ProfessorTomoe

I feel your pain, @Zorua! Frontier is out here again. Initially, they were here to fix the phone. Then I asked the guy (different from the last one) if they'd made any progress rebuilding my profile. He responded with a blank stare. Oh lord, not that again. Anyway, once he sort of understood the situation, he drove off to mess with our main service box. We lost internet service and TV service for a while (again). And, of course, any fix to our Internet service naturally requires that our POTS landline be taken down, so that's offline, too. However, I use the word "fix" too loosely. Our download rate problem still exists. At some point, a ball peen hammer is going to be required—probably on someone's head.

My internet problems continue, and have grown to affect my phone landline. The first guy who came out, who was supposed to escalate my problem, instead CLOSED MY TICKET! I got another person out here who found the problem—it was the same problem that the first guy said he'd "fixed," but hadn't. He gave me his phone number, told me that the people at Advanced Technical Support would be working on it, and promised not to close the ticket. Unfortunately, he had to do something to our POTS landline. It's still down. I don't give out my cell number, so if anyone needs to contact me (other than spammers), I'm screwed Tuesday. I've called the second guy about it, but all I've got is his personal Frontier answering service recording. I'm going to fill up his inbox until he responds.

Ohmydearlord. Don't bring her up. We'll have the forum awash with malapropisms and puns about a certain body part before you know it!

In our cases, it's just been a matter of happenstance. No special sale or anything. This time, I did use some Mike Brewer "Wheeler Dealer" tactics on the salesman, plus I took advantage of my disability (a shameless move, I know, but a true one) to talk him down. It only took three trips to the coffee break room manager's office to get the deal done—he was just slow about everything else involving the transaction.

Rotten Frontier ... My FiOS service has been screwed up for weeks. Occasionally I'll get a download speed on a file of 7.0 MB/sec, but more often it's in the 40KB/sec range. I'm paying for 50/50, and I'm not getting it. I don't know how many hours I've spent on the phone now, but none of them have done me any good. I'm on my second tech visit to my house. He said Advanced Tech Support were rebuilding the profile to my line or something like that, then gave me his phone number and left. I called him an hour ago and got voicemail. To make matters worse, he left me with no phone landline—just a cell phone that I never use. I have no POTS, and I must scream.

During the course of buying the car yesterday, I kind of let my mind focus on the wrong thing. I paid attention to the sale instead of my leg. I ran out of energy several times, but they had a cappuccino machine which helped me wake up. Things started really hurting down my leg after the trip to financing, though. I'd missed my pain medication time by almost 90 minutes. I took my pill, got in the Ridgeline with my son, and kept talking on the trip home to keep awake and keep my mind off my leg. Moral of the story: take your pills when you damn well should!

Big doings around the lab today, especially for Mrs. Prof. We bought a car. Not a brand new one, but relatively new. It's a 2014 Subaru Outback. We've always wanted a new generation Subaru. We had an old one for a short while back in the early 90s - old enough that the spare tire was on top of the engine. We replaced it soon after we got it. I hope we don't replace this one as quickly. The deal we got was good. $20,000 base price, $21,7XX (memory fails me) after taxes, license, paperwork, and so on. Saved about $400 on the asking price. We have credit union financing of 2.49%, I think. Mrs. Prof swung that part of the deal. She'll be the primary driver, using it to carry trapped cats to the pet adoption center for TNR surgery and returning them back to where they were captured. She's happy with the space in the car for those purposes. The car has a continuously variable transmission. I warned Mrs. Prof about the CVT before the test drive. It was freaky: no shift points, not even when she gunned the engine! It was all she could talk about for a while. Our son came with us to help drive our Honda Ridgeline back to our house. I rode with him so that Mrs. Prof could get a good feel for the Subaru in a mix of rush hour traffic. His incentive for driving me home was a car of his own. He's getting Mrs. Prof's 2008 Mazda 5 microvan. He'll be getting something 8 years newer than what he currently has, just like we've got a car 6 years newer than what we had. This makes two "Christmas cars" that we've bought. We got the Ridgeline before Christmas of 2006, and we've bought the Outback after Christmas of 2017. If the Ridgeline ever gets replaced, I guess I know when it'll happen now.

... and Happy New Year to you, too!

Another money saver: I got the psychiatrist to write up a 90-day supply of Trintellix (I'm on the maximum strength). That stuff is probably going to cost $160 a bottle next year, even with insurance. Since I've hit my catastrophic limit for 2017, I pay nothing for filling it this year. That's almost $480 saved over the first three months next year!

Mrs. Prof is one of those people whose choice to take sick leave is dictated by workload. If she's got stuff to do, she'll grump her way through it, sick or not. Either that or, if she's got nothing to do, she'll steal the remote, put it on Law and Order: SVU (I hate that show and she knows it), and mope for the day on the sofa.

Mrs. Prof has been in need of a new car for a long time. Car buying time may be upon us now. We've found a 2014 Subaru Outback with around 26,000 miles on it for $20,500 or so. Consumer Reports says it's a good model year for that price range. I'm worried that someone is going to snap up the car before we get a chance to test drive it. I'm also worried about her judgement, since I have zero car skills and since I absolutely can't drive due to my medications.

Listening to Mrs. Prof sniffling and coughing. I've told her to take a couple of Mucinex-D pills. She says the crud just started 2 hours ago.

Now ingesting 19½ pills, plus one my pain pill I consumed about an hour ago. The half pill is Metformin: I'll take the other half tonight. EDIT: only six of them are supplements. The rest are prescriptions.

No, they were watching the Missouri Tigers lose to the Texas Longhorns. I think they're Longhorn fans now.

Got in to see the dentist today. She fixed the tooth as a warranty repair for no charge.

After a lot of arguing between Baker and Loudmouth in the mornings, we finally got them to have a moment of peace during a football bowl game this evening:

Been having problems with FiOS again for the past week. We've been getting super-slow downloads at times (as slow as 20 KB/sec, sometimes less than 10 KB/sec) on a 50/50 plan. I reported it almost a week ago. They sent out a new router - no joy. Reported the problem again. Finally got someone to come out. He said that the router the sent me was obsolete and replaces it with the latest version. Still no joy. He then replaces the ONT (Optical Network Terminal). Same result, except my landline phone is dead. He finally gets that fixed and tries to get the speed fixed. Says it's fixed, using Ookla's speedtest to prove it. Unfortunately, a Frontier Rep earlier in this saga told me that ONLY Frontier's speedtest was valid for their purposes. Then I download Clonezilla from Sourceforge and showed him that I was still getting 40KB/sec. He finally escalates the trouble ticket to the next level and leaves. FiOS, when it works, is wonderful. When it doesn't, it's a nightmare.

Found out what it is. Man, their records departments are so slow! It was something related to Hurricane Harvey and the fact that I was in an area that was declared a disaster area (the whole state of Texas). The dollar amount was my account balance at the time of the report.

I think I sat on hold for almost 2 hours, waiting for someone to pick up at the pain management place. No one did. I'll try again tomorrow. EDIT: Finally got in touch with the pain management place. No problem with taking the Benadryl.

Grilled shrimp and part of a medium-rare New York Strip, thanks to my wife who brought it back from a high-falutin' git-together of the Garland Pet Adoption Center or something like that. She bought an extra plate for me at Saltgrass and brought it home. Nom.

I'm more worried about the Benadryl showing up in a drug screen. I have an appointment on January 4th, and I haven't declared Benadryl as a drug that I take to the pain center. I normally don't take it, but if it shows, I run the risk of losing my spot in the program without good reason, and if the welt goes away ... you get the idea. I think I need to call my pain management doctor tomorrow. P.S.: Took another Benadryl.

I am watching my Houston Texans (or what is left of them after so, so many injuries) lose to Pittsburgh. They're on their fourth-string quarterback now.