OK...I'm Back...

I'm back from vacation, and it's been a hellish week. Especially last Thursday...

I wound up having to take care of three sick people (two little ones and one big one) pretty much most of Thursday afternoon and all evening. Fortunately, the boys were pretty much OK after Grandma and Grandpa came back from dinner. This was a good thing, because I came down with the same flu they had right after everyone got back. The drive back here was nasty, and mostly had to have my wife drive. I was laid up most of yesterday and all last night. It started to break this afternoon, so I'm back up to where I need to be, but wow, getting sick on vacation isn't fun.

Sorry for the digression, but that explains why I didn't come straight home and fix my feed. That's an even better story.

One of our friends who was taking the mail in for us said that she couldn't get through on the phone. My wife called AT&T (the root of all evil) and they said that "it was probably the computer equipment shorting out the phone." When I got better, I went downstairs and took a look. The computer equipment was fine. The encoder had stopped, and my IP address had changed (probably signifying I lost phone connection at some point while we were gone), but I was able to get online and everything. So I unplugged it and tried to call our land line again. Not really any better. Bypassed the answering machine. No go. Bypassed the filter for the DSL service. No luck. My wife called AT&T back and told them we did all the troubleshooting we could and we're pretty sure it's not the computer equipment. They'll send someone out by Tuesday at the earliest. Tuesday. Ugh!

This is also a reminder for me to spend the extra five bucks a month and get a static IP address. That way, I don't have to worry about losing power and changing IP addresses. That will make keeping a stable feed up that much easier.

So anyway, if you want to follow the directions from a couple of posts ago (I believe the post was for July 15), the feed is up if you want to check it out. I'm going to go check on it now. Now that I'm home, I should be able to keep a better eye on it.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI