I'll Catch Up Over the Weekend

I have no excuses.

I just seem to have been slow and out of phase this week, at least when it comes to bloggery and biking. But Friday presents an opportunity to do some catchup work. My only daytime obligation (other than coaching a FUN swim practice in the morning) is to meet with the Comcast technician who's coming over to figure out why my Internet keeps blinking out.

The outages seem to be completely random. For the last week, the red "offline" light has been flashing more often than not. I've tried all the recommended solutions -- check the cables and connections, unplug-wait-replug, system reboot, goat sacrifice, etc -- but nothing has had any effect. The next level of escalation would be to call Comcast...but my telephone service is Vonage VOIP, which means it doesn't work if the Internet is down.

Don't suggest using my cell phone. That plan costs me twenty-five cents per minute and has ultra-crappy quality on its best day. I don't want to watch the cash drain away as I sit on hold for 30 minutes, only to reach a tech who can't understand what I'm saying through all the static when I do try to talk.

So I called the trouble line during one of the times when I had service, and of course, their diagnostics found nothing wrong. But I went ahead and set up an appointment for a housecall tomorrow. I'm guessing he's going to open up the connector box outside and find that it's full of black widows and tse tse flies. "Well there's your problem."

No, on second thought, it's more likely that the diagnosis will include the requirement to buy new cables, a new modem, a new router, and a new computer that was personally hand-crafted by the tap-dancing grandchildren of Ricardo Montalban. It's gonna cost me.

Oh well, what's the point of life if not to toil for endless hours in corporate slavery so you can just barely afford to maintain your eternal connection to the worldwide web? (Well, that and raise ungrateful children who move away and never return your phone calls. Oh yeah...and swimming.)

Anyway, during the times I was offline and therefore unable to watch reruns of the Weird Al Show on Netflix, I started thinking up a few more graphical puzzles that I'll present to you over the coming few days. The first one is the easiest; perhaps the most obvious puzzle I've ever posted. All you have to do is name the four musical instruments represented here (remember, you can click to embiggen the picture):



Let me know your answers. I should probably hand out some sort of prize for the first correct response...but that would require work. And if I was willing to work, then I could probably find a way to post more than one blog per week, couldn't I? Sigh. Anyway, my admiration for your sharp mind should be reward enough.

And if you have some extra time to correspond, I'd be interested to hear what YOU thought of "John Carter" (if you were one of the few folks who saw it). And while we're on that topic, let's take a poll: What is the best Mars-based movie you've ever seen? And for bonus points, what's the connection between that question and the fellow shown to the right?

Good luck, stay connected, and have a great day!