So I got my informal offer from SCAD; me - a professor :) How novel. Perhaps the first thing I can do is petition to redesign the redesigned website; it looks like a giant advertisement. It will be good to have something to commit to; the high point of my day is when the mailman comes, which tells you something about how busy I'm keeping. I even had time to call MCI and dispute a $1.04 charge, leaving Worldcom $30,000,000,001.04 in debt; time to get a life, hmm? (although one of them does bear a strong resemblance to barbie) ..

It finally rained here in Austin, and the temperature dropped below 92 for the first time in weeks; the plants look happy, J looks happy, and the cat seems to like the freshair.

I'm glad the courts decided to allow American kiddies time to think for themselves before being molded into good little god fearing americans, although I'm already sick of the backlash to it and it's only been one day. At least now we don't have to hear about 9-11 for a few days.

This is fun.

And this is just fantastic.

j & i are back from Vermont and my sister's wedding, and here's some pix :) .. and now I have a plane-induced, recycled air virus living in my throat. if yer lucky, i'll take photos of the phlegm.

last night's midgetmen show was great; i was expecting petro to suck, and he didn't. j & i stopped by true blue tattoo and i finally got to meet emily.

then we went to the ritz and i got to see a drunk mexican pick a fight with cap'n morgan and then get his face beat to shit by the bouncers.

then we gave a homeless man with no legs the free cap'n morgan t-shirt jess got from cap'n morgan.

then i think we went to club de ville afterwords, and now my head hurts, and our neighbors dog won't stop barking, and how would it like to be thrown in a river with a giant brick tied to it's neck?

Unrelated, this is worth reading, if only for the rare occurrence of a lawyer with a hysterical sense of humor.

So what a busy little designer I've been. After having a fairly good interview with netspend.com yesterday, I ran over to work to try to crank out a few pages.

After coming home, and whilst watching people eat pig uterus on television, the phone rings: Why, it's SCAD! Ready to talk about making me an offer!

*plotz*

So now I get to wait for their HR folks to call me back and talk about salary, which I was warned "will not be very much". Heh. I can't wait :P

This is the giant gourd plant growing in our garden. It's over 14 feet tall now. And it's still growing.

Sir,

I’ve used Time Warner roadrunner service for almost two years now, and although I’ve had several small problems, I was quite happy with the level of service I received.

Six days ago, my modem stopped working; the light blinked, and then stopped blinking, and my service was intermittent and then non existent. I called Austin roadrunner tech support; I was told that a technician would be at my house between five PM and three AM. Three AM? I told the tech support that three in the morning was ridiculous; he assured me that they never call that late.

Happily, my internet service resumed a day later, and I briefly forgot about the call. Two days later, a technician called me and said he had a repair order; I told him it seemed to have fixed itself, and he was two days late; the call ended.

Yesterday morning, 6/5/02, my internet service was not working again. I called tech support and spoke with Tony, who assured me a technician would be with me between 9am and 5pm today, 6/6/02. He assured me his supervisor, Mike Nobels (512-485-6771), would call me back early in the morning on the 6th to better inform me of when the technician would arrive.

At 10am this morning, 6/6/02, Mike still hadn’t called me. I left a message for him on his voice mail. He finally called me back and told me that he couldn’t guarantee any technician between 9 and 5, as was promised by Tony, but promised a technical support associate would stop by my house between 5pm and 7pm on 6/6/02.

At 7:30pm, when no associate had stopped by, I called and spoke with Patrick who assured me that a technician would call me within the hour. At 8:45pm, I called again and spoke with an individual who would not give his name, but told me that a technician would be at my house by 3am.

As you can clearly tell, roadrunner tech support has been nothing but lies and empty promises, and at the time that I write this letter – almost a week since I first called tech support – my internet service is still not working.

I pay nearly $75.00 a month for Time Warner’s services, and I expect these services to work, function, and be fixed properly and quickly when the fail. I understand technical problems take time to solve, but I also expect call centers to promise legitimate timeframes when they answer a technical call.

I’m upset that my service was interrupted, and my personal and business connectivity was affected by the interruption. But I’m more upset that your technical service staff was so shortsighted and so lacking in skills that they were unable to adequately estimate the time and skills necessary to fix my service problem and deploy a solution; additionally, I’m frustrated by the blatant lies told by your support staff in an effort to appease a distraught customer. As soon as a viable solution to roadrunner is made available in my area, I will switch from Time Warner; I would much rather do business with a company that can offer technical support without resorting to blatant, unprofessional fibs.

Jon

It's starting to get hot in Austin - its trying to be summer, although people here call it spring and pretend that 94 degrees is really cool and relaxing. I don't mind it yet, but the Lazy Texas Heat is starting to affect other people's motivation. Our trash men don't pick up our trash; the cable guy doesn't come to fix the broken roadrunner when he says he will .. Generally obnoxious. I blame the heat.

Anyways, the latest in the battle of the bodmodfreaks concerns our freedom to have a tongue and do with it as we please. And score one for the vegans. I guess.

Kind of depressing news.

I guess it's better reading than the blame game.