September 2004 Archives

Here's another image from my 1988 university photography class. This one was part of the set that included the bag of knives I posted back in July.

I'm happy to report that my home phone is back in working order. I confirmed with my landlord on Thursday that my new downstairs neighbor had RCN install a new cable line to her place. On Wednesday, when I lost phone service, the RCN technician drilled a new hole into the side of the house and had to run cable through the basement drilling several more holes. My landlord was not very happy with this very invasive process.

I followed my landlord's suggestion that I call RCN and demand that they fix the problem they apparently caused. The RCN customer service person very nicely replied that while they were sorry for my inconvenience, they could not repair the problem because they were not my phone provider, unless I was willing to switch to RCN that day. (Not a chance!) I told her I was staying with Verizon and that if they were able to fix the line and show RCN's tech had caused the problem, then I would be forwarding my bill to RCN. She politely told me I that I should call their 800 number again if Verizon was able to do that and billed me.

The Verizon tech showed up at 8:30 this morning and said he could tell by the gnarled nest of disconnected cables and loose phone lines hanging out of the cable/phone junction box on the side of the building, coupled with the pile of wire cuttings and pieces of electrical tape on the ground, that my building had been the site of a recent RCN installation.

Mysteriously when I arrived home late last night my home phone had no dial tone. I did the standard troubleshooting of testing each jack with a corded phone, but no luck. I went down to the side of the house to look at the phone junction box but there wasn't any signs of tampering. On the way back up the rear stairs I noticed that there was some construction debris near the trash cans, a new back installed door on my downstairs neighbor's apartment, and the smell of fresh paint in the hallway. All likely from the woman on the 2nd floor getting a new roommate. Perhaps she had a new line installed. Who knows.

Anyhow, Verizon couldn't commit to their standard 4-hour time block for a service call today, probably because my service call was so late last night (9:30 p.m.). I decided to wait for the service tech on Friday morning as I have a major work project deliverable due today.

Therefore, if you need to reach me in the next 24 hours, call me on my cell.

After 9 years of driving a Saturn, I'm pleased to announce that I've bought a new vehicle: a 2004 Toyota RAV4. Her name is "Pearl" (named for the color of the trim that complements the Salsa Red color. Here's a photo from the Toyota web site:

This photo shows one of the things I really liked about the car: removable rear seats (cute blonde not included).

In the prints of the disposable camera I mentioned in my last entry, I found a photo from a trip to Buffalo for my Dad's birthday. While I was there I had the chance to visit with my cousins: Mike and Tina, and Tina's daughter, Katrina.

(Left to right: Dad, Mike, Katrina, Tina, and me)

I recently found a disposable Kodak camera that had been bouncing around my car since January of this year. I shot the last of the remaining exposures at my niece's birthday part and sent it for processing. One of the interesting photos I found was this shot of my bedroom at my friend Liz's, where I stayed earlier this year.

I think the size of this space and the obvious lack of clutter in it provides a little insight into why I've been so reticent to unpack the large volume of boxes I have stored in my spare bedroom. The blue moon and stars curtain was my privy screen as my room that connected to the kitchen was without a door. The striped blanket over the head of the bed acted as a windbreak from the cold, winter winds that routinely blasted my side of the building. It was quite cozy and I'm immensely grateful to Liz for putting up, er, putting me up.

While my folks were in town a few weeks ago for my niece's birthday, we went to the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline, MA. My folks are interested in Olmsted's work because as the father of modern urban landscape design, his first professional project was Delaware Park in our hometown: Buffalo, NY.

After Olmsted worked in Buffalo he went to New York and played a key role in designing Central Park. He moved to Boston in 1890 to seek refuge from the stress of dealing with the politics of public works in NYC. Once in Boston Olmsted started his design firm and, among other projects, designed the park system that surrounds Boston known as the Emerald Necklace. The office was open until 1980 when the owners moved to New Hampshire. They turned the building, all its contents, and the grounds over to the U.S. National Park Service for preservation.

Here's some artistic renderings of the photos I took on our trip: This is the entryway to the grounds.