That does it. I'm moving to Denver. Medical marijuana, guns for the
blind, what a life! LOL. My glaucoma will thank the governor of
Colorado every day!
On Fri, 13 Mar 2015 00:25:59 -0600, you wrote:
>I had a really embarrassing experience today that should have never happened
>to a guy whose been a ham right at 49 years. I read a couple of left over
>emails about 11 PM last night and went off to bed. I'm not on as many
>mailing lists as I once was so I don't get 300 to 400 messages a day
>anymore; more like 30 to 40 at best. First thing I noticed about noon today
>was that I had no internet connection. I did all the usual things,
>including checking to see if my ear buds were plugged in just in case they
>were cutting my speakers off but everything was fine. So, I unplugged the
>comcast modem I have, my other one died a few months ago, unplugged the
>router, shut down the computer, plugged the modem for the cable back in and
>plugged the router back in, and fired up the computer from a cold boot.
>Nothing. I did it a couple of more times and when nothing worked, I mean,
>no internet access for mail or the web, I checked everything all over again.
>Well, comcast has the automated phone menu thing that, if you punch the
>right button on your phone, it will send a signal to jump start your modem.
>If it sees you are dead in the water, it switches you to tech support. The
>pulse they sent out didn't help so it was still dead as a doornail. Well, I
>didn't want to call them for more than one reason. I must admit, on the
>other hand, that after today's experience, Comcast has greatly improved
>their tech support services. Plus, the last time they came out to check out
>my dead modem to replace it with a newer one, the tech guy was super
>friendly. We talked about football, guns, the weather, and hardly anything
>about computers. He stood right here and used his cell phone to confirm a
>gun buy he was making. He told me, I forget what gun he was buying now, he
>had to sell a couple of his guns in his collection to get whatever this
>firearm was and this all do to the bumper sticker my youngest son has on
>one of his vehicles about second amendment rights he saw when he went out to
>climb the telephone pole to check my cable. Yes, the guy, and my 32 year
>old son, are licensed, registered, and have concealed carry permits. I know
>more about guns and ammunition than I know about computers by just listening
>to hams in Colorado and Texas and Wyoming and Nebraska and Kansas on 160,
>75, and 2 meters discussing what they own for weapons. We have lots of gun
>shows out here, too, and every single radio station advertises firearms and
>shooting ranges. I've got a firing range almost within walking distance of
>my home, no fooling, and I'm still in Denver city limits. Of course, where
>I live, you best have a sidearm just to walk out to your mail box. I'm
>kidding but it is almost true. My kids, when they were between 8 and 12,
>witnessed a shooting less than 300 feet from my front door. How'd I get off
>on all that? Anyhow, so the tech guy for Comcast and I are on the phone.
>He tells me to unplug the modem so he can see if anything changes on his
>end. Nothing happened. He checks to see if there are any other outages in
>my area. None. He asked me to read the model number off to him, this is
>another reason why I hate calling tech support, and I explained I was blind
>as a bat but my son had been over earlier that day and he said all the modem
>and router lights were on and everything was showing good to go? Another
>reason why I hate calling tech support is due to my voice. I developed some
>vocal cord problems a couple of three years ago and talking normally is not
>only difficult but frustrating. Thank the Lord I'm a CW op so I don't have
>to worry about jumping in to huge sideband pile ups I stumble across any
>longer. He asks me to unscrew the cable itself so he can check it again.
>I tried screwing the cable off but the gun nut that replaced my modem a few
>months ago, you know, the one who climbed the telephone pole just outside my
>ham shack? That guy must have used super glue or gorilla glue when he
>tighten that sucker up because I couldn't even make it moved. Since my neck
>and spinal surgery 6 years ago, my hands are very weak and even trying to
>drive a screw into wood is almost impossible for me now. I would have
>grabbed a wrench and tried twisting the thing off but between my boys
>borrowing my tools, along with my grandchildren taking them off to play
>with, I don't have even simple tools like screw drivers left. In fact, I
>just bought myself a 50 dollar Swiss Army knife last week off of Amazon with
>13 implements, all stainless steel, and I made sure half of the tools were
>useful things like a flat edge screw driver, a Phillips screw driver,
>scissors, a couple of good blades and even a small wood saw. This way they
>will have to take it from me before using it. The problem before was them
>just borrowing my tools and forgetting to tell old dad and old grandpa. So,
>I explain this to the guy on the phone. He says, fine, and said, "I can
>wait on the line if you want to get your son to come and screw it off for
>you." My son was at work, I explained, so the guy said, no problem, let's
>try it again. So, I reach behind the cable modem sitting on my desk and
>grabbed the plug. As soon as I started to unplug it, I said to myself,
>"Wait just a cotton picking second." I was unplugging the dad blamed jumper
>cable running over to my router and not the AC power cord. Holy Cow! I
>couldn't believe it. Some ham radio operator I am. I almost began laughing
>but I didn't want the guy thinking he wasn't doing his job so I explained I
>had been pulling out the wrong plug, why, I don't know. Yes, I saw that
>square plug, whatever they are called, and should have realized it wasn't
>the power cord but I decided later, I had a very good reason for making such
>a simple embarrassing mistake. First, I was in a lot of pain today for some
>unknown reason from the previous spinal surgeries. There isn't a day, any
>longer, that I don't have back and neck pain for that matter. I was hurting
>so much, I bummed a couple of pain pills off my wife, who is going to have
>hip surgery in a couple of weeks, and after washing them down with cool
>mountain spring water, I tuned the bands and waited the two hours it takes
>for the dump pills to even act like they are working. If things don't start
>working better, I'm going down to one of the Colorado Marijuana pot shops
>and make a buy score some weed. Guess what time I called Comcast tech
>support. I checked my watch and it was almost exactly two hours that had
>passed as I dialed on my iPhone. I knew I should not have called them but I
>was tired of not figuring it out after 14 to 15 hours of being offline. So
>between the pain, and the pain pills that were beginning to work, not to
>mention my age, and, oh, yes, the tinnitus I have due to the stress
>generated by the pain, I was really not firing on all 8 cylinders. I could
>blame it on my blindness, especially when the guy asked me to look at the
>lights and tell me what I was seeing after I'd already told him I was blind
>but being blind had nothing to do with the event. Plus, the way my voice
>works, I sometimes sound like I'm 80 years old or more. As we waited for my
>old computer to cold boot for the second time, this tech guy and I talked
>about the snow we've had in Denver of late, how nice the 60 and 70 degree
>current weather was, how he was born and raised right here in Denver,
>something unusual, the Denver Broncos and how we both hoped Payton Manning
>would take Denver to the super bowl again since this most likely will be
>Manning's final year playing football, and finally, my computer comes alive
>and pulls down a mail packet. Man, is my old computer slow. I had to
>explain all this about my computer to the tech guy and he probably figured,
>by this point, I didn't have a clue. I almost told him I started in
>electronics when I was 10 years old and that I was a ham but I was afraid it
>would draw a dark cloud over the ham community forever, plus it likely was
>being recorded and I didn't want anybody to hear what I had done, but at
>least now I have mail. It is a good thing I'm not climbing towers any
>longer. I average 100 contacts using Morse Runner every day at 30 to 45
>words per minute just to keep sharp. Today was pretty dull, you might say,
>but it was funny, even if it was embarrassing, too. I am going to copyright
>this email so I get a dollar for every person you forward this to. Who says
>you can't make money off of ham radio, haha.
>
>Phil.
>K0NX
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