Aaah, now all is well in the universe. I’ve switched ADSL modems now, so that I’m using my new one from my new ISP, and I even spoke to a nice dude in Montreal named Mathieu who helped me configure the modem. Silly people didn’t include the config info in the box with the modem, which I told him, because the configuration took all of 2 minutes, and most of that was waiting for the modem to reboot.

Right now I’m giggling like a mad fiend to my two new favourite tv shows tonight, How I Met Your Mother, and The Big Bang Theory. Sheldon is just high-larious…Doppler effect indeed. Great costume though, I’ve gotta keep that in mind for Halloween next year.

Dontcha just love how mysterious the Interweb is? Whether it’s the fact that you can find a sample of the theme song from your favourite childhood cartoon, or look up the history of the Concorde airplane, the Interweb is a wonderous thing. And yesterday I experienced that in full effect. For the entire day, I could not access any of the domains on my website from home. Everyone else could do it from their computer, and I could access it from work, but not home. I have no idea why that happened, as I hadn’t changed any settings on my computer, my router or my ISP, but for some silly reason, it wouldn’t work. How bizarre.

Today I’m going to switch over my DSL modem, wonder if I’ll have any adventures with that?

Thanks for stopping by y’all, and checking out the new home of my blog. You’ll see I don’t have a name for the blog, as it’ll just be about whatever the hell I feel like talking about, so that whole area may change depending on my mood. The URL doesn’t actually mean anything, it’s just a domain I had lying around, so I decided to use it. Plus I was getting tired of the restrictions on the Wordpress.com site. Interesting how that’s one of the reasons that I decided to switch over, however I was finding it terribly restrictive. I mean, there were limits on what HTML or scripts you could put in the text widgets. And while I appreciated the number of themes they had available to use, I just couldn’t find one that I was comfortable with.

But I am totally loving this Mandigo theme, as there are so many options I can play around with, and I don’t even have to modify any of the template files! I can do it all from the Administration panel here on the site, which is a definite bonus. I’ve enabled the random header image option, so that everytime you refresh the blog, it changes colours. Go on, give it a try…hit F5 a couple of times and see what happens.

So welcome again, glad you’re up for following me around the interweb & the blogosphere. Hopefully this will be the last move. I make no promises, but I do attempt to try my best.

If those of you that normally hear from my by email have been wondering why I’ve been conspicuously silent the last 6 days or so, it’s because my internet access at home isn’t working properly. Much like the problem of using internet on cable, and then having the entire neighbourhood start surfing, I’m having similar issues with my DSL access. Because my neighbourhood is one of the older ones in the city, the wiring & cables haven’t been upgraded in a while. So when, in this case, the telephone company does something to one of my neighbour’s lines, it sometimes affects me, when it shouldn’t. Apparently I’ve got right now a “high occupation level”, which just means that more of the phone line is being used by something than it should. So my ISP has to open a ticket with the telephone company, to see if they’re doing something, and that they should stop.

Couple this with the fact that I can’t access my web-based email through work, and that means I can’t send out any emails. Through the wonders of Google Desktop though, I can read your e-mails using one of their handy dandy widgets while I’m at work, I just can’t respond to it. So if you need a response to something, just give me a call or send me a text.

I will keep you posted on when things are back to normal.

I’m sure most of you didn’t notice, but I haven’t been posting much lately. I’d like to say it was because I was too busy at work, or that I was too busy visiting friends or something wholesome like that, but alas, that’s not true. Nope, I was absent because I only had dial-up internet here at home for almost two weeks. Yes, I had to go back to the stone age for a bit while I waited for my new ISP to come back online. You see, my inner frugal self thought it would be good to switch home phone & internet access a while back, but I found that was a huge mistake. HUGE! Not only did I NOT have DSL access with the new ISP, but I started having problems with my phone too. Ugh. So the internet is back to normal today, and I anticipate the phone to be back to normal shortly. Sheesh.

Add to that the insult of getting laid off from my newly purchased company along with 80 other people, and I have not had a great week. BUT, the newly purchased company gave me a killer package, so that I don’t have to work all summer! Very nice. A paid vacation, how often does that happen? So I’m taking about 4-5 weeks off right now, and then will start the job hunt in August. What’s even better about this whole situation is that:

1. It’s mid-June, so I have the whole summer to relax.
2. The IT market is quite good right now in Toronto, so I’m not worried about finding a new job. In fact, I had a contract job offer the day AFTER I got laid off. Not bad at all.
3. I’m getting paid to be a lazy bum!

Needless to say I’m not upset in the least, other than the fact was that I would’ve appreciated knowing this several weeks/months ago, so that I could’ve postponed my trip to Italy and go now for a nice month-long vacation! Sheesh. But that’s okay, because now I’ve got several road trips planned here in Ontario, which will be good. I’ll be taking some extended long weekend trips around, and not being rushed to do anything. I may try to squeeze a trip to Vancouver too, as it’s been almost 10 years since I’ve been, put it’ll have to be for a super-cheap air fare, as I don’t want to spend all my moolah on that. The upside of going to Vancouver would be that I could also do a little job hunting while there too, which would be good. Being on-site is definitely better.

In the meantime I’ve finished off my knitted squares for the blanket, and will be starting off my first pair of socks shortly. I’ll be posting pictures of the squares tomorrow, so stay tuned. So until tomorrow kiddies….