I will be pretty much out of contact until Tuesday, August 2 because of moving. If you need me between now and then, call Fox’s cellphone.

We got a duplex! Yay!

After getting pretty damn close to the “We need a roof over our heads” deadline, we got the lease signed on a very nice duplex towards the eastern end of town. It’s 3,000 square feet (more than double what we have here), and fox_cub and I get the basement all to ourselves, with an entryway straight out to the parking area. It’ll be NICE!

We’re moving in on August 1st, so I probably won’t be around much until late that night, if not the following day. And, once we get settled, there shall be much LAN-ing.

RECAP: My old Nokia 5185 got a broken display a few years ago. I recently replaced it with another Nokia 5185.

A couple days ago, while leaving for work, I powered up my cellphone, and got an error on startup: Invalid Roaming List. I played with it some more, turns out that the software in it is corrupt. No problem, I have a backup! I got out my original phone, replaced its broken display with the one from the newer phone (thanks fox_cub!), and called Verizon to switch the ESN back to the older phone.

After spending almost an hour fighting with their fucked-up automated system, I finally got ahold of someone. However, unknown to me, the FCC rewrote their rules regarding cellphone 911 systems, and non-compliant phones (aka old phones) couldn’t be added to the system.

So, basically, my options are as follows:

1. Pay $150 for a crap-tastic new phone
2. Switch providers and pay $100-200 for a craptastic new phone
3. Survive with no cellphone

Given the fact that I utterly despise new cellphones, cell companies in general, and I barely use my phone as it is, I will be cellphone-free until further notice. Verizon can kiss my ass, I don’t need a cellphone anyway. If anyone needs me, they can wait until I get near a landline.

Anthrocon kicked tail, as expected. A whole weekend of furry goodness makes for a happy wuff [tailwags]. Art will be posted as soon as I get the chance to scan it. I only got two commissions, both of them conbadges.

I’m working at Dominos with fox_cub, doing delivery. It’s decent money. In other work news, I had a job interview today that I’m feeling good about, we’ll see what happens with it.

And, lastly, we’re moving! Kinda short notice, but prior to Anthrocon, mom received a letter from our landlord that basically said “We want to do something different with this property, you need to be out in 30 days”. After some research, there doesn’t seem to be much we can do, so we’re looking on the bright side and duplex-shopping. Hopefully we’ll get something good.

Well, we made it to AC without any trouble. Fox and I are in room #1037, so drop by and say hi if ya want to

Yep, I’ll be at Anthrocon again this year. If you need to reach me, call me on my cellphone, 540-867-5309. HOWEVER, I’m running low on minutes, so only call me if you REALLY need me. Also, don’t send me text messages. At all. If I could find a way to disable them on my phone, I would, they cost me more minutes than just calling me. And if you can text me, then guess what, you can call!

If you’re trying to get ahold of me and I don’t answer my phone, don’t panic. This is a con, it’s loud, there are lots of people all over the place, and the chances of actually hearing my phone ring are slim. Do not leave me a voicemail, it costs me minutes to check them.

Why am I suddenly so concerned about cellphone minutes? Well, 99% of the time, my pay-as-you-go cellphone plan is more than adequate. I use, on average, less than 100 minutes per month. However, at last year’s Anthrocon, I used enough minutes to deplete my account. Twice. And the unexpected cost to add more was not pleasant. So, this year I’m hoping to avoid that and encourage people to use radios to contact me. Most of the people I know will have a HAM radio and/or a GMRS radio, so it’s not hard to get ahold of me. The official Ham Furs frequency is 146.460 pl 156.7. I’ll also be monitoring GMRS 18, so look for me on one of those.

I got to work today (payday), looked around, didn’t see my check anywhere. I called my boss, asked him where it was, he said that they weren’t going to have it today. I told him that I wasn’t going to work another minute there until I get paid for what I’ve already done, and he said that he should have it by Tuesday. So, my budget predictions for Anthrocon are $150 off, and I won’t have anything else until after the con.

Also, the drop-in charger for my radio that I ordered was actually for Kenwood FRS radios, and mine wouldn’t fit. Thankfully, the guy I talked to said I wouldn’t have to pay shipping to send it back, but I won’t have anything to charge my radio at AC except for the standard charger, which is quite slow. So, I have no rapid-charger, and no extra battery. This will be interesting.

And, to top things off, the forums on my server got hacked AGAIN, thanks to a vulnerability that was announced a couple days ago, and that I wasn’t informed of. If anyone has any good FREE forum software suggestions, let me know. I’m looking for something free, that will run on my server (not proboards), and made from PHP (CGI sucks and I don’t think I have ASP support).

Hopefully next week will be better :-\