Sometimes the quickest path to victory is surrender

After moving, we got DSL hooked back up in our nice new house. I noticed that my speeds were a lot slower than in our old place, so I decided to check and see what speed the new house was provisioned at.

1.5mbps. Hmm. Since I'm paying for the 3mbps package (which I was getting in the old house, four blocks further from the central office), I decided to call up Verizon and argue the point.

After spending an hour getting bounced between Customer Service, Billing, and Tech Support (located in India, the Virgin Islands, and Georgia, respectively), I was getting nowhere. Customer Service said "we can't help you", Billing said "the order won't go through for some reason", and Tech Support declared "it's physically impossible" to upgrade my speed. My quest for doubled bandwidth was not going well.

On a whim, I said "Okay, I'd like to cancel my account."

Off to Cancellations (more properly known as Customer Retention), which has much nicer hold music. It took all of thirty seconds for the nice young man on the other end to look at my records and upgrade my service to 3mbps. And he gave me a free month of service, with his apologies.

Within twenty minutes my DSL reconnected, and I was suddenly flying along at 3 tasty megabits per second (thanks, DSLReports!). Next time I'm just threatening to cancel as soon as I get a live human on the line.

"Physically impossible", my ass.

Professional discourse

I hate when people post chatlogs in their blog entries, so rest assured that I thought this one was worthy. A quick exchange between me and my boss:

[14:40] Christian: I think the Applicant Tracking System project has disappeared from the time tracking page
[14:40] joseph: LOL
[14:40] joseph: awesome
[14:41] Christian: Being that I'm on a holy quest to capitalize my hours, this could be a difficulty.
[14:42] joseph: once you put enough points into hours capitalization you get 4% damage reduction from all bureaucratic sandbagging attacks

This place isn't so bad, really.

The house is grey

Pictures are up.

New house!

Not much to report. Our DSL and DirecTV both went in today, so we're officially "online". Ahboo is no longer terrified of the back door, and he's adjusting very well to the new place. I think he already feels "at home" here. Enough to eat the cat poop in the yard.

Tiny elves moved my bedroom furniture while I slept

Well, yesterday was the big move to the new house (pictures coming soon!).

Everything went very smoothly. Since we'd spent all weekend moving over the small stuff, all the movers had to deal with was our furniture. We're already 90% unpacked in the new house, and Hillary is turning the extra storage room into an actual, genuine guest room. So you Alabama folks had better come and visit sometime, y'hear?

Ahboo is adjusting very well to the new place. He whined and cried a lot during the move, but he slept through the night with barely a whimper. Originally he didn't want to go into the kitchen to get to the back door -- the kitchen in the old house was a "no-zone" for him. The first couple of times through, we thought he was squatting to pee on the floor, but then we realized that he was just trying to put on the brakes.

We finally got Ahboo somewhat comfortable with traversing the kitchen, but now he doesn't like coming into the house through the back door. It isn't that he wants to stay outside; he's always been afraid of new doorways. No amount of calling, pleading, dragging, or bribery would get him through the door, so I had a bright idea. We walked inside, sat down in the living room, and ignored him. After a few minutes, we heard the clack of his toenails as he tentatively crossed the treacherous landscape of the kitchen. He's still a little bit timid about coming into the house through that door, but I'm sure he'll get the hang of it in a few days.

I'm still enjoying the hell out of my Xbox 360. I picked up Rockstar Table Tennis (sorry, no guns or hookers in this one), and it's a blast. Aside from the occasionally unbeatable AI on "Hard" difficulty, the game feels very balanced and polished. The ball physics are almost perfect, and the players seem very lifelike and have a lot of detail put into their individual movements and reactions. Online play is very smooth too, though I quickly found that I suck at the game, at least compared to the ADD teenagers that infest Xbox Live.

Oh, and a side note... We won't have DSL at the new house for another 7-10 days, so I won't be online from home for a bit. This is mainly for my World of Warcraft friends, since I can still hit AIM/forums/blogs from work. I hope I can make it through the Internet withdrawal period with my sanity intact.

A rose by any other name would still lick your face

Dog ownership does some strange things to a person's mind. Ahboo has earned some interesting nicknames lately:

• Dudeinstax
• Ahboo, the First of His Name, Keeper of the Sacred Dragonbone, and Heir to the Three Crowns of Dogtopia
• The White Tornado
• Snots the Dog
• The Super-Pooper
• NO! (he might think this is his name by now...)

But the one we really like is:

• Ahboo Uh-oh