The Day After

Well, another Christmas in the can. Calling ours low key would be gross understatement. There was no tree or decorations; we left our Christmas stuff in the apartment when we were unpacking, but when it came right down to it, we just didn't have the energy. We had clear skies here, but we were surrounded by freezing rain and snow, so no hangin' with the fam. We had a few gifts from my sis and Debbie's mom (thanks again!!), but we didn't "do" Christmas for each other this year. Unless you count the $5K+ we spent dragging ourselves and our crap all over the country a Christmas gift. But there was monkey bread and ham and potatoes and biscuits that come in those crazy exploding cans. And more monkey bread this morning. So it was Christmas, just not a big-deal kind of Christmas.

Speaking of those crazy exploding biscuit cans, am I the only one that thinks the fool things should come with a bomb-squad style blast shield? I normally make Debbie open them, but we had a defective can last night, so I was forced to "help" which means I was standing as far away as possible poking at the can with a fork with one hand while protecting my face from the blast debris with the other. Debbie meanwhile was "helping" by laying on the floor laughing hysterically. It may only take 9 minutes to bake the damn things, but it takes 20 stress-filled minutes to open the stupid can. By the time it was all over, I didn't want dinner; just a big glass of Grey Goose and a nap. I'd love to meet the sadist who invented those things so I can ask him if he stomps on kittens in his spare time.

I've got to change the subject. Just thinking about it is giving me a panic attack. The worst part is that I know there is another can hiding in the fridge ready to blow my face off the next time I reach for a soda. Evil, I tell ya. Pure Evil.

Anyway, the replacement router showed up Christmas Eve, but I waited until Christmas morning when everything was shut down to give it a whirl. It worked for about 20 minutes, then started acting up again. I really wasn't in the mood, so I just yanked it until I had the time and inclination. Late last night, I started poking around on the Linksys and Road Runner sites looking for ideas. One interesting find: my "new" router is two hardware revisions out of date and several firmware revisions behind as well. Based on the dates for the firmware releases, I'm guessing my "new" router is well over a year old. If we were talking about a toaster or a chair, no big deal. But this thing is nearly a full cycle of Moore's Law out of date. I find that rather unacceptable. Worse, either Linksys sort of pre-smudges up their routers with dust and such to make them fit in with your existing hardware, or this was repackaged. But no matter; after upgrading the firmware and making some rather obscure tweaks to the router settings, it all seems to be working. Of course, it's listening in, so the minute I post this, it will start going nuts again. But for now it works and Debbie can work on her PC once again, which makes her incredibly happy. Now I just have to re-establish her link to the Drobo so she can get to all our files and we're back in business.

And that's pretty much it. According to the weather map, we are surrounded by ice storms so it looks to be another day spent sitting inside, munching leftover ham, reading books, watching movies and being terrorized by exploding biscuit cans. Have a great day-after-Christmas!