[ches]

Originally Posted by Tsalagi_Phoenix

Hope everyone had a good New Year.

I know I haven't been as active in the past year or so. The past two years have brought a lot of change for me. Hope everyone has been well.

Hope and pray things go well for you this year. See if you can go to a pow wow.

[OLChemist]

I'm praying for a year with no more major infrastructure failures.

The day after I signed a contract to build a free standing studio, my 17 year old furnace died. Kiss my years bonus and then some to replace the heat and ac. Then over Christmas my household phone wiring went south, taking the alarm with it.

Ever tried to find anyone to fix home phone wiring? I'd have more luck finding someone to make wooden wagon wheels. Everyone who listed phone line/jack repair on their website will only do new installations. After 30+ phone calls, I got one electrician to come yesterday. Seventy five buck and the lines worked for 3.5 hours before the phones went back out, LOL. After two weeks, my alarm system has decided have a shrieking fit about losing communications with the monitoring center. I'm having to silence the system every couple hours.

I was going to replace the 25 year alarm system when the studio was finished anyway. The new systems are mostly cellular rather than land line. Once I replace the alarm. I think I may just go VoIP with a big honking UPS to keep things running during our way to frequent power outages. My cable company's system runs the phones through the cable modem and not the house wiring.

I'm currently sweating through tree removal. When I bought the house, there was a 40 ft pecan tree that had been allowed to grow up on line between my property and the city's brush and tree filled alley. It was a nice tree. Then three years ago, the electrical distribution company came in cleared the alley and trimmed (read butchered) the trees. They cut all the limbs on the west side of every tree all up and down the block; half my pecan tree was gone. Then a few weeks later, saplings and brush all along the alley started turning yellow and dying. It looked like someone had used an herbicide. The next summer my pecan was sick. It couldn't be saved. It is now just a menace.

The tree company is having to work from a lift truck in my neighbor's yard and cut the tree into 3 ft pieces and lower them to the ground. They have the boom threaded up between phone lines and cable lines. This is a scary process to watch.

[Broken Arrow]

Originally Posted by OLChemist

I'm praying for a year with no more major infrastructure failures.

Oh Lord, that is Murphy working and causing headaches and any other unwanted distress.

I pray with for no more failures of all sort.

Knocking on wood.

[OLChemist]

Wow. We're going to have a new entertainment. Contractor throw down matches over the limited street parking.

The house to the north of mine is having major work done. I'm having my studio built. And construction of a new home on vacant lot two doors down has begun. There is a pickup and chipper in front of mine. A flat bed trailer to the south. Five trucks from the folks working next door. Mixed in is overflow parking from all the bars and restaurants down on Magnolia.

I'm betting on the big guy carrying surveying gear.

[ches]

I hope things work when they get everything fixed and/or built. Hope the studio gets done the way you want it.

[ches]

How is the work coming along, OL Chemist?

[OLChemist]

The tree is down. The back yard is full of wood. They'll chip the wood up today.

It was kind of scary. When they cutting off the bottom of the truck, they hit this huge area that had been dug out by insects. The bottom was hollow. I guess, I was lucky it had stayed up.


The studio isn't huge. It's only 12' x 10' but it will have electricity and heat/ac. They're going to dig the foundation soon. Hopefully, the weather will hold and they can pour the concrete for the slab.

[OLChemist]

I just had to make an emergency run to the vet. I had to have my Buckster put to sleep. The heart problems final got him.

[Broken Arrow]

May he live on in the next world in peace and you follow your path in true faith.

[ches]

Very sorry to hear the sad news. Slow lingering death, I guess. We lost Caitlyn (prounounced “Kate”) a few months back. Kidney failure from diabetes. I had to give her insulin shot daily. Hung on to her till she could not walk and we had her put down. Tortie (tortoise shell) is doing ok.

[Tsalagi_Phoenix]

Originally Posted by ches

Hope and pray things go well for you this year. See if you can go to a pow wow.

Thank you. I hope I can go to a Pow wow. Maybe once I move back to Texas I can.

[subeeds]

Originally Posted by OLChemist

I just had to make an emergency run to the vet. I had to have my Buckster put to sleep. The heart problems final got him.

I'm so sorry to hear this. I know how hard it is losing a furry kid.

[OLChemist]

It's 11am and I'm already looking for the company bottle of tequila. I'm in upgrade hell, at a company with no in house IT person.

We got new company phones. The roll out was done a couple days before Christmas. We've had no training. I just hung on on someone with whom I've been playing phone tag with for two days. Then I touched the wrong place on the screen and turned on overhead paging. (Thankfully after I finished cursing.)

I got a new computer yesterday. For the first time, the boss decided I won't set it up, but our rent-a-IT guy would. He got called away halfway through the process yesterday. I thought I'd just use my old computer, but I discovered he had removed my files rather than copied. So, my old machine is mostly useless. Only 2/3 of my applications are installed on the new one.

XCode upgraded with the new machine and the open source framework I use for graphing is hopelessly broken. Nothing I use to do my design work will compile. I've spent the entire morning prowling around the github repository trying to find a release that works. I'm about to try a beta. I hope I haven't gone to an XCode version and target OS where no man has gone to before, or there will be dead red shirts.

After lunch, I plan to clean my office and lab. No upgrades on the mop, broom and dust pan, LOL.

[OLChemist]

*Rose roots around behind the counter for limes, simple syrup, and salt.*

Well, they upgraded the cleaning supplies too. The swiffer and the cloths don't match, LOL.


Now, I've got file permissions and ownership problems. Chown, chown chown your files gently down the directory tree...

[subeeds]

IT problems are horrible. Hope things get fixed for you. Maybe they should have just let you install the new stuff.

[Toolbox]

OL, it seems like you've had a rough start to the new year. Sorry to hear about your having to put your cat to sleep. That's weird that your telephone wiring went bad. The POTS usually tolerates just about anything that goes wrong. If the wires went bad then something is eating the insulation, a splice somewhere is bad, or the box that connects the phone company's line to your house wiring has an issue.

Speaking of wiring problems, I have been getting poor speeds at my desk on both ports, I normally get around 980 up and down on a good day and between 750 and 850 on a heavier day but recently one of them gets like 20 and the other gets around 200. I put a ticket in the other day and one of the network guys comes up and discovers that there's something wrong with the wiring and then that's it, I haven't heard from them at all on when they are going to fix it.

[OLChemist]

This is phone wiring in a 100 year old house, which was part of a bad neighborhood and at one point had been a rooming house with 4 phone lines going in. The wiring is circa 1980's modular. A lot of it looks DYI and semi-competent DYI at that.

I have a critter removal service on speed dial; I've had so much trouble with squirrels running the First National Bank of Pecans in the walls. In the 17 years I've been in the house, they're removed roof rats, squirrels, a raccoon and one really nasty opossum. Chewed insulation is almost a given.

But the problem started when the painters removed the box from the wall. Then there was a scheduling snafu. The box was left dangling from the wires 12 ft up the back wall of my house for weeks.

[Broken Arrow]

I hope the very best for you. The boss should have let do you the new installation.

[ches]

Computers are very humbling. When you most need them, they mess with you. I always say, “were humans involved?”

[ches]

Things working better yet? I hope nothing else has gone on the blink.