short takes

[cellio]

fiannaharpar and lrstrobel had the baby today. (Well, she had the baby and he watched. :-) ) I'm an honorary guy when it comes to stuff like this, so you'll have to go elsewhere for all the stats and stuff.

This weekend the local SCA group is having a Viking-themed event, so I got out my old Viking clothes and discovered a problem with the caftan I want to wear. But lefkowitzga had announced that she was having people over for sewing tonight, so I went over and she not only showed me how to fix it, but did most of the work. Gail is a real sweetie!

It began to snow while we were there. On the way home I was trying to figure out if the roads were much worse than they looked or if my car had developed a sudden malady. Based on some of the other traffic, I'm guessing the former (though it wasn't bad to walk on). This morning it was 45 degrees or so and now there's an inch of snow on the ground and more coming down. Wacky.

Several days ago I cancelled the digital cable, dropping back down to the $13/month ultra-basic service that doesn't use a converter box. I expected the signal from the box to go dead, but so far it hasn't. In fact, I'm still getting all the high-end channels, but the on-screen TV guide and the ability to punch a channel into the remote and go directly there are gone. (So I can get whatever's on, e.g., channel 237 if I want to go there stepwise.) So they've obviously made some change to the service, but not the change I expected. The signal is also better coming through the box than through the raw line (and a little worse on the raw line than it was with the digital cable service), so I'll leave the box hooked up until they come to get it on Sunday (or it goes dead). I wonder if this means that there is hardware that I can add to the line to simply enhance the signal, without violating the customer agreement. UPN seems to be especially bad without the box, for some odd reason.

The cable company has a nice little scam of sorts. When I called to change the service they wouldn't talk to me unless I supplied an account number, which I didn't have with me. They didn't need such confirmation to add services to the account, but they do to remove them -- and, of course, you pay for them until you successfully remove them. So they got an extra day out of me; oh well.

Comments

Slip slidin' away

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

It began to snow while we were there. On the way home I was trying to figure out if the roads were much worse than they looked or if my car had developed a sudden malady. Based on some of the other traffic, I'm guessing the former (though it wasn't bad to walk on). This morning it was 45 degrees or so and now there's an inch of snow on the ground and more coming down. Wacky.

I got home while it was still clear, but apparently the combination of precip and dropping temperatures hit at just the right time to make the roads really bad. The 11:00 news was in its glory thanks to the new webcams that PennDOT has on all the major arteries, showing live footage of lanes of traffic at a near standstill on both the Parkway East (out around the Forest Hills exit, IIRC) and on Banksville as cars with no traction try to work their way around accidents.

Re: Slip slidin' away

[cellio]

While I don't envy the folks in the accidents, I'm relieved to hear that it was probably the roads and not my car. There was something unnerving about going through the intersection at Forbes and Braddock with basically no traction -- I mean, it's not a known trouble spot, and it's not on a hill, but the mere act of trying to make a turn seemed to have set something off. (I had a similar problem making the turn into my garage from Forbes.)

There wasn't much traffic out when I was driving home (10:30ish).

The verdict is in.

[cellio]

I just watched a PAT bus go down Forbes approximately sideways.