Another Operation For Dad

My father is having another operation today to close his chest. He says they will probably put in a plate and some screws. I asked if it would make him bulletproof and he laughed. There is also a possibility that they will have to move some chest muscle around to hold things together. The operation is supposed to take about three hours. I haven't heard anything more today. I'm sure my mother will call later to tell me how it went.

What if the internet had been invented 100 years earlier?

This YouTube video explores that very question.

Dad Update

I just realized I haven't posted an update on my dad for a little while now.

He did end up going into surgery. And they did end up opening up his chest to drain the infection from around the bone, though the surgeon said the bone looked strong. They have a tube in him now pumping him out, and aggressive antibiotics. He's eating, though not as much as they want him to. It's a bit chilly in the ICU and his food gets gold fast. They've had him getting up to use a potty chair, with an assist from the tilting bed. The surgeon will be checking the wound soon and he should be getting closed up either tomorrow or Thursday.

A while ago I read about a study that found that heart surgery patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of complications. Did anybody pray for him and tell him about it? Come on, fess up!

Back Online Again

As I mentioned yesterday, we got a replacement modem, but were told that there was an outage in our area. In hindsight, maybe taking the new modem wasn't such a good idea. I'd still make the same choice, though - the old modem could have been bad and if it was that would have cost us another day. We need home access for our business & banking.

Anyway, when we got home around seven or so I hooked up the modem. It still wouldn't connect. Well, they did say there was an outage, so I looked at its diagnostic screen via the web browser to monitor its progress. Almost right away it started progressing through the connection sequence, though much more slowly than normal. Then it reset. It did that a few times then stopped, then finally connected. Yay!

Or not so yay. Nothing would resolve on DNS. Nothing but the comcast.net web site, anyway, which was showing a welcome message and instructions to download installation software. (That link didn't work, by the way.)

I called in and the technician who answered tried to activate the new modem. She said there was something blocking it and she would forward me to billing so they could clear the blockage then send me back to her. I thought that was odd since we currently have a $40 credit on our account, but in a large corporation there's no telling which department will need to stick its fingers in when so what the heck. She transferred me over and after listening to an increasing annoying piano piece that apparently has no ending I got a menu. There was nothing on the menu that sounded like what I was told I was needed, so I hit 0 to try to talk to an operator. After a little while waiting for someone to pick up I hung up and called in again.

This time I had better luck. The woman I got seemed a little slower going through the routine questions, but in a methodical way, not like she was "slow" if you know what I mean. She tried to get the modem activated but ran into an error. Instead of transferring me she contacted the provisioning department and had someone there set me up. While waiting for that to be done I asked where they were located. Turns out she's from New Orleans, but still displaced by Katrina. They're waiting for their electrical system to be inspected so they can put up their drywall. The modem reset itself again, I reset our router and released & renewed my computer's DHCP connection. (See instructions below - much faster than a reboot in such situations.) And it worked! I had my wife release & renew and she was up too. I thanked the woman and wished her luck getting back home soon.

How to release & renew your connection instead of rebooting...
(These instructions are for Windows 2000 and XP.)
1. Bring up the Command Prompt. You'll find it in Start > Programs > Accessories
2. Enter "ipconfig /release" and wait for the prompt to return.
3. Enter "ipconfig /renew" and wait for the prompt.
You're done! You can check your connection by pinging something, like "ping johnssecretblog.blogspot.com"

Again Comcast Sucks

We brought the cable modem in to the local Comcast office today. The woman who helped us said they didn't do testing there, but they could swap us a new one. That was nice and quick. However, when she went in to associate the new modem's number with our account she found that, lo and behold, there was an outage in our area. So apparently either the person I talked to last night didn't know what the heck they were doing, or Comcast's outage alert system is dog slow by any modern standard, or everyone in my area was out all day and evening or else didn't bother to call in about their difficulties until today. That last possibility really wouldn't surprise me much. Cable customers seem to take extended outages in stride, just assuming that somebody else will call in.

Anyway, we went ahead and got the new modem. It won't hurt anything and there's always the possibility that the old one went bad at the same time, maybe due to a power surge or something, or that the outage really didn't happen until today. Hopefully we'll be up and going when we get home this evening.

I called Comcast again to see if they had gotten any more calls from my area, but they hadn't, so it's almost certainly a problem with our modem. We're thinking of bringing it in ourselves tomorrow to get it checked out at their office. Maybe they can give up a replacement right away that way.
Meanwhile, here's a pic of a rhinocerous beetle one of our employees found around Secret Headquarters.

Comcast sucks. :P Still down.

Comcast sucks. :P Still down.