After spending almost an hour on the phone at midnight last with Belkin because my router went down (hey I thought I would get a bright eye'd and bushie tailed ready to work just on a shift help desk person...boy was I wrong) and three hours this morning (even worse help I have to say...."sid" - hee- did have me reconfigure everything, but "julia" was an idiot) I now have connectivity. I fixed it myself.

I have to learn. If they can't help you, disconnect, fiddle around on your own and 'oila I can set up the key and password, secure the connection, get the thing working on it's own and seriously... prove to myself that I am kind of smart and don't need a help desk person in another country who doesn't know the difference between a WAN and a LAN to help get a router working. I mean I even spelled "Wireless" and "land", she was not ready for me at all. I have to have faith in myself that I am pretty smart, understand how things work and just work on "it" (what ever "it" might be at the moment) until it is fixed. I don't give up easily and finally had to just give up on Belkin and their tech support. I did that with Dell often when I was the office computer tech at my job a couple of years ago. I had to go back to that place today. It felt good. No,it feels good to have accomplished something that a call center person couldn't manage. Yippee. Good luck "Julia", because you need just a little more training in your enunciation and understanding of the calls you are taking.

Maddening.

That being said... Seriously... happy to have my interweb back because I am going to watch "SiCKO" and chill. (*edited to add: I just watched the movie and it is very pointed as expected, but again as expected he does paint a very pretty picture about what "Universal Healthcare" can in fact be. I don't disagree with the premise at all and it would be amazing, but unfortunately very unlikely. Because as Mr. Moore points out and unfortunately only in the beginning of the movie, the pharma companies have a chokehold on our Nation. And that is the absolute truth. Forgive his going to Cuba to get care for the 9-11 workers, the cancer survivor living in her daughter's Denver basement, that is all for show. A show for the cameras, it facilitates his point, and he does mention the 5 cent inhaler, but doesn't push the point too much, its very subtle. Break the pharma lobby and let our nation develop a system to take care of their own, not let the pharma companies do it. That is really what will get us where we should be. Let France have their 35 hour work weeks with their 5 weeks holiday vacation schedule, but cut off the pharmacological companies billions funneled into our national legislature. They could fund the system all on their own and still provide the research, the monies to shareholders, all they have to do is stop the lobby. But I am very anti-lobby anyway, just seeing what I have seen happen on a very different agenda a couple of years back. So that is my take on "SiCKO". Again, Michael Moore makes a point - ish, has some great travels to show us "what goes on in the outside world" and makes American's look pretty foolish. Job well done on that. But really the reason why it won't happen here, is because PhARMA is in control of Healthcare in this country. Not the insurance companies as much as he would like to portray, but until care is affordable no Congress will be willing to pay. Jumping off my soapbox, but I encourage you to go and watch the movie for free online. Give your money to Pixar/Disney and pay to see Ratatouille instead. *end edited to add)

The experience this morning reminded me of Morgan Spurlock's 30 day's show where the American Guy whose job was downsized to go to India and work at a call center. So I am in a documentary frame of mind I suppose.

I am also seriously loving the deep diving that HBO is doing for "Voyuer". I don't want to give it all away because discovering the intricacies on one's own makes the whole experience. The presentation "on demand" is about a minute a peice and they seem to be adding something every couple of days and the site is amazing. If you have hours (seriously) to set aside... go check it out. It's really pretty great to see what can be done with the web and a enormous media company and a very interesting idea.