mfghr.

couldn't get onto the net last night. have now got reason to believe this is because my mother changed her pw w/o knowing DSL modem likely to store old pw. (she was having problems getting to email @ office, thought pw might be problem.) stayed up late playing Civ III. too bad for you, Shaka! you were put down on the same continent as the Dread Lady Bai Xiaming! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

mmm, I love the smell of extermination in the wee small hours of the morning... smells like... ozone.

going to have to fix DSL pw problem when I get home. too bad it's half an hour to my house from here; I'd go at lunch otherwise.

sod the shift key anyway. being arbitrary about proper use of English grammar & syntax. nyah.

Travel planning, early phases.

Got an issue of Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel Magazine a while ago that included a big ol' writeup on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Now, I've driven to that area a few times, but only ever on the way to Toronto. I've taken the train to Toronto and theoretically been through the region - I say theoretically because we were STOPPED FOR CUSTOMS FOR TWO HOURS, once on the American side, once on the Canadian side. Aside from getting out of my car and briefly visiting the botanical gardens and gift shop at the Falls itself, I've never really visited the region for long.

I get to carry over three paid-time-off days from this year to next year. I believe I have a little more than that left, so I can allocate a few for early in January if I like and still have room for sick time or emergencies in this year.

US Airways has $97 round trip fares from La Guardia to Buffalo leaving on 1 or 2 January and returning on 6 January; Greyhound charges $7.50 or so to get me from Buffalo to Niagara Falls, Ontario, and back again. Niagara Falls has a couple of hostels. . .

Now it's just a question of getting to La Guardia, I think. I tried looking for cheap fares from Newark to that part of New York State, or from Newark to Toronto, but all the cheap plane fares are from either LGA or JFK. Bla.

*does Secret Jesuit Happy Dance*

Figured out most of what was wrong w/home network, but only after connecting to ISP's web page at work. Hmm, sez I, it says here that the Westell modems sometimes retain password information even after one has changed the password. "Mom," sez I after dialing up my mother's office, "you said yesterday that you changed the PW, right? When?"

"Yesterday afternoon, at work..."

"Uh huh." I reads her the article about the modem. There is much wincing and ultimately a request for the password to be reset to the original. I wait until I get home, because it is not NICE to ask the tech to do something about a home connection while you are not at said computer. I do however reset the PW on ISP's web page.

Got home. Tried to connect. Got ENTIRELY NEW error message which nonetheless inspired hope. Phoned ISP.

Turned out that our router, which I had set to 'keep connection alive', had tried to log in with the old password something like 100 times in a single hour shortly after Mom changed the PW. Apparently 'keep alive' means 'squirt off package of data every thirty seconds'. The ISP servers assumed it was a hack or something and shut down the account. Router has now been set to only connect on demand, max idle time of 5 minutes, and I am back to Internetting from home.

Yay me.