Good news: WOW sent a manager (not sure whether to put that in quotes) out to fix my cable, and he did. He ran a new drop from the pole and got several times more signal through. I still have to put the tap back outside to reconnect the porch, but the DVR is reporting a signal strength that is slightly too high now, so that should work out just fine. The last guy also seemed quite competent, quickly confirmed my findings that there was simply not enough signal coming in to the house (i.e. their side of the demarc box), and said he would place a call for a line tech to come out within 48 hours. The only problem with that was that it didn't happen, and when I did call back in it appeared whoever entered his results reversed his intent. So

The cable modem is connected to their network, and to nothing on my end. I have an idea of how I can use two consumer-grade connections redundantly, but it will take time to work on. Fiddling with that sort of thing is less fun when you're so dependent on the Internet for work.

Bad news: yesterday my work Blackberry's loudspeaker stopped working. That's the speaker on the side that handles all alerts, ringers, and half of the speakerphone. I did everything I know — a fair amount, including loading several OSs — in software to fix it and couldn't get it back. I'll have to get it replaced next week. It happened, naturally, at the very beginning of my on-call week. I set up my profile to have different vibration lengths for emails, calendar reminders, and calls, and I should survive if I keep wearing pants with a belt to clip it to. Plus I can wear my headset while I'm awake and hear ringing that way.

I'm tempted to not call it in until 8/22 when there's a chance I could get a 9930 out of it, but it's more likely I'll get a refurbished 9630 or 9650 anyway. My old office manager used my line's upgrade eligibility on a Curve in January, which I told him to sho... um, keep in his spare stock cabinet.

This remainder of this on-call week should be pleasantly busy. Tonight's work may go all night, but at least it's not urgent. Then there's late night work tomorrow night, Saturday night, and all-night work Sunday night. I've had worse (last month included) so however bad that sounds, it's really average.