This is the wonderful thing that is the web. Phoons has just grown from on fellows sillyness to an activity and sharing of many people. This is similar to Picture Yourself so when you take your phoon picture, also add it to both collections. What fun!! (Referred by Busy Mom

Driving home on the interstate this morning I was doing my usual 65 or so with the other traffic. Then these kids zipped by. I looked at my speedometer and guestimated they must be going more than 80. But I also noticed that, in my car, 70 MPH has the speedometer needle pointing straight up.

My speedometer goes to 130MPH!! Now, I don't drive a big Mercedes that has to survive on the German autobaun. I drive a Saturn. I think it would fly apart above 100. I only use the first half of the speedometer dial.

I just don't know what possessed the designers of the car to make the speedometer go that high. Another of life's mysteries.

Looks like I'm spending the next few days painting. The remodel has reached the point where the walls are plastered and textured. We asked for some painting bids and they all came back between $2500 and $3500. That seems like a LOT of money to paint three rooms that are still in construction phase (no carpet, no trim, plastic already over windows from plasterers). So, I'm doing it myself.

I'll go to work next week paint splattered.

Land line phones are a complete rip off!!!

I'm paying the phone bill and, with two phone lines and DSL, it comes to over a hundred bucks. But the phone lines cost $18 each and the DSL is $32. Hummm. How is that over $100? Well, there are $30+ of "Taxes, Fees and Surcharges"!!!! "Federal Excise at 3%", "Franchise at .3%", "State 911", "Federal Universal Serv Fund", "Oregon Universal Service Surcharge", "Oregon PUC fee", Federal Universal Serv Fund Private Line" (again??!!), "Residential Service Protection Fund", "Federal Access Charge", "Federal Access Charge Additional Line", "Federal Charge Service Provider Number".

And that's for the basic phone service. The long distance carriers have their own special categories: ?Universal Connectivity Charge", "In-state connection fee", Bill Statement Fee". That last one is $1.50!!! One fifty to send me a bill!!

I might be getting rid of my phones.

We've been down for a day -- the DSL failed. Bummer.

I finally got a simple enough network setup at my end so my ISP would talk to me. They required a single computer with a crossover cable plugged into the modem before they wanted to talk to me about line problems. I guess they get enough problems with people's home equipment. So, they finally decided that my computers were outputting ARP packets and they were responding to them but I was not receiving any of their packets. Time to call the DSL provider -- Qwest.

I've heard bad things about getting technical support from the phone companies, so, with trepidation, I phoned the tech support number. Pressed "2" to say I had DSL. Pressed "3" to say I was not using Quest as my ISP, Pressed "2" to say this was a new problem. And I was talking to an actual human!!!!! No waiting, no hassle. Wow!!! I explained that I'd talked to my ISP and they said to call Qwest. He typed for a second and said "yes, you do have a problem". "There is a tech on the way to fix it". One hour later the connection was running again.

So, there are a lot of terrible stories out there, but this is a good story about DSL and phone company technical support and it has a happy ending. And now I have connectivity so my life can go on.