Many people assume that because I have a relative facility with technology, it does not randomly decide to hate on me the way it seems to with everyone else. To that, I counter with the events of this evening:

I fought with a writer’s crapware laden-computer for half an hour at the end of the night, ultimately forcing it to abandon its efforts to spit out all kinds of random pop-ups but not without going through several attempts at removal.

Massive problems with my phone (which randomly refuses to switch off roam, draning the battery pretty much immediately when it gets into that mode, thanks, Sprint!) have given way to coming home to no internets tonight.

Drove me crazy trying to figure out what it was, particularly after getting disconnected THRICE from Time Warner Cable’s lovely automated system which decided there were either “technical difficulties” or that my “call could not be completed at this time” at every turn.

However, I seem to have narrowed it down to a DNS issue - For the nerds in the house, I was pulling an IP address just fine but I couldn’t connect to squat, so I put in the OpenDNS.org DNS servers and it’s been smooth sailing from there.

Anyway, I have managed to fix (I think) two out of the three issues, but just because I usually have a half-wit idea on how to fix it doesn’t mean this shit doesn’t break on me.

Today marks the end of my Sprint contract, and the beginning of a technological battle royale. Let’s meet the contestants!

IN THE RED CORNER….

The Blackberry 8703e, better known as the Crackberry. A practically indestructible phone on a shittastic network. A phone that I’ve dropped on concrete or asphalt so many times I’ve lost count.

But it’s started to act up. It’s starting to refuse to come off roaming. It’s starting to send calls straight to voicemail. I don’t know how much of it is Sprint’s asstacular network and how much is the Crackberry itself.

And it’s also starting to get old. It strains and buckles under the weight of simply trying to load Facebook’s mobile site. It freezes up when I’m trying to switch between applications.

It’s only a matter of time.

IN THE BLUE CORNER…

The iPod 5g. Replacement for the first iPod I ever got, a purchase that changed my life because I could carry all my music around without throwing out my back.

This one had enough space (80gb) to let me get some Podcasts going, and I’ve gotten addicted to the point that I’m now a month behind in 2 of my main ones (BBC Global News and This American Life).

It seems to be rolling along just fine. It seems to be handling its daily trips around the universe in my pocket just fine. But the last one seemed to be doing that until one day the line-out just up and died on me.

Will the hard drive hold out? Will the line-out survive? Will I accidentally drop it in a giant puddle of water? Only time will tell.

And finally, we have….

THE REFEREE

…my complete lack of fiscal restraint when it comes to purchasing shiny electronic things.

Particularly after spending an hour playing with my friend Dan’s iPhone this past weekend, I want one. Like, NOW.

My utter hatred of AT&T stopped me from switching when it first came out, but I’ve gotten to the point with Sprint that I’m pretty much ready to tell them to fuck themselves, and at least have some NEW asshattery to deal with.

Part of what’s keeping me from buying one is the extent to which I am fiscally screwed after the last year: $2k to join the union, $4500 on COBRA, PLUS a delightful four months of unemployment have left me damn near tapped out.

But once I’m done with COBRA as of the first of the year, and once they inevitably release the 32GB iPhone that would let me take my main playlist (which by itself is 12GB), my Podcasts, and some videos with me…I don’t know how long I’m going to last.

The battle begins today, and ends when one of the three above breaks. Place your bets on when I’ll crack in the comments.

From the department of It’s About Fucking Time: TiVo and Netflix sign a deal to allow Netflix Watch Now streaming to Series 3 TiVos.

If only I had time to watch half the shit I’m TiVoing right now, let alone the Netflix discs rotting by my TV. At least this will be a good way to kill time the next time I’m out of work.

Still just buried in work as we try to get our footing, but a few quick:

THINGS I LIKE

- This American Life’s podcast this week, aptly titled “Another Frightening Show About The Economy.” You can download it for free from that page for the rest of the week, and it’s a much, much clearer explanation of what in the hell is going on with the economy than I’ve heard from any other place thus far. Really fascinating stuff.

- Google’s Gmail Goggles. If you’re going to send a late-night email from Gmail, you can now enable a new feature that will ask you to answer a series of relatively basic math questions in a short period of time to prove that you’re not too a) drunk or b) tired to be emailing someone.

- USAA Checking. Sweet god, Deposit @ Home is awesome. You scan a check with a normal scanner, you upload it, and then you’re done. You can walk over to an ATM 20 minutes later and withdraw the cash, which is REALLY convenient when that check is your petty cash advance from work. And USAA reimburses you for the ATM fees since they’re an internet-only bank.

THINGS I DO NOT LIKE

- The nights I just can’t seem to get out of the office. We had pages drop right as we wrapped tonight, and when I should normally be getting out of the office by half an hour after wrap, I wasn’t done until almost 2 hours after wrap.

- The fact that every muscle in my body is seriously pissed at me right now. I ordered a footrest for the office which should help prevent me from hunching over my computer, but between being the Hunchback of Notre Lot and working out like a crazy person, my body is hating on me right now.

- Waking up in the middle of a REM cycle, which I did this morning, and which made me drowsy, cranky, and off the ball all morning.

THINGS I’M UNDECIDED ABOUT

- I mentioned this to a few people, but for some reason two different guys in my office asked me if I was ex-military this week. Apparently I have a military precision about me, according to them. Frankly, I think it’s just because I know the alpha-bravo-charlie alphabet and use it to be clearer on the phone. That, and I keep making my PA’s drop and give me 20.

- I’m pretty clearly not going to make my goal of getting my weight loss total to 80 pounds by Halloween. At least not unless I get some sort of serious gastrointestinal illness like the one striking half of USC. However, I’ve already lost 70 and will hopefully be in the 73-75 range by the end of the month. I’m debating whether I should be happy about this, since it’s so close to my goal and weight loss slows as you lose more weight anyway, or frustrated with the slowing pace. I think for the sake of my sanity, I’ll go with the former.

MSNBC’s Cosmic Log breaks down the bailout in terms of the Apollo program: Even accounting for inflation since the program ended in the early 70’s, this bailout could pay for seven Apollo programs.

Seven Apollo programs. Not just sending one set of guys to the moon, but the ENTIRE program. SEVEN TIMES. And that’s before you take the extra $110 billion they tacked on to get the damn thing passed.

That is a lot of goddamn money.

NASA found snow on Mars.

At least one of my PA’s is about as much of a space nerd as I am and gave an excited, “DUDE!” when he read this, causing me to make him send me the link.

I know fuck-all about the continued collapse of the American financial system and quite possibly society in general, but dude, a robot on Mars found snow! How fucking awesome is that?

When I was swimming while I was in Idaho, I thought maybe the pool might be a little longer than the pool at my gym, since it was taking me a solid six minutes longer to finish 100 lengths than it had been at my gym.

The folks at the pool in Idaho swore up and down that their pool was 25 meters. The folks at my gym swore up and down when I asked them this afternoon that their pool is also 25 meters, even though it felt noticeably shorter than the one in Idaho.

So, there are three possibilities:

1. The pool in Idaho is actually longer than 25 meters, meaning the pool at my gym is 25 meters.
2. The pool at my gym is actually only 25 yards long, meaning the Idaho pool was 25 meters. This also means I haven’t been going nearly as far as I’ve been thinking I have.
3. The fact that the Idaho pool was outside and at moderately high altitude and the pool at my gym is inside at sea level is playing with my speed and perception, and the pools are actually the same length.

Frankly, I think option 2 is the most likely, given that at my pace the 6 extra minutes it was taking me to finish in Idaho is about how long it takes me to swim the 214 meter difference between 2500 yards and 2500 meters.

How much of a tool would it make me if I showed up at the gym tomorrow with a measuring tape so that I can find out if I’ve actually been swimming 2500 meters or 2500 yards?

This whole Wordpress bit is largely up and running now, so I’m going to start posting over here.

A few minor housekeeping bits:

• Here are links to the Main RSS Feed and the Comments RSS Feed. You’ll see a few comments from my brief (failed) attempt at using Blogger comments, but I’m still trying to figure out if/how I can import all my Haloscan comments.

• I am leaving the old version of blog up, if only for the simplicity of not having to go through and change all the damn URLs in the old permalinks.

• If there’s anything you particularly hate about this design, let me know, and I’ll see what I can work on. I’m going to futz with the size in the posts a bit since I spend too much time staring at a computer and am therefore starting to go a bit blind, so the font’s a wee bit smaller than I’d like.

• I’ve gotten about halfway through the draining task of updating the times on all my posts, but that shit’s going to take a while. The whole index page is fixed up, as is the April ‘02-Oct ‘04, but the rest will probably take me longer as I’m going to be traveling (more to come on that).

• One fun thing to come from having to correct the time on all my archives is going through and glancing at all my old posts and remembering things I’d forgotten. Like Chaplin is a year older than I remembered he was. I’d apparently been misremembering that he was between 1-2 when I got him, but this post from the day he came home says 2-3. Oops!

Anyway, that’s about the long and short of it for now, more details on my upcoming travels to come either later tonight or tomorrow morning.

1. Write a website that specializes in taking apart Apple products as soon as they’re released.

2. Realize that the first people in the world to get the new iPhone are in New Zealand.

3. Fly to Auckland to be fourth in line IN THE WORLD for your iPhone, so you can immediately take it apart and post pictures online.

4. Write the whole damn trip and the price of the phone off as business related.

5. Enjoy some gorgeous New Zealand scenery.

I think I’ve figured out how to land myself a job interview next Friday.

This theory came to me as I was waiting for my Chinese food for an hour and 15 minutes. I really had to pee, but I just KNEW the guy was going to come while I was in the bathroom.

Sure enough, I said “Oh the hell with this, I’m not waiting any longer,” and the guy came while I was in the bathroom.

This always happens to me: I wait and wait for what’s supposed to happen to happen, and then when it doesn’t, I start doing something else, and THEN what was supposed to happen happens.

Working from this trend, I’ve come up with a plan to have at the very least, a job interview by the end of next week.

My job finishes this Friday, and I had been planning (barring a sudden settlement with SAG) to try and leave town next Thursday for about a week and a half to visit my dad up in Idaho. I’ll be driving, so I’ll be stopping in Vegas on the way up next Thursday if all goes to plan.

I knew Dark Knight was coming out next Friday, and I really want to see it in IMAX, since they actually shot some of it in IMAX and I hear it’s brain-meltingly awesome.

So of course, I got online to see if there are tickets to the midnight IMAX screening in Vegas (and I’d like to pause here to note that IMAX tickets in Vegas are cheaper than regular movie tickets here), and there were.

So now, my evil plot: I bought my ticket to that midnight Thursday showing in Vegas.

By purchasing that ticket, I have close to guaranteed that something will come up in L.A. and I won’t be able to leave until Friday or Saturday, maybe not even at all.

Clearly, as I’m packing my shit into the car to leave on Thursday morning, I will get a phone call from someone who wants to interview me Friday morning, maybe even for a job that starts Monday.

And if my frustrating luck does not continue to hold…Well, I’ll get to see the Dark Knight in IMAX on opening night then spend a week in Idaho with my dad. It’s pretty much a win-win.