Here it is. The beginning of the school year has returned. Students rush about campus heading from class to class only to sit there and drool while expecting to be given an A for daydreaming or taking a nap. The sorority girls get another couple months of use out of their Nike shorts before they adopt leggings as an adequate covering for their asses. It will be just a matter of weeks or even days before the sidewalks look like the Easter Bunny threw up on them with messages of student church organizations, homecoming queens begging for attention and where to buy class notes for the people to hungover to attend class. And, in three short weeks, the refugee tents will pop up all over campus as football fans flock to Mecca making life miserable for everyone who actually works on campus. Good times.

As the fall semester gears up, so does the end of the summer movie season. Generally the summer season ends on a whimper, but not so this year. I'm thinking some of the best movies of the year are going to close out the summer. I've heard nothing but good news about District 9 and Inglourious Basterds. Wish I could say the same about G.I. Joe. I've heard very little from anyone about it. Maybe it's best if that movie is swept under the rug. You can read all about it in my newest movie review.

I made it back from Memphis with all of my sanity, not that there was much of that to lose. I wonder how much longer before Memphis becomes a ghost town. After finding out about all the closed businesses we planned to visit, it turned out our alternatives were closed as well. We planned to visit Peabody Place downtown and hang out at Jillian's for the evening. Jillian's was gone, so we ended up going to see a movie. Although I pleaded for G.I. Joe or 500 Days of Summer, which the theater happened to have surprisingly, the group decided on Julie & Julia. After the movie, we planned to eat at a pizza place nearby which was said to have Chicago-style pizza, of which I was craving. Of course, since I wanted to go, it was closed. We ended up at the Happy Mexican. Apparently, since we were not Mexican, we did not leave the restaurant happy after it took about 20 minutes to get the check.

My summer is all but over. Things kick into high gear next week as classes start. This may be my last review for awhile. The review for Julie & Julia is now posted.

It's Friday thankfully. This was an incredibly tiring and long week. It's really bad when you wake up on Wednesday after crashing early on Tuesday night and feel like you've already worked your 40 hours for the week. After work today, I'm headed to Memphis for the weekend. I wish I could say it will be relaxing, but I doubt it will be. Half of Erika's family (parents, aunt and uncle) thought it would be a good idea to meet halfway between Dallas and Cleveland. Initially this meeting point was Jackson, TN. Based on what I know, Jackson's claim to fame is a minor league baseball team and that's about it. We talked them into Memphis, especially if they wanted us to meet them. As it turns out, Memphis is falling apart. The Pyramid is being torn down for a Pro Bass Shop. The Pink palace is closed for renovations. Pat O'Briens closed because of abysmal profits. I so wanted a rainbow or two after this week.

What's left to do? Not much. There's the zoo and we found a botanical garden. Another music museum we haven't been to before. Not going near Graceland since it is Elvis week. I shudder at the thought of crazies there. I'm not one to sit by the pool either. I have a pool here and I don't go out there all that much. Why drive to Memphis to do that? I wouldn't mind a day trip to Tunica. I've been wanting to go there for a while. Probably only a fun time for me though.

So, while I am in Memphis, enjoy pics from my trip to Chicago last month. Finally got around to posting them. Was much easier since Nintendo finally got the facebook app ready for the DSi.

Chicago 09 (As seen through my DSi)

If you have an opportunity to use Comcast for any service, let me advise you not to. Here is my latest adventure with this nightmare of a company.

On Monday, our Internet service started phasing in and out. A phone call to tech support resulted in us waiting for a call back from Comcast when they figured out the problem. I got a call around 4:30 from tech support saying that they still had me scheduled for a technician to come out by 7:00 PM. Huh? Since when was a technician scheduled to come out. The tech support person said the technician would call Erika's cell phone. I told the person that would not be a good idea especially since the cell phone was currently in Atlanta. Tech support took down my home phone number (which she had just called). I never saw or heard from a technician.

From Monday until Thursday morning, there were no more Internet outages. When the Internet service disappeared on Thursday morning, Erika called once again to report the outage. She was told that a technician tried to call after 6 PM on Monday. Not sure who he tried to call. It wasn't the home phone or the cell phone. The best tech support could do was send a technician on Friday morning.

The Internet service continued to fade in and out until Friday morning it disappeared and didn't return. The technician showed up around 11 while the signal was still out. He said the signal was up when he checked the modem and tested the signal from the wall to the modem. Everything appeared fine, and he connected the modem directly to the computer and everything worked fine. What does he decide to do? He changes out the modem for a new one and admits he doesn't think the modem is the problem. Upon establishing the modem on the network, the only way Internet service could be used is if the modem was hooked directly to the computer. Even with me on the phone talking to him about setting up the network, we could never get it working properly while he was there.

The technician decided to check the cable connection in the living room for some reason. He tried to pull out the 27 inch TV by himself, and thankfully he didn't break anything. He checked what he needed and left (2 hours after he had arrived) as there was nothing else he could do to get the network back up.

When I got home, I had to spend 2 hours of my weekend talking to Comcast tech support and D-Link tech support to try and get my network back up after the technician screwed everything up with an unnecessary new modem. I wish this was the end of the story.

When we got up on Saturday to eat breakfast and watch some Saturday morning TV, we discovered the TV would not come on. Neither of us had tried to turn on the TV since the technician left on Friday afternoon. I have no idea what the technician did messing with the TV, but some how the power strip had been turned off. Easy problem to solve, but once the TV came on, we had no programming on the screen. We could pull up the programming guide and other aspects of the digital converter box, but there was not a TV show to be seen on the TV. Upon calling Comcast, I found out that the technician had somehow wiped out the serial number of the digital converter in Comcast's system. According to their system, I didn't have a converter, thus they weren't supplying a cable signal to it.

At this point I wanted to strangle the technician that came out. In the course of 2 hours, he destroyed my home network and my cable service. It took me about 3 hours overall to get everything back to normal. As if that weren't enough, we aren't sure the problem we were having has even been fixed. The technician said he couldn't solve the problem unless there was an outage at the time he showed up. Funny how it was out when he showed up Friday even though he claims it wasn't.

As much as I'd like to do something corny like refer to this story as "the ugly truth" of Comcast in an effort to introduce the review for the movie, The Ugly Truth, I will refrain. The review for the movie has been posted. It is an entertaining movie, but not much different than any other romantic comedy.