rd to get to his house. Despite hosting the event, I don't think he did too well as far as winnings go.
    I tried to be cognizant of Lent, but as soon as I got there I was mindlessly snacking on hors d'oeuvre meat, until I was reminded that Mike had breaded shrimp available till midnight. Poker Night followed the usual comfortable routine: we made fun of Patti, we waited for Larry to spill something. Hud and Don came late, having been at a hockey game (though I teased Hud about having secretly gone to see the rerelease of E.T. -- a movie that he proudly refuses to watch).
    Last Summer, a Poker Night had led to us planning our ill-fated Alpine Valley trip. I joked about this, and before long Mike and Patti and I were seriously discussing the possibility of going another road trip. Buffett was pimping Detroit again, so I was seriously thinking of closing down the old Audio Island site and sitting this one out. But Mike said he hadn't to not see Buffett this Summer after all these years. I checked the Margaritaville page and discovered that of all the Saturday concerts the one closest to us was...you guessed it...Alpine Valley! This was good for a laugh. And it was unanimously agreed we wouldn't even consider going there again.
    I checked the website again and discovered there was in fact another and closer Saturday show. It was in Chicago, on June 22. Even better, tickets would be going on sale tomorrow morning! It felt as if things were falling in place just for us, and Mike and I agreed to man our computers tomorrow morning, 10 AM CST, and try and get tickets.

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    I deliberately got up earlier than usual, just so I could get ready to buy Buffett tickets. Mike and I had agreed to get three pavilion seats. If we got pavilion seats, then we'd be road-tripping this Summer; if not, then it was fate. I finally broke through Ticketmaster's defenses at around quarter after eleven. I got three decent pavilion tickets -- and it was only now I realized that despite all our planning Mike and I hadn't thought to contact each other to make sure we didn't buy multiple sets of tickets. Normally this would be unlikely, but as it happened I was able to access three more tickets (without buying them) similar to the ones I'd just purchased but on the opposite side. Sure enough, in the afternoon, I got an e-mail from Mike saying he had three tickets (further to the left than mine, and a row back). I wrote him back, saying one of us would have to hit eBay soon.

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    Today was a big day for me, since it was Academy Awards day. I was glued to E! all afternoon long. I got started making audio CDs from Dennis's old Narnia tapes as requested. Unexpectedly, my brother Mark and family showed up. They left around eight:thirty and from then on I was fixated on the Oscars, staying up quite late. I've heard a lot of complaints about how long and boring the show was. I did not notice this at all; I thought the show was quite gripping, and I think the real reason for the complaints is that the commercial breaks were too frequent and too long. As a personal protest that A Beautiful Mind won, I stayed up even later watching my Chinese DVD of The Fellowship of the Ring. Congratulations to Richard Taylor and Howard Shore and Andrew Lesnie though.

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    I finally heard from Mike about our six-ticket windfall. Joe was not interested in road-tripping too, so it looked like Mike would have to sell his tickets. Reid wanted to plan a trip to Isle Royale, so it was pretty obvious we'd need to get a third person again in our office. Reportedly, Jeremy is still looking for work, so he might be willing to come back; but he's in Las Vegas this week. Incidentally, Reid was looking for directions to get to either Houghton or Copper Harbor (whence to sail to Isle Royale), and this is the half-assed route Yahoo! gave him.

Note the nice four-hour long detour, when Yahoo! inexplicably decides to go the U.P. by way of Green Bay!
    Found some books from Amazon when I got home.

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    Shockingly, I discovered the new Attack of the Clones score CD was already available on newsgroups. I was late getting to work so I could download the music and burn it to CD, only to find out the CD did not work. Over on the LOTR fan club message board, people were discussing pitching money together to buy an ad in Variety to congratulate the filmmakers and console them on being robbed at the Oscars. It sounded like a cool idea, and I was delighted to find out the moderators were for it too and were discussing having the fan club's company (Decipher) manage things.
    Went to Borders after work but the new issue of Cinefex still had not shown up. I'd been having trouble downloading large files in newsgroups. I thought the problem might be the Agent 1.91 (yEnc) update, but I discovered the older version did the same thing. It turns out it's Comcast's problem. They use Giganews, but I found out tonight that I did not have this problem at other Giganews servers.

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    I got an e-mail from Yahoo! asking me to rate the store whence I'd ordered the Pioneer HTP-710. Since I hadn't gotten my HTP-710, had not received any e-mails on the order, and had been unable to talk to anyone at the store, I was quite tempted to send back a low score and scathing report. Instead, I ignored it.
    Got my hair cut at the new Bo-Ric's again, getting it out of the way before the holidays, and before the kiddies would be out of school next week. I managed to burn a proper Attack of the Clones CD today. Was extremely excited to read the reports on The Lord of the Rings DVD releases, as announced yesterday. The packages sound so great that it makes August 6 feel a long way away. My homepage was loading very slowly today. I found out this was because of the server that hosts my comments.

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    Accidentally turned my alarm off this morning instead of hitting the snooze button, so I was running about an hour late. Had a heavy snowfall, just in time for Easter.

Had a couple lengthy trouble calls. Finally got my LOTR fan club magazine when I got home.

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    It was Good Friday and a company holiday. We still had to come in, but programming ended at three. I hung around an extra hour, just in case, but then hopped over to the Fairlane Mall so I could catch the 4:50 showing of The Fellowship of the Ring, since today a special preview of The Two Towers would be tacked onto the ending starting today. Surprisingly, the cinema was quite full. For the heck of it, I sat in the front row, for the first time in years. Seeing the movie that big and that close was a revelation; I feasted on the detail in the sets and costumes and in each shot.

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    I got my brother to drive me into Wyandotte so we could pick up some bookcases we had made at The Sawmill. These were to house my CDs and DVDs in the newly renovated "home theater" room. Spent the afternoon afternoon stocking the shelves, and then was the object of ridicule since I had plenty of CDs leftover. A beautiful day today, mild and sunny enough to chase all the snow away.

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    Easter Sunday. Went to 8:30 Mass with my parents at St Joe's in Wyandotte. Went to breakfast at Elias Bros' Big Boy. Not quite as sunny as yesterday, but a pleasant day nonetheless. Dinner was ravioli, which my mom and dad had made by hand on Friday. My brother Rick had to leave early so nephew Joe could get back to Kalamazoo College; brother Mark and I sat around quoting dialogue as we watched The Ten Commandments.

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