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I finally have one small place that is chaos-free. I claimed the smallest bedroom in my San Bernardino house. I had worked on the carpet for several hours before the carpet cleaning guy came in, so I'm actually willing to walk barefoot in that room. Next came scrubbing the walls. Then pulling out the nails and staples and filling the holes and sanding it somewhat flat. I allowed this physical cleaning to also be a mental cleaning of that space from the juju of Those People and their many levels of filth. Wednesday I got a coat of Kilz2 on the walls and the room was fresh. Their influence was gone. Thursday I painted the room in an actual color. A color I picked out to make me happy and I don't care what anyone else thinks. It's a pale apricot off-white. Once it was on the walls I knew what the trim color must be - a rich warm cranberry. Now the room is not just clean, it is *mine*. This has done wonders for my attitude.
Earthlink, however, has not been helping my attitude. They still do not understand their own products, and apparently they also do not keep notes in a customer's file to help out the fifth person I talk to. Now they have started my order all over again and it will be another ten working days until I might get internet service at the house. A very detailed and stiff letter is going to be sent to the management. They have clearly not trained their phone staff on the standalone DSL product. I try really hard not to take my frustrations out on the poor frontline phone people, but when the third-level technician deigns to tell me that I should refer to it as a 'dry loop' rather than using the terminology that Earthlink uses on their website, I really want to tell him that six years ago I could have configured a DSLAM for 750,000 users and I don't want to hear his random jargon about a product that they have offered for more than a year but clearly still do not understand. I get off the 45-minute call that restarted my ordering new service (they closed the trouble ticket because my phone service for the previous DSL had been disconnected. Duh. I moved.) and some other helpful fool calls me back to tell me that I can get wireless access through their dial-up service. He gives me a phone number to call. I ask what I'm supposed to do with that number. He is confused. I have to reiterate, for the fortieth time, that There Is No Home Phone Number. That Was The Whole Fucking Point. Oh, he says, then he can't help me. Duh. Yes, a very stiff letter indeed.
I had a great time at October Crown, in spite of the sleep-deprivation of the week previous. I am very excited about several new projects, including a custom coronet for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
callistotoni, a custom coronet for Murgheal, Princess of the Mists, and a brooch patterned after one of the brooches on the wall in the "St Eligius as a Jeweler" painting by Petrus Christus. I may also be doing coronets for the Barony of Allyshia. I've given a quote, but haven't heard back yet. This would be another 'learning opportunity', because they want brass cutout celtic-style sea lions applied over silver. The drawing is very nice, and while having nothing to do with the Middle Ages on this planet, the end result should be very pretty. For a piece designed by committee, they did a nice job. The issue is that heating that much silver to soldering temperature takes a lot of heat, and I'm intending to experiment with using my studiomate's kiln to get the piece to within a few hundred degrees of soldering temp, then use his large torch to zero in on the piece and melt the solder in stages - with the hoped-for result being that the brass doesn't slide out of position before the solder can solidify. In the Middle ages (yes, on this planet) they placed their pieces with solder snippets in place into the forge/kiln/coals and waited with baited bellows until the solder melted, then had to get the piece cooled off quickly. Not too precise, and this may be why we do not see sweat-soldered pieces from the real European middle ages. Rather like stippled backgrounds and piercework, this is one of the first things you learn in a basic jewelry workshop, so those techniques come with us into the SCA with nobody really thinking about whether it was done that way.
Still feeling very tired, but I'm looking forward to doing some very neato stuff.
Earthlink, however, has not been helping my attitude. They still do not understand their own products, and apparently they also do not keep notes in a customer's file to help out the fifth person I talk to. Now they have started my order all over again and it will be another ten working days until I might get internet service at the house. A very detailed and stiff letter is going to be sent to the management. They have clearly not trained their phone staff on the standalone DSL product. I try really hard not to take my frustrations out on the poor frontline phone people, but when the third-level technician deigns to tell me that I should refer to it as a 'dry loop' rather than using the terminology that Earthlink uses on their website, I really want to tell him that six years ago I could have configured a DSLAM for 750,000 users and I don't want to hear his random jargon about a product that they have offered for more than a year but clearly still do not understand. I get off the 45-minute call that restarted my ordering new service (they closed the trouble ticket because my phone service for the previous DSL had been disconnected. Duh. I moved.) and some other helpful fool calls me back to tell me that I can get wireless access through their dial-up service. He gives me a phone number to call. I ask what I'm supposed to do with that number. He is confused. I have to reiterate, for the fortieth time, that There Is No Home Phone Number. That Was The Whole Fucking Point. Oh, he says, then he can't help me. Duh. Yes, a very stiff letter indeed.
I had a great time at October Crown, in spite of the sleep-deprivation of the week previous. I am very excited about several new projects, including a custom coronet for
callistotoni, a custom coronet for Murgheal, Princess of the Mists, and a brooch patterned after one of the brooches on the wall in the "St Eligius as a Jeweler" painting by Petrus Christus. I may also be doing coronets for the Barony of Allyshia. I've given a quote, but haven't heard back yet. This would be another 'learning opportunity', because they want brass cutout celtic-style sea lions applied over silver. The drawing is very nice, and while having nothing to do with the Middle Ages on this planet, the end result should be very pretty. For a piece designed by committee, they did a nice job. The issue is that heating that much silver to soldering temperature takes a lot of heat, and I'm intending to experiment with using my studiomate's kiln to get the piece to within a few hundred degrees of soldering temp, then use his large torch to zero in on the piece and melt the solder in stages - with the hoped-for result being that the brass doesn't slide out of position before the solder can solidify. In the Middle ages (yes, on this planet) they placed their pieces with solder snippets in place into the forge/kiln/coals and waited with baited bellows until the solder melted, then had to get the piece cooled off quickly. Not too precise, and this may be why we do not see sweat-soldered pieces from the real European middle ages. Rather like stippled backgrounds and piercework, this is one of the first things you learn in a basic jewelry workshop, so those techniques come with us into the SCA with nobody really thinking about whether it was done that way. Still feeling very tired, but I'm looking forward to doing some very neato stuff.
