Erin’s mom went back to Calgary today (in fact, she’s probably already home) Erin’s at home sleeping the last week off. We got the crib together last night, so the baby’s room is basically complete. I’d post pictures, but then people would start speculating on the gender of the baby with no justification (honest, we don’t know yet either.)

The room looks really good though. This server is actually currently located in the closet there, which still leaves it a little loud. I think I’m going to wind up moving it downstairs anyway. Amazingly the wireless connection strength is not diminished by having the router located on the floor of a closet with the closet door closed. I still think we’re going to move it up higher to see if we can improve on it a bit.

We watched The Usual Suspects last night. I hadn’t seen it in quite a while, so I enjoyed it. I still remembered the ending, which kind of spoils some of the fun, but it’s still a good show to watch. Actually, the reason that we were watching a DVD was a little more entertaining

The replacement 5100 arrived yesterday, so I thought I’d call and have it activated. The activation call started out well, I gave the CSR my smart card ID etc, he went away, putting me on hold. While I was on hold, a message popped up saying something along the lines of “This smart card is not authorized for this receiver.” He walked me through the same rigmarole as they always do (unplug it, walk around your chair three times, touch your finger to your nose, click your heels together and say “there’s no place like home” etc.) and it didn’t work. The CSR gave me the “call back tomorrow” line (ie. I don’t know how to fix this, but you likely won’t get me if you call later.) I asked to speak with a technical support person (the next line of defense,) but he claimed that he was unable to communicate with them because of an internal systems problem - I guess they were all sitting there waiting for a call that would never come, right?

Anyway, after having determined that this guy couldn’t help me, I hung up and called right back - this time, I got a helpful CSR. Rebecca was her name-o. Anyway, she quite quickly showed me that 1) she knew what she was doing, and 2) she wasn’t going to lie to me to get me to go away. (As an aside - the first guy asked me how my receiver was hooked up to the TV - as if that could have anything to do with it. When I told him that I had the composite video and the optical audio cable hooked up to an A/V receiver, he seemed confused - even “correcting” me that what I had it hooked up to was actually called a “hub” and that I must be using the SVideo cable and confusing it with a sound cable)

Anyway, Rebecca walked me through some brief diagnostics, then identified the problem, told me that it would be fixed within about a half hour or so, at which point she would call back to confirm that everything was working as expected. What do you know - she got it working - She even called back, just like she said she would. What an amazing thing. The new unit is nearly silent (especially as compared to the old one.)

Everything is back to normal, resume your daily business

Simpson’s quote of the day: “No! We’re not sending the lobster away to some snobby boarding school.” ? Marge