Plaidophile

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So, I signed up for phone and DSL via AT&T online a week ago. Today I checked the order status, and found that the phone order went through but the Internet order didn't.

I called the number they provided, and the CSR (who mumbled and slurred his speech) insisted on looking up order status on the number I was calling from (my Seattle cellphone number) and of course didn't find anything. I explained that I just had an order number and could I please use that, and he said, no, I needed to give him the home phone number and my name and so on. So I gave him that, and he said that the name on the account was different than my name, and he wouldn't specify what that name was. So I asked him again if I could give him the order number, and he said no. So I read off the exact error message that I saw on the signup page, and he said, okay, give him the order number. So I gave him the order number, and he said it was the same order number he had in front of him.

Okay, so the dishwasher in my apartment is pretty piddly and low-end compared to the one I had in Seattle, but: its rinse cycle sounds like the TARDIS. And that is pretty awesome.

I was hoping that the buyout wouldn't have any negative consequences for a while, but for the last several days I've tried to order DSL from them several times, and each time I was put on hold without any estimate of how long I'd be on hold. After a few minutes on hold I'd give up.

It used to be that if you called Speakeasy you'd get a CSR right away. I never even knew they had hold music. But I'm guessing that the Best Buy buyout has led to them having to scale up their operations fast without having a comparable scaling of resources and they're prioritizing business customers, and as I expected, the residential side of things has suffered.

AT&T makes it really easy to sign up for service online (and even easier from my apartment's services directory), and the total cost of AT&T voice service (which I guess I need since reception is a little spotty in my apartment) and 6.0/768 DSL is about the same price as 1.5/384 DSL alone with Speakeasy. And my sister has AT&T and it's Reliable Enough. I don't need to run servers anymore, and I don't need 5 9s. So I guess AT&T will have to do for now.

I can't be the only one who's noticed that like every single comic on the Internet has a guest strip by Ryan Estrada today.

I don't know when this was announced, but Paul pointed me to Logic Studio, which has finally made the (previously) $1000 Logic Pro catch up with the $cheap GarageBand. Also it's only $500 now and includes a hell of a lot more than Logic Pro ever did (including all the jam packs!).

The upgrade is only $200, which I will probably be purchasing as soon as I get my G5 back. (Unfortunately, Logic itself now requires a dual G5 or faster. So I'll have to keep using 7 on my laptop for those rare times that I record from it.)

I was just looking for more information about boost::any_cast and came across this old article by ucblockhead. The comments are pure gold, and not because of any sort of insight they bring.

I wonder how much truth there is to this. I'd like to see it finally get released, at the very least.