Armkreuznacht

Tuesday, September 24, 2002

Very bizarre day today.

It started just as I was falling asleep.

Noise, and lots of it, coming from above.

Which is odd, considering that the master bedroom is on the second floor of a two story building, there shouldn't be noise coming from above.

But there was, and as I found out from Spring a work crew were up on the roof doing roof-like work.

All day.

Sigh.

Also, through the day we both noticed some rather odd behavior from Rob, which culminated at around 9:30 pm when we took him to the emergency room; he had a bad reaction to something earlier in the day and our attempts to help him weren't working.

The hospital is keeping him overnight for observation but everything seems to be under control, thankfully.

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

A Life Less Interesting

It seems that wierd things are happening all around.

Earlier last week Mark was attacked by a feral cat. Mark's bathroom opens up to the back porch in his house, and he heard some noise at the door. When he opened it this cat latched itself to Mark, scratching and biting him, then it flew around the bathroom, breaking anything and everything that could be broken.

Mark was able to remove the cat from his house before more damage could be done. He then called Animal Control who came out to set traps for the animal (since Mark's house is on the edge of a nature preserve). They also told him to get rabies shots.

The first hospital he went to (in east Boca Raton) told him he did not need the shots and that a case of rabies had not been seen in Boca Raton for years. The next day when Animal Control came back out to check the traps, they were horrified to hear that Mark was blown off by that hospital.

So, Mark went to the West Boca Medical Center (which is where we took Rob) and they set him up on a rabies shot schedule.

I also heard some news about John, the paper millionaire of a dot-com. I haven't heard from him in almost two years (I think the last time I saw him was Thanksgiving of 2000). I occasionally wondered about him, his wife and how they could afford to live in that house of theirs after the DotCom Bubble burst.

Well, it seems that John lost most (if not all) of his money when it burst, since most of his money was in stock to begin with, and sometime last year he apparently split without telling anyone, including his wife where he went.

She, however, is still in the house and how she can afford it, I don't know. Perhaps John, the paper millionaire of a dotcom didn't loose all his money and just decided to leave everything behind.

Perhaps.

But I'm not even to the wierd part in this story.

John, the paper millionaire of a dotcom, had wired up a computer to control the house. Lights, music, air conditioning, you name it, it was controlled by a computer. He was, after all, a paper millionaire of a dotcom, and with that much (paper) money you can buy some pretty fancy toys, like a computer controlled home.

And even though John, the paper millionaire of a dotcom, no longer lives there, he still, however, has control over that computer. And he's been using that control to control the house, remotely.

And his (ex?) wife has no idea how to prevent him from logging into that computer remotely. Even after she cut the Internet access, John, the paper millionaire of a dotcom, apparently still has a way in.

Me, I find that terribly amusing.

The roof! The roof! The roof is under construction!

Work continues on the roof.

WHAM WHAM WHAM WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRR WHIRRRRRRRRRRRR WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRR WHAM WHAM WHAM

All

day

long.

Scream.

The bureaucratic shuffle

“What do you mean he's not on record?” asked Spring. It was four in the afternoon and we hadn't heard back from the hospital about Rob, so Spring called them up. “We brought him in last night! … No record … okay.” She hung up.

“I guess we better go there and ask them in person,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

Half an hour later, we arrive to the emergency room and start asking. Oh, Rob was moved to another medical facility. Why weren't we notified? Don't know he was just moved. Oh.

Fourty-five minutes later we arrive at the other medical facility, where were weren't allowed to see Rob. We got no information about Rob at all, since we were not on a list to have information. We don't even know how bad off he is. We have to come back tomorrow during visiting hours (and there's only four (4) hours per week anyone can visit at this particular facility).

Sigh.

Thursday, September 26, 2002

The Wireless Net

Last week I again borrowed Rob's Cisco Airo 340 wireless PCMCIA card to use. I've been trying to get it to work for the past two days (it isn't working because Rob shut down the WAP as he started rearranging his room and hasn't gotten back to it yet) so I tried yet again.

This time, I brought up the interface, which seems to be fine, and ran a network sniffer on it and found, to my surprise, not one, but two WAPs nearby, given the ARP traffic I'm seeing. Given the signal strength, I'm inclined to say that the two WAPs are in the same building we're in, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

Still under construction

Given the noise I'm hearing above me, I suspect they're still working on the roof.

Visiting hours

Spring and I went to visit Rob and see how he's doing. He's doing fine although quite groggy from the drugs the hospital is administering to him. He's still under observation and does not have any indication as to when he'll be out, but hopefully it will be Real Soon Now.

Sunday, September 29, 2002

Some months, it just doesn't pay to get out of bed

Updates.

The roofers finally finished whatever they were doing to the roof on Thursday. Rob got out of the hospital on Saturday. The chrysalis is empty, so I suppose the flutterby popped out (or eaten, who knows). Just then you think things return to normal I find a flat tire on my car.

And the spare is flat.

Wake me up in 2003 please …

The Boston Diaries