Well, it looks like we will not have phone service for a while. I will be calling Verizon this afternoon and giving them two choices: install what I paid for five years ago (that was never installed correctly) at no cost to me or anyone else, or disconnect both numbers. We will pursue wireless through a place that I had contacted when the line was first cut back in the beginning of August. I'm sure we can at least get data access working; voice may take some more effort, but as funny as it sounds, that is actually less important. The lack of data access is killing me with my job and at college. I have to get that back.

Another great U.S. company I will never do business with again is Northstar. We spent $3,000 on a diesel generator from these idiots and it has been nothing but a pain in the butt. It is unreliable, looks like it was put together by chimps, and puts out absolutely nasty power. The diesel engine is still in great shape, but the electronics on the generator end are trashed. We are currently in a serious scramble mode to figure out how to keep the lights on. One priority for the week will be to get the solar panels hooked up. I dragged everything out last night and it doesn't look to be that hard. The problem is that I have college tomorrow, work Friday, and a 50th wedding anniversary in Flint on Saturday. I may just blow off work Friday in order to get this taken care of. I probably don't have the vacation time, but when has that ever stopped me before. Some day we will get this all sorted out.

I have a software upgrade today on a real pain-in-the-butt system. It sort of runs over the network, but not really well. Most of the files are on the individual PC's meaning that each machine has to be updated in sequence. We are three updates behind, so I get to run through all this multiple times. Worse, some of the machines are not even on the main campus, so I will be trying to remote them. There are days I like my job better than others. This is definitely one of the "others."

Well, If I'm stuck here half the night working on this, I'll probably put some more time into cleaning things up here. Otherwise, it will be tomorrow or Friday before I have a chance to mess with things.