bits of this and that...

[tollermom]

If you're on Twitter (or even if you're not) and you're interested in space stuff, checkout Twitter users MarsPhoenix and STS124. MarsPhoenix is a "first-person voice" twittering written as if by the Mars lander. Pretty cool... little 140-character-or-less snippets about a lander's day on Mars. STS124 is, unsurprisingly, a Twitter feed about the space shuttle. It's a little more "newsy" and less personal, but it frequently has things like links to the live video of the spacewalk, which is a pretty cool way to keep up with the cool stuff! (If you're a Twitter user, I'm there too... username tollers, just like here.)

Closings are scheduled! (At least mostly...) I close on the current house at 11 a.m. on June 18th. Closing on the new house is set for June 20th, time TBD. The seller has seven days to get out, then I start moving in. I have 30 days to be out of my house, nine of which are eaten up by the two days between closings and the seven I'm giving her. Ugh. The PackRat should be here by Monday, so I can start the really serious packing.

I'm discovering that tiny towns are all kinds of entertaining. The town that I'm moving to has a population of just over 2500 people. The lady I'm buying the house from has dial-up AOL, so she had no clue about broadband availability, so I started looking. I found a wireless provider (not terribly fast, but highly available), and Verizon's DSL, but I couldn't find a cable provider listed anywhere. I had a few other "new-to-town" questions that I needed answered, so I went looking for the Chamber of Commerce. Heh. No such thing in TinyLittleTown. Finally, I called the number listed simply as Town Hall. Bingo. Got a nice lady who told me that the town runs the utility company, so that same number is now stored for when I transfer the electricity, gave me the name of the local cable/broadband provider, told me which cell phone providers have the best coverage and just generally did all the "welcome to TinyLittleTown" things. (Finally ended up going w/ Verizon DSL after all... they offer twice the download speed and three times the upload of either the cable or wireless providers, assuming the line checks out when they test it.)

Speaking of TinyLittleTown... it's far enough off the beaten track that I have no TMobile coverage there, so after years of being with OmniPoint/VoiceStream/TMobile, I'm going to be forced to change cell phone providers. Eep! I like TMobile. I get actual tech support from them. Last time I went to Aruba, they'd just provisioned a reciprocal agreement w/ the local wireless carrier and hadn't tested it. I ended up w/ about $50 in credit, plus all my calls for free while I was there, just for being their designated guinea pig. And when we moved into our current offices and I had crappy reception, I called them, told them I could see the tower from the office, but only had two bars on a good day, and promptly ended up talking to engineering. Less than a week later, an engineer called me back and asked how it was working... turns out he was calling from the tower and wanted to make sure the dead spot was fixed before he left. It was. Full signal. Yay.

So while I'm not happy about leaving TMobile, and having had notoriously awful service from AT&T in the past, I find myself in the position of considering AT&T because (a) the nice lady in TinyLittleTown says they have the best coverage and (b) I really want an iPhone and they're still AT&T-only. So now I'm waiting to see what Apple announces about a possible new iPhone on Monday at WWDC, then I get to see if I have better luck w/ AT&T than I had the last time I dealt with them.

The cats have figured out that Something Is Up. The abundance of boxes, and things that keep moving around or disappearing, has them all just slightly off kilter. It's going to be interesting to see how they all react when they get put in the Evil Cat Carriers and hauled away to a strange house. Hopefully the giant screened porch will be fascinating enough that they won't be too freaked out!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

If you're going with verizon dsl don't you get some sort of deal on wireless too? I've had Verizon for years and while, yes the customer service sucks I get great reception and reception where folks with Sprint and TMobile get nothing.
Jeani

[tollermom]

I thought about that, and if I end up not getting an iPhone, I'll probably go w/ Verizon for the cell also. But the iPhone... sooooo tempting...

I've avoided the New Gadget urge all year because I loved TMobile and hated AT&T, but general opinion seems to be that all telcos suck, so I might as well as least end up with the nifty gadget. At least that's my current theory. :-)

[kyrielle]

Huh. I was about to say I've had great luck with AT&T, but it doesn't really apply, because I haven't needed the customer service. Lots of companies look better until the first time you need them to fix a problem.

I have Verizon for DSL and we're probably switching to FiOs. And they drive. Me. BATTY. Technically, it's fine. Every time I have to deal with them for technical service or sales, I wind up at a minimum annoyed, and at worst almost ready to strangle someone.

But they're my only option for land-line, DSL, Fios. I could go cable and deal with Comcast, but that doesn't actually sound like an improvement. :P

[tollermom]

I can pretty much guarantee that TinyLittleTown will never get FiOS. It's one of the tradeoffs of moving to TinyLittleTown.

The local cable co. is half the speed of Verizon's high-speed DSL, so _if_ the line is able to be provisioned for the high-speed account, I'll definitely stick with them. If they bump me back to the 1.5mbps connection, then I'll look at either cable or the local wireless company, 'cause they'd be equally as "fast" and I'd be supporting a smaller company.

the twitters

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

OMG. That is HILARIOUS to me, because I'm pretty certain it would never have existed without spiritrover and opportunitygrrl.

Heeheeheeheehee.

Re: the twitters

[tollermom]

Oh, those are great! I hadn't seen them before, but you're right... the MarsPhoenix Twitterer is the next incarnation of that concept. I wonder if it's the same lady? The "voice" seems similar. I love the rivalry between the two sisters in the LJs. :-)

(Love the icon, btw!)

Re: the twitters

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Oh! No, sorry, I forgot you didn't know. spiritrover was my husband gfish, and opportunitygrrl was started by our friend adularia (I think), but almost immediately taken over by our other friend eeyorerin.

It all arose years ago out of a conversation when NASA was initially having trouble contacting the rovers after they'd landed. Someone joked that maybe the rovers were actually just *ignoring* NASA, like bratty teenagers ignoring their parents. (I think that might even have come out of some way an article was phrased, but I'm fuzzy on that part.) The conversation snowballed, and pretty soon the idea was born; twin sisters, one angsty goth and one bubbly mall-teen type.

A whole *slew* of anthropomorphic space LJs followed, mostly done by people we didn't even know who just thought it was a great idea. I forget what all they were, but most of them have the rovers friended, so you could find them if you were curious. Some of them get mentioned in the LJ posts, too. Most of the satellites and probes, I think.

(It was also desperately amusing the first time we went to Consonance, and met Bob Kanefsky, who works for JPL, and someone excitedly got to introduce Fishy to him as spiritrover. They thought *I* was opportunitygrrl, though, and I had to disillusion them. It would've been perfect, wouldn't it? But I couldn't have done it; I don't improv that well.)

When it became clear that the rovers weren't going to have power much longer, both Fishy and Erin stopped blogging them, because, well... they'd become kind of emotionally attached, especially Fishy, and he said he really couldn't bear to be blogging as if someone who that was happening to. :/

I don't know who's doing the twitter, but if it's anyone I know, they haven't 'fessed up. :) (When I pointed it out to Fishy, he joked, "Wannabes.") ;)

Re: the twitters

[tollermom]

Okay, now _that's_ cool! And I can completely empathize with Fishy empathizing w/ his dying rover. :-(

The MarsPhoenix Twitterer is actually a JPS employee... I'll see if I can find the link to the article about her. *ponders* Ooh! Here it is... http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/05/wired-science-i.html

oh yeah

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

...I did draw one of spiritrovers LJ usericons, though. :) (Not the pretty girl one. Amusingly, that one was fan-art from a stranger!!)

[kestrels-nest.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the joys of living out in the Middle of Nowhere(tm)! :) Verizon is what we have available for landline, but though they've been promising it "real soon now" for the last 5 years, DSL still hasn't made it out here. When we moved here even that wasn't available, and we used to take turns going to Panera's for "broad-band breaks".