Sharing The Dream

To say that my internet options here are limited is a bit of an understatement. Currently there are two choices: bad and worse. One is Comcast, the other is Verizon. To figure out which one is which is an exercise I will leave to the readers.

Currently I have Verizon and it is a love-hate relationship. I hate to love it. I signed up for electronic billing only to have my service cut off fo lack of payment. I switched to paper billing but pay online. That doesn’t work. I would get the bill, go online and find that I owe ‘nothing’, call for help and get ‘you owe nothing’. Disregard the bill though and down goes the net.

I admit that ultimately I am responsible for the charges so I do my best to get them paid during these discrepencies (usually by mailing a money order just to be on the safe side). Fail at that and I spend countless hours trying to do the right thing and pay my bill. It is painful.

Tonight I a greeted by a new surprise on my return home: no internet. I found out by trying to look up some data using my iPad. That wasn’t the surprise. The real surprise was a new web form to let me pay the bill right then and there. YES! Salvation at last.

Not so fast.

When using the form, I tried to pay with AMEX. The CCV box did not have spaces for 4 digits. When I tried to process the card, it complained. I tried other computers with the same result. I looked at their code and the Javascript should be working, but alas there is something in their code that prevents it from working in Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Go figure. Here I thought life had given me a sip of luxury only to be given a lemon.

TIme to make some lemonaide.

Enter Firebug - a tool I use for checking web site operations for sites that I build. It is a good bug tracking tool. But it also lets you edit HTML, CSS and other web goodness on the fly. So while on Verizon’s payment page, I open Firebug and change the offending limit from 3 to 4. I didn’t think this would work but low and behold it did. Internet is coming back, the bill is paid and life goes on.

Thanks Firebug.

To say that Star Trek is one of my favorite shows would be a bit of an understatement. When I was younger, I took in as many conventions, movie premiers and activities as possible. I was a proud member of the star trek fan clubs and served onboard the USS WindSpirit, a fine ship if ever there was one.

I recently watched Star Trek 6 and loved it (again). Tonight, however, I realized that I am facing my own ‘Undiscovered Country’ in that I am fearful of the future for me and space travel. In one sense, I am glad to be a part of it. In another, I feel that the space movement is moving away from me and I can no longer keep up.

Fear of the unknown is driving me to sit on the sidelines rather than get into the game. I know what I need to do. Do I have the strength, the courage and the boldness to do it?

One of the amazing things about Space is that there are some people trying to bring it down to Earth in unique ways. Stephen Van Vuuren is working on an IMAX film about Space. The cool thing is that he is doing this from his basement. There are some samples of the video work he has accomplished using nothing more than still images. This link takes you to his IndiGoGo page where you can view a snippet of his work: http://www.indiegogo.com/outsideinGSCA?c=home.

Stephen is also looking to raise funds to get to the Giant Screen Cinema Expo if he can. If you can help this project out, I know he would be really grateful. Beside, this is your chance to get your name on a movie! Cool Stuff!

For the next few days, I will be without my trusty iPad. I loaned it to a friend who is going on a trip. It makes a great communication device and they will make good use of it. While it will take some adjustment, I will get by (twitch, twitch).

Just for giggles, I attached my iPod touch to the keyboard stand I have been using for the iPad. It worked flawlessly! So now it might look funny, but I can continue to do everything I was doing on the iPad only in miniature form.

That just made my day.

A lot of what I type includes a fair amount of acronyms. This is useful for conveying some information to audiences in the know. It is NOT a good thing for iPad however as the darned thing continues to try to replace my code-speak with its own set of words. Many a time I have sent out an email with the core of my message exchanged for something else. I can turn it off but then my spelling goes to pot.

Guess we can’t have it both ways yet.

I finally got around to watching ‘Angels and Demons’ with Tom Hanks. The movie was okay but for the most part, it felt way too easy for such a complicated set of event sot fall into place so perfectly. The big baddie dude I had pegged within 10 minutes of the film starting (I won’t say who it is) and it is amazing all the little clues that kept pointing in that direction.

The best part of the film was the line “Religion is flawed because man is flawed, not because God is”. All I can say is amen to that.