Colds

[Update - ENCORE photos added]

A Fortnight of Suffering

A week ago on Sunday I woke up with a sinus infection, which quickly became a full fledged head cold. I was in bed for a week and missed 4 days of work, 2 singing rehearsals, a merchandise liquidation sale, and an ASL class. It's times like this that I realize how active I am. It's a week later and I'm still suffering with the congestion. This week's singing rehearsal was difficult having clogged ears and nose.

Just as I started to feel better, last Saturday Cindy came down with a head cold of her own, and at the same time the upstairs air conditioner broke down. For the next 5 days we had to live and sleep in illness without A/C in the bedrooms while I tried to find someone trustworthy to fix it at an affordable price. This air handler has been a nightmare for us. When it runs it sounds like a jet airplane; it's so loud we've had to keep changing the volume on the TV to hear it above the rushing wind. It's not a joy to sleep through either. About 9 months ago it froze up due to a coolant leak, and about a month ago it did it again. Each refill costs about $190. Finally last Saturday a thunderstorm caused the blower to stop working. It took 4 days before we could get someone out to fix it. During that time we had a lot of fans running.

The air handler is about 8 years old and I assume the original builders bought it in bulk to install throughout the complex. We've been expecting it should be replaced, but that could easily cost over $2k even without the challenges that would make our labor costs high. This handler is a wall hang unit hovering right above the hot water heater and pipes, all inside a narrow closet that looks like it was assembled around it. It's a large and heavy machine filling the entire width of the closet and flush with the top. It has to be carefully removed without damaging any PVC pipes or the heater. The work has to be performed from a very narrow hallway. Then there's finding a suitable replacement and fitting it in since this unit is no longer manufactured. It needs to be done; we don't want to live with this anymore and could never sell the house without addressing these issues. It's been a worry that it would cost a fortune, especially if we went with a major commercial company to perform the work.

Based on recommendations by some local towns people (who I don't know), I called someone who came over and patched the blower enough to get by for a few days. He seemed nicer and more knowledgeable than others we've had over. He devised a plan to replace the handler with a new, more intelligent, and potentially quiet unit. He's agreed to do it at a reasonable fixed price. The new system will have a 5 year warranty. If successful we will have a new, reliable, quiet A/C upstairs. If not I may be without A/C and hot water, and facing a massive repair bill.

The show begins this Saturday morning, 8am, and is expected to last most of the day.


Marching Along...

Between the colds and air conditioning problems I haven't been to the club in 2 weeks, so I can't say I've observed anything special concerning the campaigns to keep it from closing. Island management seems to be aware of anything worrisome to them. Already they've responded to on-site podcasts, call-ins, obscenities, literature dispersal, and probably things I'm not aware of. Disney World is private property and any situation they view as a possible safety risk or impacting a guest is going to be addressed seriously. I hope protesters understand where the lines are drawn and won't place the club's final days at risk. I would hate to discover on 9/27 that the doors will not be opened.

I've been trying to help some cast members with their employment search. It's not been much but my position allows me to assist in ways others can't, and I think it's more useful than handing out commemorative t-shirts.


Networking Woes

The same storm that took out our A/C blower also killed our wireless network router, and our Vonage home phone system. We are considering dumping Vonage for Skype or TruPhone, but I was not ready to make the transition right then. I called Vonage support and actually got a hold of someone with reasonable technical abilities, who quickly recognized that I was not incompetent and they agreed to replace the device with a more expensive model and all I had to do was pay $13 for the shipping. By Tuesday the home phone was operational again.

[Warning; geek technical talk ahead]

The home wireless was another story. The main gateway port on the Linksys WRT54G was dead, as was one of the switch ports. The device would handle routing of the wireless subnet, but I could no longer use it as a firewall and non-wireless router. I had hopes that if I replaced the firmware with anarchy that I could manually reconfigure the ports to be more useful. The firmware upgraded fine but the ports were still dead.

The lack of working wireless at home is why I haven't been on-line in a while. Looks like I have to replace the device; probably with an WRT54GS. Good thing they aren't expensive.


ENCORE

Despite our colds, Cindy and I went to Disney's ENCORE concert. This is an annual concert put on by Cast Members, and includes orchestra, choir, solo singers, humor, and honor guard acts. The performances are usually songs from musicals, and the concert takes place at the World Showplace building at Epcot.





The show was terrific!

Syndicated 2008-08-03 06:58:51 (Updated 2008-08-30 06:12:06) from Keith