Bread is Life

I would have posted this yesterday, but the wounds were too fresh for me to relive and so tonight, I bring you a story of disaster. I came home from work at 4pm yesterday, took off my two sweatshirts, turned on Oprah in the kitchen and began gathering the ingredients for egg bread. I make bread using a bread maker that was purchased during my time at HomePlace, America's Bankrupt Home Decor SuperStore. I just recently began doing this after a few year break, but seeing that bread maker sitting in the corner made me long for the smell and taste of fresh, home baked bread.

There are three essential parts of the bread machine, you have the machine, the pan and a paddle that mixes and kneads the dough at the appropriate time. I begin dumping the ingredients in the order it states in the recipe book, all the while sobbing uncontrollably during a segment of Oprah. I was so tired after coming home that it took me nearly a half hour to assemble all the ingredients and get the pan in the bread maker to begin baking. I leave the kitchen and take my shower.

Once I finished my shower, I sat at my computer and began writing the post directly below this one entitled, "Shake It Like A . . ." My mom comes home, an hour later she walks into my room and tells me the bad news, I had forgotten to put the paddle into the bread pan. Disappointment flooded my consciousness and I walked into the kitchen to see what was going on. I lifted the lid and all the ingredients were sitting as they did 2 hours before in the same heap. The pan wasn't even hot! Nothing had happened! We were both disappointed it was way to late to begin another loaf as it takes about 3 hours to bake.

That wasn't all the bad news I received that evening. Apparently, when I started the dishwasher that morning, a spoon fell through the hole in the silverware basket keeping the water jet from rotating and cleaning the dishes. Some of the dishes were clean, but all the silverware had to be run through the dishwasher again as well as a few plates. This news may not have been life altering, but I just didn't feel like hearing that something else had gone wrong.

Today was much better. I was able to remember the paddle, so this evening we were able to have the bread we longed for last night. Plus, I had sloppy joes for dinner, and that's always a good thing.

Power Play

Last night I was sitting at my computer writing yet another thrilling blog post when all of a sudden the house goes dark. We had lost power. We rarely, if ever lose power because we are on the same power line as a shopping center across the highway. I expected the power to come back on within a few minutes, but since this treacherous wind storm knocked out power to tens of thousands of people, my expectations grew grim.

I got up from my computer and opened the linen closet to feel my way to some flash lights and then made my way to the family room where my mom was getting the oil lamp lit. We had just returned home from Popeye's Chicken & Biscuits with dinner for us, my Aunt Sandy and Cousin Charlie who haven't had power since last Thursday. They were looking forward to not having eat by candlelight.

They arrive and we immediately begin ribbing them about bringing their power misfortune to our neighborhood. We all call the power company to report the problem and hope the power comes back on soon. I really wanted it to come on before SNL because Justin Timberlake was hosting and I remember him being very funny on his last appearance.

After dinner my aunt went to pick up my Cousin Samantha from a church party while Charlie, my mom and I talked in the dark. We received some phone calls from my grandparents and I tried calling Cold Stone in hopes of acquiring some dry ice for our fridge and freezer. My Aunt arrived and they immediately packed up and left.

My mom and I sat at the table, candles burning wondering what to do. It was too dark to read, too dark to play a board game, we ended up parting ways and went to bed. I received a couple of calls from Charlie, one telling me they had finally gotten power and another informing me of why we lost power. I played Contact on the DS for a couple of minutes before closing it and going to sleep at around 10:45pm.

Well, to make a long story short; the cause of the power outage was due to a massive explosion at a substation that knocked out power to nearly 50,000 people. I woke up at 2:40am and saw my my alarm clock flashing 3:32. If I had been awake, I would have caught Saturday Night Live. Blast it all!

Me vs. NetSol

Learning valuable lessons really suck sometimes. Last evening I received an e-mail from Network Solutions stating that I would not receive a refund, as I was told, for the $12 Web Forwarding service I blogged about on Sunday. Since I had to get up very early today, I didn't want to get into all the major specifics, so I sent them a quick reply asking for my money because their provided service shutdown all my websites.

I receive an e-mail this afternoon instructing me to call them. I didn't feel like dealing with it, but I felt I had the moxie to take care of it. I call and I get a fella named Frank who, after looking at my file apologetically tells me that I will not be able to receive a refund as it supposedly states in their Terms of Service. Whatever! Who reads the Terms of Service anyway, right?

I asked to speak with a supervisor and he said, "If I knew it would make a difference you would be on with him right now. He would tell you the same thing but be more blunt." He follows it with, "That's how Network Solutions does it." WHAT!?! I thought it was a great quote that made me laugh inside, but I was supposed to be a disgruntled customer so I didn't give any indication of my delight.

After ten minutes, I hung up the phone with Network Solutions without my refund. Frank the consummate salesman that he is, made me think about switching my web hosting over to Network Solutions. While I would receive 2GB more disk space, there are currently more benefits with Yahoo!.

So, let me leave you with this valuable lesson. When you purchase services over the Internet, be aware that you may not receive a refund regardless if you use them or not.

Me vs. NetSol & Yahoo!

Some things are best left alone as I discovered the hard way today and it all stems from the switch to Blog*Spot. Let me give you a little history on the subject. I purchased my domain name, justjason.com, from Network Solutions (www.netsol.com) then the Small Business web-hosting package from Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com). Yahoo! completely tied justjason.com to the web-hosting package, as they naturally should. This is where Blogger (www.blogger.com) would be publishing my blog.

Fast-forward to present day where you find me wanting to convert my blog to Blog*Spot. Blog*Spot is the service that Blogger uses to host peoples blogs for free. I mentioned some of the reasons in a previous post entitled Welcome . . . again. Now all I needed to do was point justjason.com to my Blog*Spot address and everything would be fine.

I visit Network Solution's website and purchase a service that will forward justjason.com to my Blog*Spot address. The service costs $12 a year and I currently use the service for my three other URLs which all point to files hosted on Yahoo!. I'm very hesitant because DNS (domain name server) settings need to be changed in order for the forwarding to work, and anytime setting changes need to take place it all becomes very complicated very fast.

Against my better judgment, I purchase the service and point justjason.com to my Blog*Spot address. A few hours later I check my website and everything that could have gone wrong did. Not only did my website not come up, but none of my websites did and none of my Mom's websites did. All the connections that connected my domain and my web host were broken, completely interrupting service.

So why did everything go down if the only change was to justjason.com? As I mentioned earlier, Yahoo tied justjason.com to my web-hosting package. This means that all graphics and html pages hosted by Yahoo! had the justjason.com domain attached. Since Network Solutions changed the DNS settings for justjason.com it was no longer pointing to any of my files on Yahoo, therefore nothing was being displayed.

I manually change the DNS settings on Network Solutions back to Yahoo!, but then decide to call Yahoo! and have them reset the DNS settings as well. I call Network Solutions and cancel the web forwarding service. I hope that sometime within the next three days everything will be back to normal.