OK, ready for a funny story?

This is about my latest contact with Windstream Communications, our telephone and Internet provider.

“10:59 a.m. 24th call, called broadband tech support, speeds still 1.5mbps or lower, paying for 6mbps since May 11, put on hold. Tech answered 11:10, said it wasn’t put over to 6mbps yet, and he didn’t know why the other techs didn’t do it. After a couple of minutes, he said to do a speedtest, and it was over 6mbps! He said if I had any more problems call static ip dept., put in phone number, and not as a residential customer.

25th call, Called to try to get a refund on the slow speeds and the 175 outages we’ve had since I started keeping track on April 4. Got transferred, explained I wanted a refund, she said I was sent to wrong office, transferred again. Told the rep. I wanted a refund for all of the outages and slow speeds, put on hold. He came back on and wanted to know if we would like to combine our telephone, internet and cable TV. I laughed and asked if he was out of his freaking mind. I think he was a bit offended, even after I explained the 175 outages, and no way did I want my television service through a company with that record. He issued a credit of $64.

Internet went down again last night (thanks, Windstream Communications), for the 175th time since I started keeping track in April. They last anywhere from a few minutes to 17 hours. I just love to listen to their recorded messages when I’m on hold (last night I was on hold for over a half hour), talking about Windstream being able to meet your business solutions and their ‘blazing fast high speed internet.’

Ha!!

My neighbor’s son, Jim, is biking to Alaska to raise money for cancer research. His blog is http://pedalingforpennies.info/. He has good reason to want to beat cancer, since his dad died from it. Wally was such a nice guy. He got a snowthrower attachment for his Kubota tractor, and would blow out our driveway with it. Just a sweetheart!

Jim is leaving Friday, and today a Kare 11 TV news reporter came out to interview him and his mom. I recorded it and posted it on youtube.

I also posted a video of Suka and I exercising on the exercise bike.

I’ve really been enjoying the Baltimore Orioles,

 and I had a Scarlet Tanager! They are such striking birds.

Another complaint about Windstream Communications,
Internet still down, 6:50 a.m. Called, their message still says it will be back up by May 17, 5:02 a.m. Got transferred to someone else. He tried to get through to their engineers and was unable, so he said he would call back when he was able to get some information from them.

Called at 7:30, this guy said that there were repair guys working in the area, and it should be done within the hour.

Called 8:40, tried broadband tech support 866-866-8786 opt 4, voice message says it’s for dsl technicians and please don’t give it to customers :) put on hold for a ‘network analyst.’ She asked what state I was in and put me on hold. 8:54 got disconnected. Called again. While I was on hold (9:03) Internet came back on.

I seriously doubt it will do any good, but I’ve written up letters to both of our senators, our governor and the attorney general. I’m not the only one having to deal with this poor excuse of a communications company.

Oh, and I ran their speedtest this morning, 1.5mbps. A far cry from the 6mbps that we’re paying for.

Lovely Windstream is at it again. I called last week because our speeds were dropping down to below 1mbps (we’re paying for 3mbps), and they said they were installing new equipment and it would be all done by the end of the week. I switched over to their 6mbps package, hoping that after their new equipment was installed, we would maybe be able to get 3mbps. Well, the internet went down at 3:50 this afternoon. I’ve called several times, and at first they said they had an outage in our area, and they were working on it, and it would be 24-48 hours. I was a little bit pissy, I admit.

I’ve called several more times, and now they’ve got it down to a voice recording that it will be back up by 5 a.m. tomorrow.

I HATE Windstream. I wish they had never bought our phone company, with their ‘blazing fast internet speed.’

When you have a business, you’re always looking for an effective way to advertise. ArtisanCraftPage.com is like posting your business card on the local cafe/coffee shop’s bulletin board. It’s $100, BUT that’s for 4 years of advertising. When you go to it, you see a little icon, but when you mouse over it, it expands into the ad, and clicking on it takes you to the website of the advertiser. The good part of it is that with all of the linking, it brings it up in the search engines.

Tom has a nice post about it and how it works.

I saw a new bird today!! It’s a white throated sparrow.

The other morning I had a pair of pheasants in my front yard.

Spring is finally here! It was a horribly long winter, and I’m so glad to be able to walk outside barefoot and dig in the dirt. I planted carrots, radishes, parsnips and onions yesterday. My chickens are busy coming up to my flower gardens and digging in all of that nice, rich dirt. Time to get the fences up to keep them out.

My lilacs are starting to bud out, 
johnny jump ups

and crocuses

Yes, spring is my most favorite time of the year, warm enough and still chilly enough so the bugs haven’t come out yet, although I do see a fly in my window, sigh. Time to get the flyswatter...

Oh, it’s a regular blizzard out there! My driveway is turning white. Yuck, yuck, yuck!!!!!

Well, it’s official. We’ve had snow for 8 months now.

May 1st, and it’s snowing. I’m tired of winter.

Welcome to Minnesota in March, snow again. Oh, wait a minute! It’s the end of April!!

Can you tell that I’m tired of winter?

Well, our Internet outages have been solved. They had done something with the DNS numbers, so changing them has worked with the outages. We’re still only getting half the speed we’re paying for, but I need to work up my resolve to tackle their customer service system again.

I am going to try something new in my garden this year. We have pocket gophers, and they manage to eat most of the potatoes, so for the past few years I’ve been growing potatoes in my old water tanks. But this year I got some hardware mesh and am going to lay that down on the ground and put logs on both sides to hold it down, then fill it with dirt, lay the seed potatoes on the dirt and cover them with hay. That should keep the gophers out, and hopefully make it easier to harvest them (I hope) this fall. Sigh, waiting for a warm day to work in the garden.

Suka is SO bad! You wouldn’t guess just a minute ago he was picking on Squeak, trying to chew on her leg. He looks so innocent.

Tonight my assignment is to get more beads cleaned, and I’m going to pull out my coring tools and give that a try again.

Honestly, I pity anyone who is unlucky enough to have Windstream Communications. I wish they had stayed out of Minnesota!

Here my log for the past 5 days:
4/22
Outages 11:34, 12:19, 12:34, 12:39, 12:59, 1:04, 1:24, 1:29, 1:34, 2:04, Called the 800-347-1991 (which is supposed to be the direct number for billing), it’s the same menu as the other numbers, Called and asked for a supervisor, she put me on hold, came back on and put me back on hold for a supervisor, was transferred to technical support. He said he couldn’t help me and tried transferring me to static ip technical support, (3:05, no music, just dead air. 3:10 got disconnected.) Called broadband tech support 866-866-8786 opt 4. (The message says this number isn’t supposed to be given out to customer). The guy who answered didn’t know that’s what the message said when I asked him about it. He put me on hold, 3:19. 3:23 he’s passing me on to another technician. He had me change the primary and secondary DNS numbers, and gave me another 800 number that's supposed to be business office. I did their speedtest, and we're still at half speed.

4/21
Outages at 3:26, 3:31, windstream speedtest 1.67 mbps, 983kbps, called customer service and asked for a supervisor so I could get a refund on all of the outages, she transferred me to technical support, still having latent outages, they’re working on it, he told me to bypass the surge protector and plug modem straight into wall, he gave me the direct number for billing 800-347-1991. Windstream speedtest 1.14 mbps, upload 983 kbps.
Outages at 4:31, 4:36, 4:56, 5:01, 5:11, 5:34, 5:46, 6:06, 6:36, 6:41, 7:41, 8:01, 9:51, 10:54

4/20
11:30 tried speed tests on 5 sites, windstream’s was 1.7mbps, 3:11 called, put on hold, ran speed test, 1.19mbps. He had me restart the modem, tried bypassing the router and plugging directly into modem. Blamed it on the outages. 3:24, 3:44, 3:54, 4:09, 4:14, 4:34, 5:49, 6:59, 7:04, 7:19, 8:36, 8:39, 8:44, 9:15, 9:50

4/19
6:29. Repair man came and replaced modem. He said we should be getting 3mbps, so called Windstream. Ran test, 1.61 mbps, still having outages. 12:13, 1:48, 1:53, 3:23, 3:43, 4:38, 4:53, 5:58, 6:18, 6:23, 6:28, 6:38, 7:23, 9:43, 10:18

4/18
2:36, 3:31, 3:56, 5:26, talked to Celie, she said it might be a filter for the satellite. Got disconnected, called back and talked to someone else, she created a ticket, 6700631, broadband tech support 866-866-8786 opt 4. 10:05

Life is filled with frustrations lately.

We’ve been having problems with our internet going out for almost a month now. It gets into streaks where it goes out every 10 minutes. Thanks, Windstream Communications, for buying our telephone company and screwing things up. I’ve called multiple times over the past 3 weeks, and I just get the same-old, same-old, ‘we’re having intermittent outages in the state of Minnesota.’ They shouldn’t be buying up smaller telephone companies if they don’t have the infrastructure to handle it. It’s such a laugh to listen to their messages when I’m on hold, ‘lightning fast internet speeds,’ hah! We’re supposed to be getting 3mbps, we get half that. I tried complaining to the Public Utilities Commission, but they don’t handle internet services. They suggested that I contact the Attorney General. That’ll be my next step.

Winter just won’t let go here. It was snowing again this morning, and our birds have all left. I still get a chickadee occasionally. I can just feel the lack of sun stripping everything away. I want to be outside in the warm sunshine, digging in the dirt, planting seeds.

I have to take the truck in, something’s wrong with the steering or something. It shimmies and shakes when you get over 45mph. More money down the drain.

My back and shoulder hurt! I have arthritis in my spine, and something’s wrong with my rotator cuff. I don’t know what, the doctor didn’t say, just that there’s nothing that can be done for it. Except pop more pills, which makes my stomach hurt.

Glass! When I first bought Amy’s storm tutorial, I made a green stringer and didn’t write down what glasses I used in it. People have been snapping them up, the stringer is all gone now, and I can’t duplicate it.

 I tried 4 different combinations this morning, and none of them are like the original. It seems like half the beads I make are just so un-inspiring. The colors don’t come out the way I expected them to, the dots are off, the beads are lopsided.


End of whining.

A couple of beads that did turn out,


I think what I need to do is discipline myself to making more beads that I know I like, and less time on experimenting with color combinations and stringer combinations.

And talking about glass, what do I do but buy more glass!! Like I really need more.

 What I really need to do is clean all of the beads that I've got stashed in my drawer and get them listed.

Well, at least I’ve still got flowers blooming. Here’s one of my amaryllis,

I lost some orchids this winter, so when I was down in the cities last week, I had to buy some more,


Next year if I have all of my ducks in a row, I’m going to have my greenhouse and back deck torn down, and put in a new deck with a bigger greenhouse, with real glass/plexiglass instead of plastic. It’ll be big enough that I can go out and sit in a chair and soak up the sun even if it’s too cold to go outside.

Oh, and here's my little puppy, growing way too fast:

He's still a big baby, though, no matter how big he is. Christian accidentally stepped on his foot the other day, and Suka pee'd himself.

This dog is a MENACE with that cone on him. I’m going to be all black and blue from him running into the backs of my legs with it, and he does NOT fit under my desk with it on. Or at least he and my feet don’t fit under the desk with it on. It’s been 50-50 on who gets the desk today. You know, it’s really hard to type on the computer when you’re sitting 2 feet from it.

I took Suka to the vet this morning to get netuered. I don’t know who was more traumatized, him or me. I had to walk out the door and listen to his scrambling to try to come with me. I felt like I was abandoning my only child.

The vet just called, and said he came through it just fine, and he was awake and a little groggy. She said to come pick him up at 3:00.

My house is awfully quiet without him chasing the ferrets, or picking on Pip, and running in and out of the doggy door and slamming my studio door open.

ETA: Here’s my baby, home with the cone.

And here he is, sitting and slowly leaning back, and back, and back until he almost fell over. LOL, think he’s still a little groggy.

Do you ever get the feeling that I like flowers? Here’s my studio,

Some of these amaryllis are from seeds that my Mom grew after she cross-pollinated some of her amaryllis. They’re about 12 years old now, and this is the first year that they’ve bloomed.

Silly pets photos, my nephews have been building drawers for my glass cabinet for me to store all of my glass rods in, instead of having them out in the open collecting dust. Here’s the fur babies helping Mark,

They’re just so darned much help!

Here’s Pip on one of her favorite spots, the back of the recliner,

So tired!

And here’s the big goof who’s going in this week to get fixed. He’s using his teddy bear as a pillow while chewing on a bone,

He decided to bring all of his toys into the foyer the other day. I came in there, and there were teddy bears and squeaky toys all over.

And to think that just yesterday the snow was almost gone. Now we have drifts 2 to 3 ft. high. Sigh, spring is coming, spring is coming, spring is coming. If I repeat it enough, it’ll happen.

I don’t think the birds are going to be getting much food off of this feeder,

Yup, spring is coming...

I love hyacinths, the colors, the scent, the petals, but especially the scent. I have one pot sitting on my printer to my right, and another to my left. Heavenly!


The sandhill cranes were out in the pasture today, and calling down by the river. I would love to be able to go south when they gather for the migrations. It must be quite a sight.

Here’s my resident Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers,

It’s been difficult to write for the past week. It’s been horrible to see the videos from Japan, with the loss of life, and so much destruction. But my sister reminded me that it’s uplifting to see pretty pictures, so I’m back with some.

This bright boy has been hanging around for the last couple of day.

I wish the camera could pick up the metallic shimmers in these beads. They just gleam!



Spring is on the way. It was over 50 yesterday, and the snow is melting. I had a flock of Canadian geese fly over, and a sandhill crane. I cracked my bedroom window a bit more last night, and could hear the cranes down by the river. I am so ready for it, it’s been a long and hard winter. We had over 80” of snow this winter.

Christian took Suka to the vet today to get his shots. Suka is 5 months old now, and weighs 50 lbs. He is such a wuss! Christian said when the vet was listening to Suka’s heart, Suka put a paw on Christian’s lap, then his other paw, then he jumped up on Christian’s lap. And then when they did his nails, he piddled! What a baby! Here’s a photo with Christian (yes, I know my son looks like a lumberjack. He’s waiting until it warms up, then he’ll shave it all off and get a haircut).

He’s grown so fast! Here’s a photo of when we first got him,

Last night he was on the bed with me while I was reading, and Christian came and was wrestling around with him. Suka wagged his tail, and it thumped against the pillow, and he stopped and looked at his tail, like ‘what’s making that noise?’ Hilarious!!

Yesterday morning Peaches, the cat, must have been trying to get in through the doggy door while Suka was outside. I was sitting in my studio, and I heard her screeching, then she scrambled through the doggie door with Suka after her. She jumped over the half door of my studio, Suka banged into it (it’s has a screen door spring to keep it shut so the ferrets can’t get out), the door slammed into my cabinet, and I was thinking ‘that door is going to slam shut and wake Lukas up.’ Well, Peaches turned around and ran back through the door, and it slammed shut on her tail. Well, at least it didn’t make as much noise that way. Poor cat.

This is video of Suka playing with BB, the ferret.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avm4a2Z1_hU

I started some peppers and tomatoes, and have been dreaming of spring and warm sunshine, and no coats or shoes (I’m just a hippie at heart, hate to wear shoes). We have a snowstorm moving in tonight, but at least we won’t be getting the foot of snow that they were forecasting earlier.

It’s no wonder I don’t get any work done. I posted a couple of videos of Suka and the ferrets playing tug of war with a stuff toy and a piece of plastic, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvUrKB6-M-8

When I empty a bag of ferret food, I leave it on the floor for a couple of days for the ferrets to play in. Suka wanted to get every last crumb in it, and then couldn’t get the bag off of his head. When I called him to get the bag of of his head, he ran into the desk. Sorry, but I was laughing so hard I was crying.

I love Dark Aurae! I just wish I could get more of it. This is Dark Aurae on pink glass. The only difference is the oxygen/propane proportions and the amount of time flashing it in the flame. What you don’t see in the photos are the shimmering metallic glimmers of the glass. They’re just gorgeous!