Come From Away

Silo?

Yup, silo.

Welcome to country living… Our current high speed internet tower is the silo at the Meerbur’s pig farm… The Meerburg’s went “belly up” about a year ago and now some one purchased their farm… The new owner wants to move the silo and we may lose our high speed tower…FUCK! Science damn it!

Every morning the radio wakes us up to crummy music, announcements and the usual idiotic radio announcer. . .

One of the ones today, had both K and I chuckling away:

The Chamber of Commerce of the Greater Charlottetown Area would like to welcome the law firms of Cox and Palmer to its membership…

They must have said “Cox ‘n Palmer” 5 times during the announcement. Silly, childish, but still funny. Later on I started thinking (always a dangerous action)… When we first moved here, we had to visit a lawyer to get some document notarised regarding something finalising the sale of our house back in MTL. The firm’s name would grow in its hilarity if he joined them as they would become, “Cox, Palmer and Ghiz!”

We decided to take a short “official” vacation. In the past we have tried to stay away from work when folks were visiting, or to free up some time to do fun things, but have never “closed” our web site or done anything to say, “Next week, we are on vacation.” So, for the first time in four years, we put up notices on our site and took a week off “officially.”

It rained…

After returning to our “week away,” which composed of much sitting in the house (cursing out the window) with four squirrely, quarrelsome kids, we returned to work. Due to our notices that we were closed and messages stating that items would take longer to ship, we received, perhaps, one or two orders less per day. i.e. There was a week’s worth of work waiting for us.

Halfway through the week, our internet hosting company had trouble with the server we are on and they took it half off-line so that they could do a disk scan. Again! Our site did not load and email was bouncing. If they had taken the damn server all the way off-line, or at least turned off some services we would have at least received some of our email (once it was working properly). . . When I called and politely asked what was happening and when they expected the issue resolved (I actually have a lot of sympathy for folks doing what they were doing — go figure), they were rude and unhelpful. Again!

I have spent the last two days moving 11 web sites, 15 databases, 50 email addresses, etc. to a new hosting company.

It’s raining…

Today about 4:30 PM (while working on the last site to move), I was startled to see a lot of sparks flying up from under a trailer that was being towed/dragged by outside my window. It seems that when you change a tire on your trailer, that you should re-torque the wheel nuts once you let it down off the jack. Duh! Apparently, if you don’t (like this good fellow didn’t), then all of the nuts fall off and then the tire comes off your trailer when you are proceeding down the highway at 100 clicks… Being the nice guy that I am, I foolishly offered to help. I tried to call Leon (our trusty local mechanic), but he is not usually at the shop on Saturdays, so we roll down to Cooper’s (a bastion of civilisation out here in the sticks). Of course they do not have what we need, but Leon lives just up the road and we bump into him while looking up his phone number at home, as we were about to call him… Unfortunately, he is on his way out to supper with his lovely wife and can’t get our new friend going. We follow him to his house where he quickly roots around in his garage (the one behind his house that everyone has, not his shop garage that only mechanics have) and finds a few bolts that “should work” and sends us off (sigh). We are now accompanied by his 14 year old son, who will let us into Leon’s garage (his shop garage that only mechanics have, not the one behind his house that everyone has) to grab some tools. The shop is blissfully, surprisingly, on our way back to our house and the broken down trailer. We are not sure if the bolts that Leon has given us will fit, because my new friend did not bother to bring one from the other side of the trailer (as I had suggested) to compare to others in the event that we could actually get some replacements… When we get back to our place, Daniel, Leon’s son, goes right to it and he manages to get three out of four of the bolts on and torqued well on… My friend, however thinks that the problem he had is because the rims on his ancient trailer are worn out and that the same issue will arise again if he does not change the rims… So right now, we have a couple camping in our driveway (knock, knock -> can we fill up our pitcher…. knock, knock -> can you spare some tea… knock, knock -> we need more water…. bathroom…). It’s not the end of the world, but I’d really rather not and there will probably be more tomorrow…

It’s still raining…