A little breathing room...

I declared this afternoon a work holiday after a berserker session of catch-up from last week. Things got so wild that I didn't even bother to log my stats (which I better do tomorrow morning, or I'll pay for it later).

The gas is on.

The water is on.

I've got an Internet connection.

Life is good.

* * *In the small victories department, I managed to figure out why the cable modem wasn't responding after a coax cable was connected between it and the cable connection in the wall. It went back to one of the first lessons I learned as a control systems engineer: "First make sure the receptacle is powered and then make sure your power cable is good." It was bloody amazing the number of potential "problems" that were headed off by following those two steps.

In the case of the cable connection, it occurred to me to go outside and check the "demark" (the place where the utility's hardware ends and mine begins). An eyeball trace found that the cable leading into the house ran to a... dish. So I called the former tenants and they informed me that, aside from two coax panels, the rest of the house was actually now wired for satellite reception.

When I moved the cable modem to one of those two remaining coax panels (which our former tenants used exclusively for broadband access via the cable provider), voilà! (Almost) instant Internet access.

* * *I've used a Loew Cornell 18"x24" black cutting mat as a pad underneath my keyboard for years (and yes, for the occasional pasteup job), so it was with some disappointment that I pulled the poor thing out of the Infiniti's back seat looking like some kind of three-dimensional nightmare that seemed set in whatever this pad's marvelous self-healing material might be. After two subsequent days atop the Infiniti's roof, however, it appears to have "melted" back into its flat configuration and is back in its accustomed place underneath my keyboard, so yet another small victory can be chalked up, as well.

* * *I've got about 9,000 words due Sunday morning, for a new end client. I ought to be able to get it done, provided I am not distracted.

Meanwhile, I think I will continue to relax.

Cheers...