Broos is in a category all his own.

Yesterday he came over to fiddle with my wireless (heh, that sounds somewhat naughty, but then I've been watching Coupling,  and after a couple of episodes, everything sounds naughty).  After an hour or so, he announced that we were leaving.  "To get dinner?" I said, encouraged that he had diagnosed and shot the patient much more quickly than I had.

"No," said he in tones reminscent of my husband.  "To Best Buy."

And then began the Luck of the Goober.  Recall that Rob and I never have a good experience at Best Buy.  Ever.  This night, Broos parked directly in front of the store, stormed the bastion and obtained what looked like the last of their wireless laptop cards.  Before I have time to think, he's at the register shamelessly flirting with the cashier who offers him everything from more gadgets to a free lemonade. 

And then we're off again to Outback where as we drive up, a car is backing out of a stall not five spaces from the restaurant door.  "We can't be this lucky!" I gasp, amazed.  "We're not," said Broos, cruising past the newly opened stall to an empty spot only one away from the door.  "We're this lucky."

If he could bottle and sell whatever it is that provides him the choicest parking wherever we go, he would be a gazillionaire.

After dinner, we came back to my apartment where he fiddled with the new wireless card, and behold!  My network is working again within the hour.  This morning, I did have to jumpstart the laptop to get it to see the wireless, but the desktop hooked up to it just fine. 

And so, thank you, Broos, for getting this all hooked up.  My connection hasn't gone up and down since you smacked it last night.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Little lights are blinking merrily away on my wireless adapter and the cable modem box.  I wish I knew who was using my internet, because it certainly isn't me.  :(

Since returning from the weekend to Seattle with my laptop, I haven't been able to get into my own network.  Very frustrating.  And it's oblivious to me, sitting not three feet from it, while I have to swipe the neighbor's connection.  Indeed, my laptop is now so used to hooking up with the neighbor, it automatically connects to them and doesn't bother trying to locate mine.

I am convinced wireless networking is male.  It goes on doing whatever it is that it wants to while pretending to be available to others.  Men.

Anyway, at this point I should probably call the cable internet dudes and cancel the service.  Why pay for it when  I can't get a steady connection on my own boxes anyway?  It's a bit frustrating.  I might look at it this weekend, but I've already done what I know how to do...unplug it, wait, and plug it back in.  That's about the extent of it.  Evidently, since I'm hooked up to the neighbor, I can't even log into my own system to remove the WEP and see if that'll help.

Gar!

Have wireless card, will travel.  :)  Now swiping broadband in Rob's Seattle apartment, from the neighbor named "linksys."  Bwahahaha!
 
The phone rang this morning.  I answered, thinking it might be one of the cherubs on their way to see us.  "Hi!" said the perky-voiced caller, "We're calling local singles to tell them about Great Expectations!" She paused for a perky breath, so I said rather venomously, "My husband is not single."  She babbled an apology and hung up.  I turned to Rob, who was frantically working his face into a mask of innocence: "Who was that, pookie?" he says.  Hah!  He's been running a bachelor pad! I knew it!  :)   My first clue wasn't the phone call, though.  It was the sight of the formerly white and yellow bath towels he has; they are now a lovely dark grey (on purpose, to match his bathroom, no doubt).  ;)  Hehehe!
 
We went to the Seattle Symphony today to see Howard Shore conduct the Lord of the Rings, accompanied by a backdrop of concept art.  It was an awesome concert and I enjoyed it so much.  I've decided that at my funeral, I'd like to have "Into the West" on my soundtrack.  I've always wanted "The Long and Winding Road" by the Beatles, but "Into the West" has bumped the Beatles.  I mentioned my musical request to Rob and the cherubs, where the greeted my forethought with the usual derisive comments about how I won't even be there so what does it matter what music I might want to hear, etc.  Men.
 
Anyway, I think the neighbor is onto me and my broadband swiping.  I'll go quietly now.  Honest!

Yes, by golly, it's hot.  :)  So hot that today some of the power near the office went off for a couple of hours.  I missed some of the excitement as I was out at lunch, getting lost while trying to find the PetSmart.
 
And so now here it is, dark thirty, and I am home from work and it's broiling.  I have no lights on, and am sitting by the wide open front door in the breeze.  It's much cooler outside than in, and unfortunately, I have no cross ventilation.  But with the door open and one of my little fans pointing out the window to suck hot air, the place is cooling a tad.
 
My sister complains about those of us who complain when it's hot.  She forgets that I grew up in Hawaii and know what that hot is like compared to everything else.  Hawaii has trade winds that help one forget the heat (unless there's a condition called "Kona winds" which just means the wind isn't coming from the regular direction, making everything kind of stuffy and muggy).  It would be a lot cooler in the apartment if I had windows opposite each other to let the air through.  But even without cross-ventilating windows, it's damn hot during the day.  :) 
 
During our little power outage I sat outside to toast my legs a bit, chatting with Fannie (the awesome exec assist who takes care of everything) and it got so uncomfortably warm I had to go inside and take tylenol.
 
Anyway, Mittens is patrolling the concrete balcony outside our front door.  It's a very pleasant space that I might have to buy a couple of chairs and a little table for, so that when I come home at night I can sit down outside in the cool night air's comfort instead of hunched over like Quasimodo beside the open door.

Thoughts on California so far...

It's really hot in my apartment. Yes, it does come with central air, but it also comes with an electricity bill :) So I want to see how spendy the latter is before I use any of the former. Meanwhile, there are fans in my windows ($10 at Linens and Things...Broos-approved expenditure as they were cheep).

For a state with known water shortage issues, there is a lot of landscape watering going on during the middle of the day. I mean, come on...it's evaporating! Driving down the street after Mittens' vet appointment today, we passed at least two different canyons being watered.

Other drivers suck :) They specialize in passive-aggressive road rage here. On the way home tonight, a motorcycle made a U-turn at a light (U-turns are allowed pretty much everywhere here) and nearly collided with the car making a right turn on red after a stop. The car was wrong, obviously. So to 'punish' it, the motorcyclist sped up alongside it, in the same lane, then slipped in mere inches immediately ahead of it. I'm sure that taught the car driver a lesson. :: roll eyes ::

I love my job :) Even if I did just spend half a day pulling out my hair trying to figure out why a quest wasn't questing as intended. In the process, I learned something new, so that makes it all worthwhile :)

ChrisWho, blogger :)

My wireless network hates me. For some mysterious reason, it drops me about every two - five minutes and prompts me to choose one of the other, unsecured wireless connections in the neighborhood.

So, like any quasi-geek, I went to the Linksys website, figured out what seemed to be the appropriate answer to my problem and set about fixing my connection according to their instruction.

After using XP's system restore, I am now back to falling in and out of my wireless network.

This really blows.

I tried to log into SWG, and I don't know whether I can entirely blame this on the wireless or not, but it would get so far along, then drop me to the character selection screen as though we hadn't almost made it into the world. I'm afraid to try anything else. :(

Any suggestions?

The good thing about being away from Rob is that it makes him post more frequently :) Also, our friends need not wonder what Broos is up to, as I can expose his every goobery episode! Bwahahaha!

For a Scottish person, Broos loves to spend money, so long as it's someone else's. And, yeah, yeah...going to a good cause. :D He is already salivating at the thought of another trip to Fry's with me and my wallet, to get me "one more thing" I'll need to get my home network running this weekend. So thoughtful :)

It is actually nice to have someone guide me through the mysterious processes, so I'm not complaining. After Broos tended to my TiVo, I brought it home and attempted to plug it in to the thinger he had me get and it wouldn't work. I switched around the plugs to different things, then gave up and called him. He says, "Do this first, then do this," which I swear is exactly what I had done initially without success. Meekly, I follow his instructions and glance at the screen, prepared to tell him it won't work...when lo! The TiVo screen came up, causing me to babble.

I suspect he planned it that way. Not sure how :) Might've been like the time Jean and I put a tiny piece of tape over the handset plug in of Tom's telephone, then rang him up from another office. He kept picking up the receiver and saying, "Hello? Hello?" but of course couldn't hear anything because we'd put the tape over the connection. It was pretty funny at the time. Happening to someone else. :)

At first I thought my neighbor had either 1) moved and took their broadband with them or 2) figured out that I'm a thief and blocked my access.

Turns out that neither is true (although my neighbor did move out this weekend, the signal is actually much stronger on the opposite side of the apartment from where they used to live).

Broos is a good guy :) He took me to Ikea this weekend and sat obligingly in every chair or sofa I admired, offering his ... er, seat-of-the-pants ... assessment. We picked out some chairs and a sofa, but of course they are back-ordered. I do however have a new dining table and a lovely bookcase, which Broos helped me assemble. And he did, as mentioned in comments, take my TiVo home and beat it into submission :)

I spent most of the weekend unpacking, and actually did not pook my nose out of the door except for the trip to Ikea. Mittens is calming down, too, which is very nice. I only got lost once on the way to work, so my planned 12 minute commute took 15 minutes. That's a very lovely commute!

Thursday I take my California driver's license test. I hope I pass. That'll make me kind of a California chick. Like, totally!

I am a thief. :/

Set upon the road to perdition, mind you, by my boss's boss's boss. When I commented upon the length of time it would take to get my cable modem installed, and what I might need to buy to accomodate the installation and gee, is that a full moon? -- aroooooo -- Broos said, "Why don't you just fire up your laptop and see if there's any wireless networks in the area?"

And there is. And here I am.

Of course, this is not the first time I've piggy-backed off someone's broadband. When I was apartment hunting, I had the laptop with me as I had saved the various maps as images and was looking at the maps whenever I got lost. During those times, I noticed the laptop would blythely pick up a signal someplace and connect to it without me having any say.

I am getting my own connection though, as right now I'm hunkered down in the living room because this is where the signal seems strongest. I also plan to make my network a bit more secure than to allow cheapskate neighbors to swipe my airwaves. :)

Anyway, unpacking. Supposed to go to Ikea with Broos, but I am dog tired. Mittens explored the WHOLE place last night till about 4AM, and kept me up fretting. Also heft around the desk and I think I put out something in my back doing so. Luckily, I have ibuprofen. Which I'm going to take some of now.

Happy Fourth!

My household goods arrived yesterday morning. I picked up the apartment key and as the manager and I sat there at 9AM with paperwork, the moving van drove into the complex. Very punctual crew!

I'd forgotten about the 400-lb fireproof safe Rob got me. As the four mover men hoisted it off the truck, I wondered frantically where it should go -- while an excellent conversation piece, it's not worthy of living room status. Fortunately, each apartment has a laundry closet right on the patio, so I raced to look, and sure enough, the safe fit in there too. So the mover dudes huffed and puffed and got it into the closet.

Last night, I went back after work to unpack s'more while Broos attended his weekly game night. I heard running water in the bathroom, so I looked at the toilet and decided to shut the water off at the incoming valve. The valve snapped off in my hand. :) Fortunately, the water is merely trickling into the tank, however they are going to need a plumber to fix the valve. And he may as well check the seal on the tank while he's at it.

This weekend, Broos and I are talking about heading to that Fourth of July mecca, Ikea! Mamma needs a new couch! Shopping! Wheeeeeeee!