Fire on the river

Pulled pork sub at subway

It exists!!

My Water Bill: Usability Fail?

So after searching for an hour for my checkbook, I set out to pay my last Delta Township water bill. For some reason, they are the only bill I have (had) that didn't offer an auto-pay feature, which is miserable, because that means I have to pay via check. Although that's questionable based on the last bill that I got talking about EFT in some fashion, but that's another story.

And for some reason they failed to include a self-addressed envelope like they usually do. Needless to say, I totally forgot to get the address before sealing the envelope. So at this point, I check the part of the bill that isn't sealed in the envelope. There is an address at the top of the page, but it doesn't say "remit payment here", so do I really trust it? It ends up that I rip open the envelope to verify the address that I'm supposed to send it to.

Which leads me to this: why is the part that tells you where to send payment listed on the section that you include with the payment? In what situation does that make sense? Maybe if you upon receiving of the bill, immediately separate the "please return with your bill" portion and throw the other half away. But does anybody do that? Perhaps it's just me that only separates the two halves as I'm paying the bill. How about, just in case this happens, you put the address to send it to on the part of the form that you'll be able to actually read?

Now I realize that the address WAS on the other portion of the bill, in the upper-left corner, much where I would expect an address to be. It seems plausible though that the address on a company's letterhead could be different from where you send your bill. Maybe my bill paying method is just oddball, that's entirely possible. Regardless, Delta Township owes me an envelope.

Moving news (also server news)

Good news, I'm moved into my new place! Due to some clutch help from a lot of people, the moving process wasn't too painful (although a wee bit warm). We finished in about 2 1/2 hours, which I say is pretty good time. Unpacking, well, that's still ongoing. I'm doing well though I think - my bedroom is basically good to go. The TV is more or less hooked up - I probably won't attach the back speakers to the surround sound, so it's a relatively simple setup going on there. I still have the arcade cabinet to piece together and a few other things to clean up, but I'm well on the path to victory.

Achieving internet is a long story - unfortunately, the end result is I won't have legit internet until August 31st. I've been hijacking my iPhone's data connection which works surprisingly well, though not so much for a server. So my gallery server will be unavailable until then.

The new place generally has been good. It's clear that the office doesn't excel at communication in my dealings with them so far. Hopefully I won't have to deal with them too much.

That's about all I got there. Glad to have this moving thing more or less done. Still have to change a few addresses, which is lame, but necessary. Also have to return my Comcast goods, which I am really excited about being done with them. After much hand-wringing, I'm bailing on cable and I'm going with AT&T's U-Verse internet. I think it will be a good thing.

I'd really like to get Hulu up and running on something on my TV, although I need internet before I can do that. I've had Hulu Plus for a while now, and it's been less than awesome. That's another post though. With any luck, by the time Molly and I get back from the cruise, Apple will have released a sweet new Apple TV replacement for $99 that will make all my worries go away. Somehow I doubt that will happen. Otherwise it's time to get serious about a home theatre PC (again). Though in the meantime, I might start by just getting a good pair of rabbit ears...I forget that HD comes over the air for free these days!

Server downtime (also, moving!)

I'm moving this weekend into a townhome down the street. It seems like I've been moving for months now, but I'm for real going in the next couple days. So, not only am I using that as my excuse for not posting, it's also going to cause some downtime in the gallery server. I know, that's heartbreaking, but that's the way it is. It actually might be a couple weeks, as I didn't plan far enough ahead apparently to get AT&T in to setup my internet. I'm going to be limping by on my iPhone for a while. Yeah, that's going to suck. That's all for now, I'll see you on the other side.

Sorry Ralphie...