Happy 2011!!
Last Tuesday, our internet went out intermittently but we didn't worry about it because of the bad weather we had been experiencing and Seth had another tattoo appointment so we were already rushing to get out the door and get there on time. When we got home, we did our evening ritual... Play COD:Black Ops. Problem? No internet connectivity. Seth put his computer techy skills to work and voila! It worked... For all of 30 minutes. More techy computer mambo jambo I don't understand and out comes the swearing which I know can't be a good thing so he calls our internet provider and they tell us that it's our modem that's bad and that since it was too late to send a new one out that night, they were going to next day ship it to us the following day. This would usually not be an issue except Seth has staff duty on Wednesday and I'm going to be bored that evening with NO Facebook (unless I access it through my phone), no addictinggames.com, no Solo-Ops but most importantly, NO COD!!
Wednesday late afternoon, early evening: Seth found me a pink controller, since I wanted one so desperately but they are incredibly hard to find since Microsoft only made a limited amount for Christmas 2 years ago. I went to pick it up at the mall parking lot since it's a public place and there are those crazy Craigslist killers out there. I thought to myself, since I'm already at the mall, I might as well drop into Game Stop right?? Right across the hallway from Game Stop is our internet providers kiosk so I stop in and have a "nice" little chat with them about their awful internet connectivity hoping that they could somehow fix my internet for the evening so I can play my game. They gave me an answer but it wasn't quite what I was looking for. They told me that I could have exchanged my modem right then and there instead of going through the hassle of getting one shipped then sending the old one out. Ughhhhh!!
Wednesday night: Intermittent internet, intermittent being it's on for 30 seconds, off for about 30 minutes so I use my computer techy skills (which I have none of) and unplug the modem for 30 seconds, plug it in, connect to XBOX Live, play for 30 seconds, get disconnected, reset the modem, connect to XBOX Live, play for 30 seconds, and so on and so forth for about 2 hours. All while thinking to myself: "I doubt Seth would have this kind of patience to turn off the modem, turn it back on, turn it off, etc". Well, I spoke too soon cause I too, ran out of patience and tried the "caveman technique": bashing it until it works. Who knew?? It worked.
Thursday: Seth comes home and falls asleep while I go to work. I come home that afternoon and he's on COD. The new modem came and it's magically fixed, or so we thought. It worked for all of an hour until it went kaput on us so we decided to call tech support again and let them know what's up. They said that they were going to have to send out a technician to look at our problem and the soonest they can get one out is Sunday. Sunday?! Are you freaking kidding me?! Fine, not like there's much we can do about availability. And until then, we would have to keep unplugging and plugging the modem back in to get it to connect.
Thursday night: "I was right!" I thought to myself... Seth didn't have the patience to keep resetting the modem and ended up taking our new one that was less than 12 hours old and our old one back to the store in the mall. We told them our situation and the guy was really nice and took both back and gave us a brand new one. We got it home and plugged it in, knowing that this time it would work since it was a brand new modem. Plug it in... Wait for it... Nothing. Utter disappointment. Sunday seems like forever away at this point.
Sunday: The technician came and assessed the internet coming to the house and everything was in the clear and he came into the house and found that we were using the new modem that they gave to us, well, it's new, wouldn't you think that they made the old one better? Nope. The firmware on the new modems aren't compatible with the network is one problem. Our technician also told us to do something totally bizzare, reverse the polarization on the outlet, meaning flip the plug around. We turned it around and OMG, WTF, it works!! Seriously!? All we had to do was plug it in backwards?! *facepalm* Anyways, he gave us a new different modem cause he didn't know how long that fix was going to be for. I am still *facepalming* over the whole situation because it's such a dumb fix, who would've thought to turn the plug around?
Come today, I am sitting here, with internet, blogging to you on our 55 inch TV because my computer broke and I had to send it in. Excessive? Probably but at least I have the internet and I have learned... I am addicted to having the internet and I have taken being able to communicate to the rest of the world for granted.
Hope everyone is having a great week.
Credit: HR Northwest Photography
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Heat!!
Last night yet another person came to look at the furnace and confirmed that yes, our furnace is cracked and needs to be replaced and hopefully could get it replaced that evening.
2130:
Got our hopes up again. No furnace because the parts they needed from their warehouse was closed.
Fast forward to this morning. I woke up at 0630, went downstairs, let the dogs out and checked the temperature in the house; a whopping 49 degrees! Now I knew if I exhaled, I could see my breath. Why was the house so cold?? When the sun rose, I found my answer. The grass was white because it had frosted overnight.
The furnace installer came at 0759 and spent the morning installing our NEW FURNACE! We now have heat and the temperature is slowly climbing, I think we're in the 60's now which is like paradise compared to the past 3 days.
In the words of my brother: Welcome to the icanhazwarmz club!
2130:
Got our hopes up again. No furnace because the parts they needed from their warehouse was closed.
Fast forward to this morning. I woke up at 0630, went downstairs, let the dogs out and checked the temperature in the house; a whopping 49 degrees! Now I knew if I exhaled, I could see my breath. Why was the house so cold?? When the sun rose, I found my answer. The grass was white because it had frosted overnight.
The furnace installer came at 0759 and spent the morning installing our NEW FURNACE! We now have heat and the temperature is slowly climbing, I think we're in the 60's now which is like paradise compared to the past 3 days.
In the words of my brother: Welcome to the icanhazwarmz club!
Friday, December 3, 2010
Start of winter...
So I'm going to try my hand at this blogging thing... I've only had one other blog in my life which was for my wedding on my wedding website since everyone was interested in what I was doing or what I was planning.
The winter has really set in around here, we've had around 4 inches of snow already, which unfortunately has already melted and the temperatures have topped off at 45 degrees max since. The worst part of it all is... We're living with NO furnace and NO fireplace.
Two days ago, I was shivering in my house but I brushed it off to "I'm always cold." While cooking dinner later that evening, I realized that I wasn't getting as warm as I usually would with the stove cranking out heat and the heater going so I went to check the thermostat and it read 59 degrees. I thought to myself: "WOAH!!" I went to the garage and our furnace wasn't working so my plan was to stare at the furnace since I clearly don't know how to function the thing hoping that glaring at it will miraculously make it work. No such luck so I call back up. Seth goes into the garage and tinkers with something which starts the fire in the furnace. Awesome! 10 minutes later, I check the thermostat and it's rising in temperature... Our house is now 60 degrees! An hour later, it's dropped to 57 degrees and the furnace has kicked off again.
Yesterday morning we woke up to the house being a very warm 52 degrees. I felt like we were in the Arctic. If I exhaled I could probably see my breath. My next move before I froze into a solid ice block was to call our landlord and explain the situation. She said that she'd get someone out later in the day. When Seth came home, he asked our neighbor to teach us how to light our gas fireplace. What happened to flipping a light switch and having it turn on like our last place?! Oh wait, I guess that was a luxury. ;) Now we find out our fireplace doesn't work because every time we turned on the gas, the pilot light went out, turn off the gas, the pilot light came on... I think it was taunting us.
One of our landlord's family friends came by and assessed the situation and couldn't help us but called our landlord's husband and told him that we had NO heat. He immediately called us and apologized profusely for not understanding the situation fully, he thought we had heat but it wasn't rising in temperature. One thing I learned in this situation: Communication is KEY. While there was no chance we would have had heat last night, we could have had someone come out earlier in the day if there was no miss communication. He had a ex-furnace installer come out to our house at 2000 who further assessed the situation and it wasn't good news...
Our furnace is cracked and has been leaking carbon monoxide throughout the house. So we contained the leak and thankfully we still have gas since that is what our whole house runs on. He was able to fix our fireplace so now if you sit about 2 inches from it you'll get warm but you risk the chance of lighting yourself on fire. ETA of a fix of the new furnace or getting a new one? Who knows... A couple days hopefully at max but it is heater season here since it is the start of winter.
Thankfully our neighbors had a space heater they lent to us so we wouldn't freeze our butts off!!
I think Sumi has portrayed our situation the best:
Taken 02 Dec 2010
Until next time... Stay warm everyone, winter is here!!
The winter has really set in around here, we've had around 4 inches of snow already, which unfortunately has already melted and the temperatures have topped off at 45 degrees max since. The worst part of it all is... We're living with NO furnace and NO fireplace.
Two days ago, I was shivering in my house but I brushed it off to "I'm always cold." While cooking dinner later that evening, I realized that I wasn't getting as warm as I usually would with the stove cranking out heat and the heater going so I went to check the thermostat and it read 59 degrees. I thought to myself: "WOAH!!" I went to the garage and our furnace wasn't working so my plan was to stare at the furnace since I clearly don't know how to function the thing hoping that glaring at it will miraculously make it work. No such luck so I call back up. Seth goes into the garage and tinkers with something which starts the fire in the furnace. Awesome! 10 minutes later, I check the thermostat and it's rising in temperature... Our house is now 60 degrees! An hour later, it's dropped to 57 degrees and the furnace has kicked off again.
Yesterday morning we woke up to the house being a very warm 52 degrees. I felt like we were in the Arctic. If I exhaled I could probably see my breath. My next move before I froze into a solid ice block was to call our landlord and explain the situation. She said that she'd get someone out later in the day. When Seth came home, he asked our neighbor to teach us how to light our gas fireplace. What happened to flipping a light switch and having it turn on like our last place?! Oh wait, I guess that was a luxury. ;) Now we find out our fireplace doesn't work because every time we turned on the gas, the pilot light went out, turn off the gas, the pilot light came on... I think it was taunting us.
One of our landlord's family friends came by and assessed the situation and couldn't help us but called our landlord's husband and told him that we had NO heat. He immediately called us and apologized profusely for not understanding the situation fully, he thought we had heat but it wasn't rising in temperature. One thing I learned in this situation: Communication is KEY. While there was no chance we would have had heat last night, we could have had someone come out earlier in the day if there was no miss communication. He had a ex-furnace installer come out to our house at 2000 who further assessed the situation and it wasn't good news...
Our furnace is cracked and has been leaking carbon monoxide throughout the house. So we contained the leak and thankfully we still have gas since that is what our whole house runs on. He was able to fix our fireplace so now if you sit about 2 inches from it you'll get warm but you risk the chance of lighting yourself on fire. ETA of a fix of the new furnace or getting a new one? Who knows... A couple days hopefully at max but it is heater season here since it is the start of winter.
Thankfully our neighbors had a space heater they lent to us so we wouldn't freeze our butts off!!
I think Sumi has portrayed our situation the best:
Until next time... Stay warm everyone, winter is here!!
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