Went up to Greensboro overnight to visit the folks after putting Mark on a plane in Raleigh. This may come as no surprise, but my cable internet service was still down upon my return an hour ago. It may be something fairly major, as all of Time Warner’s phone lines are busy now, so I can’t even call for an ETA or update. Heaven forbid they should have system status updates on their website like Pair and any number of ISPs do…

Dang, dialup sure is slow. Especially when you have actual work to do…

It’s been 24 hours since I’ve had any cable internet connectivity through Time Warner, and the customer support line mentions system-wide outages due to Friday’s storm. It was a pretty good storm, but nothing really out of the ordinary, so I’m wondering if this is a really common problem with cable internet service. Is it going to be like this EVERY time there’s a storm?

I’ve always had (generally reliable) DSL in the past, so if anyone could offer comments, I’d be most interested in reading them…

Random thoughts for a Saturday morning:

• Evidently, we’re not the only people fleeing the City of Doom. Per Census Bureau estimates, San Francisco has lost 32,000 people since the 2000 census. And if you believe the population signs as you drive into the city, almost 50,000 people have left since the 2001-ish estimate of 793,000 was published. Somehow, though, I bet the signs won’t be changed to reflect the current estimate anytime soon…
• Charlotte, on the other hand, is looking pretty darned healthy…
• Chutzpah: that’s what the Bellsouth telemarketer I spoke with yesterday had. Or maybe it was just brain damage. After (1) asking me what I though about my new phone service and (2) sitting through the ensuing tirade about how I’d been sold DSL service as part of a package without ever being told that DSL wasn’t available in my new apartment, and (3) listening apologetically as I told her I was strongly questioning whether or not I wanted to continue using Bellsouth AT ALL, she then proceeded to try and sell me an UPGRADED service package. Jeez…
• Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new contender for worst local newscast in the country. I thought I’d seen the bottom of the barrel several years ago with the short-lived show on KBWB in San Francisco, but I think this is even worse. Aside from being stupid and annoying and trite, they don’t even have the technical proficiency thing down, with music cues and pre-recorded stories invariably drowning out the last three words of every sentence by the anchors. And here’s a hint: a “musical guest” may be appropriate on your morning show, but it just don’t fly on a primetime news show, especially when the musical guest (invariably) sucks ass…
• A summer thunderstorm in North Carolina is a wonderful thing, and I’d forgotten how wonderful. Yesterday about 5:30, it sounded like the world was about to end, and we probably got as much rain in one hour as San Francisco gets during a week in February. The only down side is that the satellite has a tendency to go out…
• Oh yeah. The hometown paper interviewed me again yesterday. It’s amazing how newsworthy I seem to have become in Greensboro for doing, well, nothing particularly important…

It’s good to be home. One of the great things about Charlotte is that there’s so much good and dirt cheap food that it almost makes more sense to eat out than to cook at home. Five or six bucks will buy you a complete meal with entree and two sides at any number of places, and it’s even cheaper at the cafeteria, where you don’t really have to tip. We could eat someplace different this way every night for months, particularly when you factor in all the assorted ethnic places which weren’t around when I lived here before…

And should we decide to eat at home, the groceries are dramatically cheaper too. It’s amazing how having multiple competing grocery store chains will stretch your food budget…

Other random observations about Charlotte:

• Bellsouth sure is stingy with the phone books. SBC seems anxious to circulate as many as possible; you can get them at just about any supermarket. With Bellsouth, it’s like pulling teeth. They won’t even give you an office address where you can come to pick one up.
• Obviously they’re doing something right here with respect to residential development in the center city. It’s absolutely amazing how much there is…
• It’s so cute that finding graffiti on an abandoned building in the suburbs was actually worthy of a TV news story the other night…
• I’d forgotten just how polite everyone is. Except the manager of the Steak & Shake near our house…
• It’s really nice not sitting up in bed at 11:00 at night trying to remember if your car is parked legally or not…
• How much do you think it cost Food Lion to license the theme from “The Andy Griffith Show” for its ads?
• I’ve not yet run into a single task which wasn’t ten times easier to perform here than it is in San Francisco. Then again, I haven’t tried to buy drugs on the street or have anonymous sex with a homeless, syphilitic speed freak yet…
• Aside from leaving some very good friends behind, I have no regrets whatsoever about leaving the City of Doom…

   

Sorry for the delay, but I now unveil the illustrated story of my most recent cross-country road trip. Enjoy…