I am having a love/hate relationship with Sweet Adelines right now. I adore barbershop music. I love singing harmony with my friends. I love the friendships I've made.

I hate the Sweet Adeline take on show biz and decision timeliness.

( whine, whine, whine )

Now we getto find out the fun of Clear service disruption. We got the new modem. It was all shiny and fast. Then last nightwe started getting slow speeds and 10-15% packet loss. We thought it might be the heavy rain. It seemed to fix itself late this morning. Then around midnight tonight there is suddenly no service at all. The modem is just searching, even after a powe cycle. Sigh. And no rain to blame it on. And after tech support hours of course. Good thing we have interwebs on our phones!

In other news, I'm thankful for a successful show last night and a quiet day today.

Our big chorus show is this weekend (Sweet Adelines, Voices Northwest for those who don't know... :-).

We'll be performing at the Historic Everett Theater this Saturday at 7:30 pm. In addition to our chorus, this show will feature 3 fabulous quartets. We are very excited to be hosting The 2009 international quartet champion, Moxie Ladies as well as Mojo and Livewire. They are all fabulous singers and it will be a FUN show! Tickets are $25 for adults and $15 for students. They can be bought either on our website (www.voicesnorthwest.org), or at the door. (The website also has the theater address as well)

In addition, I have 2 free tickets. My in-laws bought tickets but aren't able to come now. If you would like to come see our show, ping me and they're yours! :-)

( cut because I'm sure my friend are tired of hearing me whine about Clearwire )

This is me switching from someone who used to love and rave about Clearwire and tell all her friends and family to try it to someone who dislikes Clearwire very much and is warning everyone to stay away. Stay far away. Only choose Clearwire if there is NO other choice!

Happy Birthday, dolphinchatter!

Hope it's been a grand day and that the next trip around the sun holds many great moments!

Because it was useful tonight, I'm going to document Clearwire network problems I have here. How was it useful? Well, I was on the phone with an actually helpful tech (someone who did more than tell me to power cycle the modem or move it to a different window) and he asked how long this had been a problem. I was able to go into my LJ and Facebook and say, "It was bad enough on these dates that I whined about it in my journals."

So, to continue in that vein, here's more of the saga...

( cut for those who are tired of the whine without cheese routine )

So I'm back to the same erratic service with lame ping times (mostly in the 1800-2000 ms range) and slow speeds (.3 to .7 down) that prompted me to call the tech in the first place. And no WoW. But with some hope that someone is going to at least look at things now and there may be a solution at some point...

I don't love you anymore. I used to rave about you and tell all my friends about your way cool service. That was before all the slowness, drops, and general suckiness. I haven't been able to rave about you for about a year now, and I'm starting to get to the point where I'm going to tell my friends to stay away from you.

I suppose that .28 Mb/s down falls with in the range of the "up to 1.5 down" that you advertise, but it isn't useful for anything. The printer driver I'm trying to download is going to take hours. I'm getting anywhere between 7 and 50 KB/sec (with a 30 KB/s avg) on the download.

Add that to the constant packet loss (1% loss is a good day. Bad days are anywhere up to 10% loss) and your lack of helpful customer service (is unplugging the modem for 40 seconds really a long term solution?), and I'm ready to start looking elsewhere.

I'm sorry Clearwire. The concept was beautiful. I loved being able to take my internet with me and use it where I needed it. But I need constant service more than I need portable service.

I've already had a couple of people ask if I have a wishlist. I've tried to keep it all on Amazon this year (with the help of the Amazon Wishlist browser button!)

Anywho, here is my Amazon Wishlist.

Who knew?!?!?

We've had clearwire for several years now. It was great when we were up in Everett. I played WoW just fine on it and loved it for it's portability. I love being able to take my modem with me when I go to a convention. Then we moved 20 or so miles south to the Seattle area. We aren't feeling the Clearwire love anymore. And while power cycling the modem sometimes helps, I shouldn't need to be doing it as often as I am.

Anyway, I just erased a long rant. Instead, I'm going to say that it looks like Clearwire is not a good choice in my area for playing WoW. Or even sometimes downloading my work files...

Unfortunately, our lovely new place (have I mentioned how much I'm liking it here?) appears to be too far from the phone central offices to get DSL. And FIOS hasn't yet hit the area either.

That leaves us with staying with Clearwire and seriously thinking about deactivating my WoW account or moving to Comcast and hoping they don't suck as much as I keep hearing about. We probably would only be getting internet and not channels as we don't really watch TV and can't really afford both.

sigh. This isn't really a choice I want to be making right now.

I noticed on the way home from errands today that Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, Up, and Ponyo are all at the Crest!

Saturday, Oct 10th is our housewarming/birthday party for Jeff (or any of our other many October birthday friends who show up).

We're still setting a start time, but it will be a rather informal come, hang out, play games if desired, we kick everyone out when we want to go to bed kind of event. With a chocolate fountain. That's what really makes it a party! :-)

Message me if you need our new address or want driving directions!

I wish that every elected individual had to spent at least a month living on the income and health care of their poorest constituents. I wonder how things would be different if those who had truly felt what it was like to have not. Would you kick up a ruckus about reforming health care if you got sick while not having any? Or if you had to pay for your lab work out of pocket because you hadn't met your deductible yet? Would you make a fuss about minimum wage if you knew what it was like to have to come up with food and health care and rent and car/travel out of the money you earn at a minimum wage job? Do the people who are making rules that affect us know what it's like to decide between 2 needful things because there isn't enough money for both?

Would you work harder to help the poorest in your district if you knew you would have to spend time living like they have to?

Today it's all windy today and cool. And the wind is bringing in clouds. But the dandelions still look cheerful in the gray, and the wind is making my chimes sound. Life is still good!

Happy Birthday, typographer!

Hope it's a grand day and an even better year!

Yesterday was one of those rare and lovely Saturdays with nothing planned! It was beautiful! I played some WoW (Blizzard added a Pirate Day achievement!), got together with a friend to play some music, and baked. I made an cinnamon apple cake off of www.smittenkitchen.com. It turned out wonderful and made the house smell like fall! I also made my uber-decadent Black Hole Devil Chocolate cake (in bundt cake form instead of cupcakes this time cause it was faster and easier).

Today Jeff's family had a fun gathering. Some of his relatives were up visiting from California, and his parents were over from Winthrop. There was BBQ and bats and balls and lots of chatting and catching up. I thoroughly enjoyed myself! And my desserts went over well. I love it when I get asked to make dessert. Oh no! Don't throw me in that brier patch! I have to make dessert--whatever shall I do? Make too many, of course! :-)

Yep. Life is good!

Yarr! Hope ye be havin' a happy Talk Like a Pirate day, me hearties!

I'm thankful for:
1. Jeffrey. Need I say anymore?
2. my own kitchen!
3. fresh made whole-wheat bread with butter and honey. Life is good!
4. broiled, open face tomato and cheese sandwiches, especially those made from fresh bread and mom's garden grown tomatoes and Tillamook cheese. Mmmmm!
5. My own cello!
6. a lovely fall day.
7. playing with and learning about the new Stampin' Up! My Digital Studio. It's a pretty cool piece of software!
8. Tomorrow's dinner almost done (trying the tomato and corn pie again with some recipe tweaks)
9. kitty snuggles
10.hammock!