A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Bugs

I'm sitting up in bed with the first head cold of the season, feeling the viruses stomping around my upper respiratory tract in their Doc Martens. And trying to entertain myself on the 'Net, but only getting more frustrated with my wonky DSL connection. I hope you're enjoying the videos I've linked to because I can't watch them. Most YouTube videos play for about a minute and then freeze. Web pages greet me with a mournful "could not connect" page that I can usually get past by refreshing. But not always. Others stall as they're loading.

Oh, yeah, I've reported all of this. I've switched off, rebooted, unplugged, replugged, done the paper-clip reset of the modem, called AT&T and had many a pleasant conversation with nice people in Bangalore. I've replaced filters, bought a new router, unplugged phones completely, had the wiring guy out to check things over. Things go along smoothly for a few weeks, then they start to hiccup again. I seem to be in the Bermuda Triangle of DSL connections. And no, I can't switch to a cable modem -- the complex isn't wired for cable.

Sorry, didn't mean to whine. (Of course, there's also no guarantee that I'll be able to post this.)
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