Writing From Home
Tsoft was quite responsive in getting me a dial-up account, so I'm actually writing this from home. Their instructions were helpful, and their tone seemed pretty friendly, so maybe I've found a winner. I figure, for a free two-week trial, how bad can it be?
In fact, the worst part of getting hooked up was discovering that the phone jack in my office doesn't work. My guess is that since the previous tenants were a father and his daughters, that the jack in here is on a different line and therefore didn't get turned on when I got my phone service. I called my landlord and left a message to ask if he knew anything about it (maybe the jack is just dead, in which case either (1) he knows about it, or (2) he'd like to know about it), but I suppose I need to call the phone company to be sure.
If it turns out that it's on a different line, then the big question is: Do I want to get it switched to the same line as my other jacks, or do I want to get a second phone line, which I'd only use for my local Internet dial-up? I must confess I've never paid enough attention to my phone bill to be certain just how much local service costs, but if I recall correctly from my talk with Pacific Bell a few weeks ago, my local service is only about ten bucks a month for unlimited calls. Which might be worth it not to tie up my main line when I'm on the modem. Hmm.
Some part of me thinks that having a dedicated Internet phone line seems excessively decadent, but then again friends of mine like Jim have second lines. So...
Anyway, it's nice to be wired again. I may still write erratically for the next week or two - at least until I move my pages over to my Spies account. We'll see. I have not been getting any replies from Fullfeed lately, and I'm wondering if their e-mail is broken or if they're ignoring me for some reason ("he's getting ready to leave our system, so we can give his inquiries a very low priority"). Fullfeed's customer service has always been kind of erratic, but I'm betting it's some technical or software problem.
But, if my pages suddenly disappear at some point, go check Spies.
(Hey, which reminds me: Maybe someone out there can suggest a quick-and-easy way to redirect all hits to my Fullfeed web tree to Spies. I've tinkered a little with .htaccess, but it only seems to work on a directory-by-directory basis, and I'd sooner shoot myself than set up redirections throughout my entire hierarchy. Let me know if you have any suggestions.)
Figuring out the phone jack thing is also a priority, since in the past Jefferson has shown a tendency to chew through phone cords, and right now I have 40 feet of phone cord running through my apartment for this connection...
Speaking of the cats, did I mention that Newton had a near-encounter with a local cat? The cat, a gray longhair, was walking around on the overhang outside one of my apartment windows, and I carried Newton there so they could watch each other. The other cat was profoundly unimpressed with Newton, and just walked off. I think Newton and Jefferson both love the views in this new place, and I know Newton spends a lot of time around midday lying in the sun - something he couldn't do except early in the morning in Wisconsin.
And the cats had their first big playfight last night, which I hope is an indication that they're feeling settled in to the new place. Jefferson is still a little clingy, but he's not spending much time hiding anymore, and is meowing for his dinner at the usual times.
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