DSL Outage (0 comments)
Serenity is a lot more moving the second time through. Knowing what's ahead gives a lot more gravity to the events and dialogue. There were a few scenes where the first-timers were laughing and I was crying, but I won't go into detail.
While in Hoopeston, the internet broke. More specifically, my line was converted from a static IP block to a single dynamic IP. I've been fighting SBC for some time on their billing. Every month since I got my new contract, they've failed to automatically apply the $60 credit I earn by having a one-year contract with them. Last time I called, they found the root cause, and it turns out that their fix completely changed my account for the worse.
But after negotiating my way out of India, I had a one hour, forty-seven minute phone call with tier two tech support. My problem was beyond the capabilities of their standard tools, so it occasionally required intervention from the senior guy in the office who better understood the dark ways of data manipulation. While that guy was checking into things or while we waited for data to propogate, I got to hear all about how my tech support contact used to do video conferences in a room with four foot thick lead walls and got his time down to eighteen seconds in the "destroy the ignition computers on forty-eight nuclear warheads" game. I've got no idea whether or not he was telling the truth, but it was entertaining.
More entertaining was the dream I had a few nights ago. I was sitting at a poker table with Charleton Heston and some non-descript other guys. It was decided that we'd play blackjack, so Charleton Heston dealt everyone six cards. Nobody knew whether or how to call him on it, and before we could decide, he picked three face cards from his hand and laid them face up on the table, looking at us and saying, "It's Ween time, you bastards."
That's when I woke up laughing.