Telling it like it is

Jeebus . We've had popup thunderstorms rolling across the valley since about 21:15 last night. Holy hell they're dropping a lot of rain. We had 7.6mm of rain in 5 minutes last night (according to our rain gauge). There's severe thunderstorm warnings in effect and according to our local weather bod we're going to get nailed between 8:00 and 8:15 again this morning. The radar has purple in it. Purple = bad.

Could the last couple of days have gone any better? I submit that it could not. First, Qwest were able to solve my slow DSL speed last night instantly. Not sure how or why, but my download speed had dropped to less than 500kb/sec. Now it's back up to 1300kb/sec or so. Sweet. Then today, when the Dish network guy didn't turn up, I called them to find out that "Ted" in Delhi had charged me $78 for the promo I ordered, but despite having told me he'd booked the engineer, he'd in fact not done anything. The girl on the phone today apologised profusely and the result is that we're getting the promo for free. Double sweet. And finally, Jim got fired. Trifecta!

Holy shit! The board fired Jim! The official press release says he resigned, effective immediately. In other words, they fired him. Normally, if a CEO resigns, the board would ask him to stay on whilst they find a replacement. In this case, they haven't, so it's clear what has happened. Pity it's 10 years too late and for the wrong company, but better late than never. After the layoff last year, I told my boss I would stick with him - I'd either be the last one out and turn off the light, or be the one who handed Jim his ass on a plate. As it happens, IT let me be the one to unplug Jim's account and terminate his T1 line today, so the second option is as close to coming true as I can make it. It was strangely empowering to know I was the one who disconnected Jim Oyler.

So the Cherry tree has finally grown almost totally in front of our satellite dish. Whilst deciding whether to move the dish myself or not, I stumbled on an offer on Dish network's site - $78 to upgrade to a dual-tuner DVR. Nice. Especially if I could get an engineer to come and move the dish at the same time. So I called the 1-800 number and got through to "Ted". In Delhi. Well to cut to the chase, I could barely understand a word he said that wasn't one of the pre-set catchphrases. For example he kept telling me he'd put me on hold so that he could maximise his resources to get to the bottom of my problem. I wasn't aware that offering to pay them money was a problem, but it might have been. So I think he's booked an engineer to come out on thursday morning to move the dish and drop off a dual-tuner DVR for the paltry sum of $78. Although I'm actually not sure quite what's going to happen.

So much for the much-reported takedown of piratebay. They've relocated, bought new servers, restarted the site and are currently pursuing the MPAA and RIAA for compensation against downtime. So funny. They've posted some of the legal letters they got here. Some of them are pretty funny.

Rough night last night - don't know why. So I'm half asleep this morning, about to become fully asleep as these ibuprofen kick in. I think if I can doze off with my nose on the 'z' key on my keyboard, it will get the message across to others :-)