Thankful Thursday Wednesday

Cyndi:  Hey, what are you doing?

Marcus:  I'm moving your Thankful Thursday post to Wednesday.  We didn't have anything planned for today anyway.

Cyndi: That doesn't matter.  You can't just change posts around without asking permission.

Marcus:  Please?  It's very important to me.  I have a special post for tomorrow.  *tilts head, bats eyes, bares teeth*

Cyndi:  That is the scariest pleading face I've ever seen.  But, okay.

Marcus: Thanks.  I owe you one.

Cyndi:  I thought we could share the story of why we didn't publish a Mousebreath interview last Friday.

Merci:  That's because the week was so hectic, we didn't get to use the computer to set it up.

Cyndi:  Yes, but Jan was going to let us post it first thing Friday morning.  She thought we would have time because the phone man wasn't expected until the afternoon.

Merci:  Actually, he wasn't expected until September 13th, but we were re-scheduled at the last minute.  Jan got up early and ran around like she'd lost something.

Cyndi:  And then there was a terrifying knock on the door.

Merci:  Terrifying?

Cyndi:  Yes.  It was only 8 a.m., Jan wasn't dressed and it was the telephone guy.   She threw on a robe and peeked out.  "Can you give me a couple of minutes to get dressed?  "I need a couple of hours outside," he replied.

Merci:  Whew!  Even Jan can manage to dress in two hours!

Cyndi:  By the time he finished outside, we'd all been fed, the dog pen was poop free, and the litter boxes had been scooped.  Then he came inside and gave Jan an even worse shock.

Merci:  We have rarely had a phone man in here but every time we did, he would look at Jan's phone/DSL setup and roll his eyes. This man didn't.  He looked at our lone, line congested jack and then at our computer and said, "You can't use those cords with the upgrade.

Cyndi:  "Those cords" were 50' long and draped over living room doors and around corners from one side of the room to the other and then finally to the computer.  The jack and modem are not supposed to be more than 12' apart.  We almost complied if one measured a straight line but the cords obviously missed the mark by some distance.

Merci:  There is one jack and only one place to put the computer and plug it in.  They just don't happen to be anywhere near each other. The guy picked up his stuff and started out the door.    "What am I going to do?" Jan asked.

Cyndi:  "I'm going to install a new jack," he announced.

Merci:  Jan's eyes opened wide and her jaw dropped.  Ten years or whatever ago a new one was $70.  She was ready to panic.  The DSL upgrade was supposed to be free.  "Do I have to pay for it?  "No."

Cyndi:  Before long we had traded "those cords" for a brand new dedicated DSL jack, high speed modem and DSL line. 

Merci:  As he was leaving, he dashed all hope of posting a late interview. "I hope you don't need to use the internet for a while.  The new modem has to update its software and it will take at least a couple of hours."

Cyndi:  So we all took a long nap.

Merci:  Oops.  Too long a nap evidently.  We forgot to set this to auto post in the wee hours. 

Rusty is 13

Cyndi: Happy birthday, dear Rusty.  We love you like a brother and we want you to know how much we appreciate your good nature.

Merci:  And we're thankful for your good nature today since we are so late publishing for your special day.

Percy:  For once it wasn't Jan's fault.

Taylor:  Oh?  So who's fault was it?  I know I didn't hit any wrong keys.

Buddy:  For once it wasn't Jan's fault and it wasn't yours either, Taylor.  I have a sneaky suspicion it was Winton's (Win 10) fault. 


Jan:  If anyone noticed we didn't post today and wondered why, we lost our browsers yesterday.  It's a very long, complicated story but I accidentally resolved it today.  The Funny Farmers are innocent.  And so am I.  Winton, however, needs to stop sneaking around behind the scenes and creating chaos. 

Kudos to the nice guy at my ISP who went out of his way to help verify the internet was working.  Everything with it worked except all 3 browsers - FF, Edge & IE - could not connect.  Boos to my ISP for wanting me to pay them to "fix any problems or viruses".  Kudos to my antivirus support for responding so quickly this morning to let me know it was NOT a virus.  And a bucketful of kudos to Mr. Doug who didn't get upset when I found the solution just as he was arriving.  (He took me shopping instead.)

So, belated birthday wishes to sweet Rusty!

Polite Pee Mail

Cyndi:  Psst, I'm up here.  You should have known I would be up high.  I'm pretty feisty for an old lady cat.

Marcus:  Is feisty a word?

Cyndi:  Of course it is.  It means spunky.

Marcus:  Why didn't you just say that?

Cyndi:  Because it's good for you to learn new words so you don't make stupid mistakes like you did the other day when you told Jan to drop "a bomb" instead of a balloon.

Marcus:  I guess it was a good thing she didn't listen to me. 

Cyndi:  We want to share some photos Jan took on the 16th, just a few days ago.  We weren't expecting any rain and we didn't get anything but an almost perceptible mist in the area of the clouds, but look at those clouds.

Marcus:  There hasn't been any demolition or cleanup work done at the mill in almost a year.  The mess makes a great backup for the threatening clouds.

Cyndi:  And just barely to the right, here is more of the same.

Marcus:  And just barely to the right of that photo, the sky was clear and beautiful.  Jan loves to watch the clouds on our walks.  We dogs prefer to read pee mail.

Cyndi:  And from what I understand, you love to leave your own for other dogs to read.

Marcus:  That's only polite, but if the last dog left a political statement, the proper thing to do is to kick dirt over it.

Cyndi:  There's a lot of thunder booming and rain expected, especially this weekend.  We're sure thankful we have a home where we can stay dry when the weather is bad.  And our internet has stayed on for a whole week now.

Marcus:  It blinked yesterday and Jan said it nearly gave her a heart attack.  That was so nice of our ISP to give Jan a free health checkup.

Cyndi:  A heart attack is not a free health checkup.  If she'd had one, it might have been a checkout.

Marcus:  Well, if she checked out, I hope she kept her receipt.

Cyndi:  I think I need a nap.

Marcus:  You're going to need a double nap when you realize we just finished our Thankful Thursday post for today.  Thursday was yesterday.  Today is Friday!  


We are joining the Pet Parade hosted by Rascal and Rocco, Basil the Bionic Cat, Barking from the Bayou and Owned by a husky.

Capital Hockeysticks

Cyndi:  Who is this dog?

Merci:  Do you remember when we dogs were attacked on a walk about three weeks ago?  (Rescued)

Cyndi:  Yes.  Was this one of the dogs?

Merci:  At the time Buddy and I were too terrified to remember anything, but the next day Marcus reminded us that this dog was often tied in the front yard when we walked on the other side of the street. And it had gotten to where it was so highly excited when it saw us, it would keep racing to the end of it's tether and leap into the air barking like crazy.  A day or two before, Jan commented that she hoped the dog would never get loose because we seemed to upset it.

Cyndi:  It's a funny looking dog.

Merci:  Yes, it is.  It's been moved to the back side of the yard.  There's a drop there and he can hear us but he can't see us unless he jumps.  So when we get about half a block away, he starts leaping into the air.  He looks so funny appearing and disappearing.  Jan had to take the pictures with the zoom and of course she can't see what she's taking a picture of, so out of three photos, we have 1 3/4 pictures of him.

Cyndi:  You three have too many adventures for me.  I'm happy to stay home.

Merci:  He seems a bit calmer back there.  Perhaps all that leaping exercise tires him out.  He has a family and the kids love him (or her), so we hope he and Marcus never come face to face again.  Jan sure hopes that.  She is old and as she has said, it hurts like "capital hockeysticks" to be yanked around like that.

Cyndi:  I think we would all be in agreement if I say what we're thankful for this week is that we're together, our tummies are full, we have heat, and our phone and internet are working.

Merci:  Unless they're broken again.  What?  I'm just saying.


We are joining the Thankful Thursday blog hop at Brian's Home. 

Long Distance Internet Epidemic

Percy: This is Rusty.  He's a bit daffy.

Rusty:  I am not daffy.

Percy:  Than why were you licking water off the windows this morning?  By the time Jan grabbed the camera, you were making biscuits in your bed.

Rusty:  It was freezing cold outside.  It was somewhat warmer inside.  Therefore, there was water on the windows in front of the desk.  The window was closer than the water bowl in the kitchen.

Percy:  As I said, Rusty is a bit daffy, but that does make sense. 

Merci:  We've been absent quite a bit this week.  First the t-storm on Monday, then our internet went out Wednesday afternoon till Thursday morning.

Cyndi:  And then our internet went out again from Saturday afternoon until Sunday morning.  Mr. Doug's internet went out too.  There was an epidemic.

Merci:  An epidemic is an outbreak of disease.

Cyndi:  Well, there were a lot of humans breaking out in dis-ease over the lack of internet! 

Percy:  And worse.

Rusty:  What could be worse?

Percy:  There was no long distance service either.  Local only.  Landlines and cell phones.  Not that we have a cell. 

Merci:  It's been strange around here this past week and it hasn't just been our phone / DSL provider having problems.  Our internet came back on yesterday morning but Mr. Don from Jan's church lost his until the afternoon. 

Cyndi:  So if we disappear again, we hope we will be able to return before spring.  Or tomorrow.  Whichever comes first.

Rusty:  Tomorrow will come first.

Cyndi:   But when Jan called support, she was told this might persist intermittently until the problem is fixed, so if the problem returns, spring might arrive sooner than tomorrow.

Percy:  This confusion is giving me a headache.  Why can't we just say we'll be here unless we aren't?

Merci:  You just said that.

Percy:  Good.  My brain needs a nap. 

Cyndi:  There's a rivulet of water running down the bottom right window pane if you're still thirsty, Rusty.

Go To WWW Dot

Rusty:  Well, now that the day is half over, we can finally post.

Buddy:  2017 has been off to a shut down start.  Monday night we had to shut down because of thunderstorms rolling through here.  We were expecting worse than we got but some around us were not so fortunate.

Cyndi:  Yesterday we were shut down without warning.  Well, our internet was.  It's back this morning.

 Rusty:  We're only posting this late today because we want to participate in Thankful Thursday.

Buddy:  We're a bit unprepared, so we thought we would share this photo of a lone bird sitting on the mill fence a few days before Christmas.  It was growing dark and we hadn't seen any birds in several days.  It just looked so lonely sitting there in the cold.  Marcus wanted to invite it to dinner.

Cyndi:  We were surprised Monday.  When Jan shut down the computer, she got a lot accomplished.  Every year she sets up a calendar with special days, such as our birthdays, but for a number of years, it's April or even May before it gets done.  This year it was finished on the 2nd.  Now if she would only remember to read it!

Rusty:  But yesterday, we had a lot to do on the internet.  Jan called tech support several times over the course of several hours and each time got an "all circuits are busy" message, so she knew there was an outage in the area.

Buddy:  She decided to try one more time about 11:30 and the call went through.  There was no outage message, just a recording telling her it was resetting her internet.  (It evidently didn't work.) Then to hang up, disconnect modem, etc.  She figured the outage must have been fixed and her internet just wasn't working.

Rusty:  We won't tell you all the fun, but we will say she had a lot of it.  Then she called again.  This time she got a recording saying there was a "current outage of data and audio" in the area.  The waiting time to talk to someone was 5 - 9 minutes.  It was nearly midnight.  She hung up.

Cyndi:  Now the reason we're telling this story is to reach the punch line.  Yes, this is a true story and there is a punch line.

Buddy:  When the recorded message told her about the outage - and why didn't it tell her the FIRST time she called? - it instructed her to GO to www dot (their website) and fill out a ticket.

Rusty:  Jan looked at the phone in disbelief and demanded of the prerecorded message, "You IDIOT!  And how am I supposed to do that without the internet?"


Cyndi: After Jan set up the 2017 calendar Monday, we sat here and went through the lovely Christmas cards we received from a number of you.

Buddy:  We had hoped she would be able to make graphics to post with all the snail mail and emailed cards we received, but there hasn't been time. You bloggers are so talented in creating graphics.

Rusty:  We're grateful for each and every one of you!  We hope 2017 will be a great year for everyone.


We are joining the Thankful Thursday blog hop at Brian's Home.

Percy Fix It or Fry It

Cameron:  Hey, the Mousebreath dancers made an Easter video with Daisy as a special guest.  They are really good. 

Buddy:  We missed this yesterday since we were offline for all but about half an hour.  Jan came home, turned on the computer and ... poof! went the internet.  Again.

Cameron:  Yeah, a couple weeks ago the internet AND the phone died for a couple hours and then did so intermittently for a day or two.  But for months it's been dropping dead in the afternoon for a bit, then returning.  It still hadn't returned by midnight yesterday, although we did have email.  We had to click "Get Mail" and walk away for 5 minutes or so. 

Buddy:   It was really frustrating, especially since the company told Jan our internet was working, we were just having a "latency outage." 

Rusty: Well, we might not have had internet, but we did manage to email Kiril of Nikita & Elvira's blog and also a local customer to ask if they could google the phrase for us.  The local was having on/off/on/off problems but said he could work around it.  We couldn't.  It's hard to "work around" DEAD!

Cameron: Now we know why our internet has been taking  naps on us.  There are innumerable complaints online about Windstream's poor customer and tech service as they blame everything on "latency outages" that don't seem to get fixed.  If Windstream doesn't get its act together soon, we'll have to send Percy over with a screwdriver to do the job for them.  He's real good at techy stuff.

Buddy: You hear that Windstream? Don't make us sic Percy on you.  He can wave a screwdriver around and spew nonsense with the best of non-repairmen!

Percy:  *trying to look modest*  Thank you, guys.  I appreciate the vote of confidence.  Guess I better dig up my screwdriver, in case.

Buddy:  *whisper*  If you're afraid of sparks, better stand clear of Percy and his screwdriver.

 

Kid Daphne

Well, now we all know what Jan was doing Sunday afternoon.  Yep, hanging around with goats.  That's 2-day old Daphne being cuddled by Jan's friend Cynthia.  And behind her, pretending to look the other way but actually keeping an eye on her baby, is mom Cherry. 

No, we weren't invited.  And actually neither was Jan.  She invited herself so she could meet the little kid and take her picture. 

Jan wanted to hold Daphne and get her picture taken with her too, but ... well, we all know how quickly Jan forgets what she's doing ... or where she's going ..... or what she was talking about.  But if Buddy should happen to swipe her morning toast with butter and jelly (2 pieces) 2 mornings in a row, that she remembers.

We were going to post this yesterday but we lost internet for a short time in the morning and then it went dead in the afternoon.  When Jan tried to report it, she found we had no dial tone.  She went to a neighbor's house to use their phone and  they were getting their service switched from the local phone company to Charter and they had no phone service.  But they did have a cell phone.

And as we said, Jan forgets.  Don't believe us?  When the auto message told her to give the phone number with the problem, she started tapping in her brother's phone number.  Why?  Well, I never dial my own number. 

When the Charter guy came inside, they asked him if he'd done anything to kill our phone and he said no, he'd just disconnected something or other for their phone.  But when Jan came home after a while, our phone and DSL were working again.  

Coincidence?  Jan is now thinking about checking into changing our phone and DSL to Charter.  Do any of you have Charter phone and internet service?  Is it reliable?  

Protect Your Online Rights

We are against any material being copied, stolen, appropriated - whichever you call it.  But we are also against the type of censorship law about to be passed in the US.  This would effect all of us..Yes, you and us - bloggers, tweeters, YouTube video posters, Facebook and other social website users. 

Here is a short video on the proposed legislation from Fight for the Future.


If this video doesn't play, click here.

Yes, bloggers, you might blog for fun, but there is a bill in Congress that will affect your rights on the web and will censor all web sites, blogs, etc.  In a nutshell :

SOPA explicitly states that companies will be liable for everything their users post. Sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, Wikipedia, or any sites that allow user generated content CANNOT exist under these laws. Immediately after this bill is passed, you will see the media mafia (MPIAA, RIAA, etc) replacing websites like Wikipedia with commercialized encyclopedia software. Mainstream media outlets will not cover this bill because they are the ones lobbying for it.

If you want to know more - Google created a doc to read and inform - SOPA for Dummies.

WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN AND STOP THIS BILL FROM PASSING! 

To help you do this stop by Fight the Wall  and connect with your Representative!

There is more on stopping American censorship with SOPA and PIPA on AmericanCensorship.org.

Your Senators need to hear from you now.  Today.  The bill will be passed in just a few days if you don't act. 

If you would like the Stop SOPA and Stop PIPA black banners at the top of our page for your Blogger blog (Wordpress already has a plugin for you), you can get the code here and put it in an HTML/Javascript widget.