Quick update
Good news: the new ISP activated the new account.
Bad news:
1) After two days of tearing my hair out and trying 493 thousand different configuration options, it turns out that oh, BTW, there's a bug in the gateway software I use which has a chance of screwing things up massively if you alter the ISP settings. It was fixed in the version just AFTER the one I use, of course. So because the gateway box is now effectively sitting in the corner staring at the wall and drooling, I have a nine hour download running to fix it. And I will need to completely re-set-up all the application software I had loaded onto it over the years. Sigh.
2) Those who know me know that I tend to collect a lot of computer hardware, to the point where I sometimes have to throw it out or shuffle it off to other basement dwellers every couple of years. As such, I don't tend to form attachments to "my computer", as it's just made up of a bunch of whatever parts I had to hand. Except that (as noted on this journal) a couple of years ago I won a very nice Dell thirty-inch monitor in an auction because they thought it was broken. It wasn't. I've been using it ever since I managed to track down a video card which could handle the max resolution. It was the centrepiece of whatever workstation I used the most. I really, really liked that monitor. I could handle anything else the world threw at me, because I could always retreat to the comfort of my big screen. I pretty much considered it my one luxury, and it had an extra piquancy because I'd acquired it simply by knowing more about it from a sketchy description than anyone else bidding on it, or even the auctioneers who had physical access to it. That kind of thing plays to my ego in a huge, huge way. It became something of a symbol of my self-image: it was a concrete example of winning something really nice and personally useful, purely by being smart. In a way, I'd come to consider it the first step on the torturous road of being successful by being myself.
So when it came time to move house this past week, I babied it like you would not believe. Wrapped it up carefully, wedged it into the car padded by blankets and anything else soft, drove defensively all the way to the new place, unwrapped it, set it up on the desk, tipped it slightly forward to connect the cables, and watched it faceplant onto the end of a phone cable.
CRACK.
I rarely swear, gentle readers, but at that particular moment I was tempted beyond words to unleash quite an astonishing stream of invective. Although the electronics, the card readers, the USB hub, and everything behind the front panel still work, the screen itself is a rainbow riot of vertical and horizontal lines. For its primary purpose, it may as well be an amusing paperweight now. It's just one more thing I didn't really need at this point.
I'm not going to miss the old house terribly much, or even the suburb. But I will miss that computer monitor.
Bad news:
1) After two days of tearing my hair out and trying 493 thousand different configuration options, it turns out that oh, BTW, there's a bug in the gateway software I use which has a chance of screwing things up massively if you alter the ISP settings. It was fixed in the version just AFTER the one I use, of course. So because the gateway box is now effectively sitting in the corner staring at the wall and drooling, I have a nine hour download running to fix it. And I will need to completely re-set-up all the application software I had loaded onto it over the years. Sigh.
2) Those who know me know that I tend to collect a lot of computer hardware, to the point where I sometimes have to throw it out or shuffle it off to other basement dwellers every couple of years. As such, I don't tend to form attachments to "my computer", as it's just made up of a bunch of whatever parts I had to hand. Except that (as noted on this journal) a couple of years ago I won a very nice Dell thirty-inch monitor in an auction because they thought it was broken. It wasn't. I've been using it ever since I managed to track down a video card which could handle the max resolution. It was the centrepiece of whatever workstation I used the most. I really, really liked that monitor. I could handle anything else the world threw at me, because I could always retreat to the comfort of my big screen. I pretty much considered it my one luxury, and it had an extra piquancy because I'd acquired it simply by knowing more about it from a sketchy description than anyone else bidding on it, or even the auctioneers who had physical access to it. That kind of thing plays to my ego in a huge, huge way. It became something of a symbol of my self-image: it was a concrete example of winning something really nice and personally useful, purely by being smart. In a way, I'd come to consider it the first step on the torturous road of being successful by being myself.
So when it came time to move house this past week, I babied it like you would not believe. Wrapped it up carefully, wedged it into the car padded by blankets and anything else soft, drove defensively all the way to the new place, unwrapped it, set it up on the desk, tipped it slightly forward to connect the cables, and watched it faceplant onto the end of a phone cable.
CRACK.
I rarely swear, gentle readers, but at that particular moment I was tempted beyond words to unleash quite an astonishing stream of invective. Although the electronics, the card readers, the USB hub, and everything behind the front panel still work, the screen itself is a rainbow riot of vertical and horizontal lines. For its primary purpose, it may as well be an amusing paperweight now. It's just one more thing I didn't really need at this point.
I'm not going to miss the old house terribly much, or even the suburb. But I will miss that computer monitor.