January 16th, 2002

default, superpanda, panda

Grar! Stop doing that!

I have no idea why, but fairly frequently Trillian decides that it's just going to balloon up and eat all available CPU. This is not incredibly friendly behavior, and requires a kill and restart before my system returns to something resembling a useable state.


This happened prior to my reinstall (well, right up to the point the program just started crashing every time I tried to open it), but I don't recall it happening with such regularity. Now it happens a couple of times a day, usually after the system has been idle for a while.

default, superpanda, panda

I really need to stop renting movies.

I've been on this kick lately where I've been renting movies from Hollywood Video again, and I really need to cut it out. See, I'm horrible about returning movies. Really really bad. And I know this, so I stopped renting movies from real stores (Hollywood Video, Blockbuster) in favor of Netflix, which has no late fees (yay, Netflix!). But every now and again, I start renting movies in the real world, and I end up racking up late fees, since I seem to be incapable of watching a movie until after it's due.

At least Hollywood Video is marginally better about the whole late fee thing than Blockbuster. At Hollywood Video, when you fail to return your movies on time, they rerent them to you for another full rental period. When you fail to return movies on time Blockbuster, they charge you for another rental. Every day. I recall reading an article once saying that some astronomical percentage (I think it was around 60%) of Blockbuster's income came from late fees. It wouldn't surprise me in the least.

So anyway, I need to stop doing that. (She says, while staring at the stack of four movies, unwatched, that were due back at midnight tonight. *sigh)
default, superpanda, panda

Please to be getting your stories straight.


One of the things I've been trying to determine is whether or not we're going to be able to get a static IP address for our cable modem after the Comcast@home to Comcast transition. I've been told a bunch of conflicting things by a bunch of different people. So when my phone rang about 20 minutes ago and it was Yet Another Comcast Representative making sure I knew about the upcoming transition, I leapt upon him and asked about static IPs. He seemed quite certain that they were going to stick with the same model of "running through DHCP, but always giving out the same IP" and that they weren't going to be doing any of that "dynamic IP stuff." "Great!" thinks I. Just to be sure, he gave me a phone number I could call to confirm this information. So I call, and ask my question, and get put on hold. When the support person comes back, I am told that no, the person I spoke with earlier was wrong, and that Comcast will be making no attempt to make sure that users get the same IP every DHCP renewal. Well, crap. But, they say, I can call and they can sell me a static IP! Yay! That call resulted in me finding out that yes, I can indeed buy a static IP! I just need to upgrade to 'business' service! For only $229 a month!