We Hate Comcast!

Comcast, the company that hates it's customers and doesn't mind showing it, turned off service for Holly and Robin.

They couldn't pay their bill due to the fact that Comcast's computer is messed up. Comcast refused to accept a payment, thus (according to legal precedent) cancelling the debt. Robin told them to cancel service permanently, but they said they couldn't do that because (according to them) they still owed money.

So, Comcast is stuck in a limbo of their own making. They'll have an account with Comcast forever because their account can't be closed because they (according to Comcast) owe money that Comcast won't let them pay.

Once again, all together, with feeling: "WE HATE COMCAST!"

The great side to all this is that they'll be having DirecTV installed on Monday! They'll be getting a DVR! And by that, I mean a DVR that works! Not a DVR like the one I have from Comcast that works sometimes. If I could get DirecTV where I live, I would have done it two months after I moved here! I hate Comcast!

They'll have a DVR that has twice the capacity of mine. And it will just work! When they watch a movie and get interrupted and go back to it later, they'll be able to go back to where they stopped watching it, even if it's an hour later, unlike my DVR that remembers where I left off for all of two minutes (if I'm lucky).

And when they go to watch something they've recorded, they'll be able to watch it, not get a black screen that will necessitate unplugging the DVR for at least 5 seconds, and then make them wait another 10 minutes while the DVR boots up to have another shot at trying to watch it. Which is what mine does all too frequently.

And it turns out that you can get internet through DirecTV, too, unlike what they told me a while back.

And Holly said that if she forgets to set the DVR to record something that she can call it on her phone and tell it to record!

I envy them!

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A bit more than a week ago, I answered a call on Twitter and volunteered to make a hat for someone for their yarn store. Last week, I got a ball of yarn in the mail that looked and felt like it had been wound by the incredible Hulk, and he was trying to see how tight he could possibly wind it. Photo later.

Well, I've rewound it, and given it some time for the yarn to relax from the outrageous stretching it's been subjected to. The ball of yarn is much bigger now.

I've been searching on Ravelry for a nice hat to make. Since the yarn is variegated, I thought a nice entrelac would be be good. She specified that it had to be knit in a free pattern. After a long search, I decided to knit a Quant from Knitty.com.

Spin-Off did an article about this pattern, and I've been wanting to get the pattern and knit one. I'd like to knit it from some yarn with slightly longer intervals of color, but I think it's going to be nice after all. And it's one of the few patterns that can be made with 200 yards of yarn or less. The ball of yarn said it has 200 yards, but the ball was about the size of a softball when it arrived, so I have some serious doubts about that. If it was measured while under the extreme tension needed to wind the ball so tight, it's probably more like the 150-160 yards needed to knit the Quant.

More info and photos on this later.

Hope you're having a great weekend!

Dollhouse!

I'm sure you're all getting psyched for tonight's new episode of Lost, but bear with me and look forward to Friday, when Dollhouse premiers.

You probably already know that the dollhouse is stocked with people who've had their minds wiped, and are for hire to fill a number of jobs/positions. When hired, a "doll" has a new set of memories installed so they can do the job.

There's an article about it on io9 here. Here's a photo of Eliza Dushku with Middleman's Matt Keeslar in a scene from Dollhouse.

By the way, the plans for a DVD of The Middleman seem to be pretty solid for a release this summer, and they plan to judge whether to continue the series by how well the DVD does. So, get out there and buy it when it arrives! By the way, there's a Middleman fan club on Facebook, and a group on Ravelry.

If you liked the show, and have Comcast, like me, you'll want to get the DVD just so you can get the dialogue. Comcast broadcast the entire series without closed captioning on their standard resolution TV channel, and, in some cases, with the sound going off and on. Other people have been complaining about this on the internet. If you have Comcast and they do that to you, switch to the HD station. They actually add CC that's useable on a regular TV on their HD stations. The sound went on and off on all channels, though. I can't help you there, except to suggest that DirecTV is great!

There's a new post up on the Steve Canyon blog, and you can read it here. It was just posted and I haven't read it yet, but I do know that John will be headed to Ohio to an event that will honor Milton Caniff (among other things). You can read all about it at the above link.

And for those of you who have been waiting in suspense for the Steve Canyon hats, they're coming back! I have a grey one and love it. The construction is first-rate, and they're beautiful.

In the meantime, I've been working hard on the covers for the second Volume. It's going to be great, but I can't really tell you about what it's going to look like until John gives me the go-ahead. It's going to be wonderful, though!

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Here's a photo of the yarn I bought from WalMart on Sunday. It's all Caron's Simply Soft Eco, which is part Ecospun fiber, which is made out of recycled soda bottles. You know those Brita commercials? The ones where they show someone on a treadmill drinking water, and they say something like "20 minutes on a treadmill, eternity in a landfill." Well, that's not really true.

This lead to a really strange conversation between me and two other spinners one time. The conversation went something like this: 

Spinner #1: Here's a sample of another fiber I tried out--Ecospun.

Me: Wow, how did you dye that? What kind of dyes did you have to use? That really feels nice!

Spinner #2: Yeah, it does feel nice. What kind of fiber is that?

Spinner #1: It's Ecospun.

Spinner #2: But what kind of fiber is that? What's it made of?

Spinner #1 and me (in unison): Soda bottles!

Spinner #2: No, really, what's it made of?

You should be getting the general drift at this point, so I won't go through the next 10 minutes of quotes like, "You're kidding me, right? and "Is this a joke?"

The purples and turquoise are to finish a project that I started for someone else, and since it'll wind up a present, I don't want to talk about it too much here.

After finding that pattern for Coraline's starry sweater yesterday, it occurred to me that this might be the perfect thing to knit it in. The colors are a little darker in reality than they look on my  personal computer screen. I'll need more of it, but there's no dyelot, and that's all they had in the store.

I read over the pattern last night, and decided that I'd rather make this up knitted in the round from the top down. So, I'll probably eventually post a revised pattern for it.

Have a great Wednesday, and enjoy Lost this evening!

Ho Hum

In an effort to brighten up a ho hum Monday, here's a photo of the gingerbread house that Malaia made for Christmas:

I forgot to mention to her how impressed with it I was. She's an amazingly crafty kid.

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I worked myself up into a headache last night over the Comcast thing. I finally realized what was going on and took a Valium (which is why I asked the doctor for them) and some Aleve, watched Harold and Maude, and went to sleep.

Before I did all that, I did some research on the internet about TV and internet connections, and I think that no matter what Comcast does at this point, DirecTV and a Verizon internet connection will make me happier. I have severe doubts about Verizon because they've treated me badly in the past, but they were very nice yesterday, so I'm thinking about giving them a second chance. Also, they're willing to give me a connection for $20 a month instead of Comcast's $45 per month. I am pretty sure that it's a slower connection, but it's a lot less money. I think I can live with that, and if I can't, I can get a faster connection for $10 more, which is still lots less than Comcast.

I just can't imagine anything that Comcast could do to make me want to continue with them at this point. I did ask them for an itemized list of all the charges and payments to my account for at least the last year. Even if they straighten that out, they've made too many problems over too long a period of time for me to want to continue with them.

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I finished the mitts last night, and started on the hat. I'll post photos soon. Come to think of it, I don't have a photo of the finished mitts, but here's something:

There's one finished mitt (L to R), one that's finished knitting but doesn't have the ends darned in, and one that's just started. I think I put this up before. The third mitt is done, and all ends are darned in! You should know that the mitts look weird until you put them on, and then they look and feel great.

Photos of the hat when I get them.

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There are four hours of Lost on the SciFi Channel tonight, and the premier of Kyle XY on ABC Family, which follows a Kyle marathon today. And don't forget that G4 is running single episodes of Lost at random times (usually, but not always at 11 am here), so stay alert! I think G4 is using them as filler, hence the random timeslot. Oh and there will be another three episodes shown on Wednesday on (I think?) ABC. Everybody's gearing up for the big premier later this month.

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I have a lot to do today. I got several letters/bills that are wrong all at once, Comcast being only one of them, and I have to write letters/make phone calls to straighten them all out. 

I also have to get to WalMart for some additional yarn to complete the stockings, a coaxial cable for the DVD recorder, and some blank DVDs to record. I want to get anything I really want to keep off of the DVR so I won't be upset about giving it back. And I want to make a stop at Shoppers while I'm out. That means about 2 hours of bus time (not all actually on the bus, but time spent walking to the stop and waiting).

And I have a dentist's appointment tomorrow morning, so any post that I might make will be late. This will be the last appointment (he says) before getting the caps for the front teeth. That will have to wait until they get more funding next summer.

Have a great week!