life without internet
Last night our internet at home started getting spotty. Then around 11pm, it just went out completely. We tried restarting the modem and doing all the other tricks, but to no avail. This morning I called our internet provider--on our mobile phone since the landline runs through the internet service as well, meaning it too was out. That adds a good dose of irony to the information on our bill saying calls to the technical assistance line from our home phone are free of charge. Anyway, the woman asked me if I was an idiot the cables were all connected and the modem was on. When all of those sophisticated diagnostic methods failed she said I could either take my modem into a boutique to be inspected, or have a technician come by. The technician would be available Thursday afternoon. "Thursday--you mean today? I'm free this afternoon, yes" "No, next Thursday". That's such a long wait. On top of that, it happens to be right in the middle of our Sweden trip, so I had to schedule it for Mondey the 13th, a full 11 days from today. Needless to say, after it gets fixed, I'm going to call and demand that we don't get charged for those days we were without service. Tomorrow we might go to the boutique as well, because there's no sense in sitting around twiddling our thumbs.
I'm really frustrated about not having internet at home, since it's going to throw a wrench into preparing for our Sweden trip, especially for Christian and me to prepare our respective talks.
I wasn't planning on going into campus today and instead doing all our laundry from Italy and just working at home, but with the internet out, I had to respond to some emails and so I came into campus. I got my electronic keycard reactivated, which means now I can enter the building on the weekends again. I probably will have to this weekend. I also wandered by Amador's office after getting some coffee, and was there just in time to catch him, Julien and Thomas discussing who should manage the logic group's website. None of them wanted to do it, but someone had to do it, so they were all trying to dump the responsibility on each other--i.e. on Amador. Amador sees me in the hallway and proposes that I do it. I pretended to hesitate, but secretly this was a responsibility I actually wanted -- a way to be more involved in the organization of the department, doing something I feel utterly capable of. In fact, I had even offered to Julien take over last semester, but he kindly rejected the offer since he felt postdocs should only spend their time on research. I know he meant well, but I really felt like I should be more involved in the department and just sitting around doing research in my office was keeping me fairly isolated. So, now it happened to work out the way I wanted, quite haphazardly!
I'm really frustrated about not having internet at home, since it's going to throw a wrench into preparing for our Sweden trip, especially for Christian and me to prepare our respective talks.
I wasn't planning on going into campus today and instead doing all our laundry from Italy and just working at home, but with the internet out, I had to respond to some emails and so I came into campus. I got my electronic keycard reactivated, which means now I can enter the building on the weekends again. I probably will have to this weekend. I also wandered by Amador's office after getting some coffee, and was there just in time to catch him, Julien and Thomas discussing who should manage the logic group's website. None of them wanted to do it, but someone had to do it, so they were all trying to dump the responsibility on each other--i.e. on Amador. Amador sees me in the hallway and proposes that I do it. I pretended to hesitate, but secretly this was a responsibility I actually wanted -- a way to be more involved in the organization of the department, doing something I feel utterly capable of. In fact, I had even offered to Julien take over last semester, but he kindly rejected the offer since he felt postdocs should only spend their time on research. I know he meant well, but I really felt like I should be more involved in the department and just sitting around doing research in my office was keeping me fairly isolated. So, now it happened to work out the way I wanted, quite haphazardly!