My grandfather died today

...in his sleep. Medically, anyway. He was long past the point where he forgot who I was.

Howard Pitt enlisted in the Army during World War II and was assigned to the Army Air Corps. After training, he flew missions in Europe near the tail end of the war, mostly assigned to destroying infrastructure--train tracks, munitions depots, etc. When the war was over, he returned home and married the girl he had met while on leave (Kathryn Evans) and took advantage of the G.I. Bill to go to college and study engineering. After graduating, he worked as a surveyor for an oil company, spending some time in Scotland along the way. He and Kathryn had two children, Randall and David. Despite served in Europe, he refused to buy anything made in Japan until the day he died. When he retired, he divided his time between Long Beach, CA, where he had raised his two children, and Florence, OR. His wife preceeded him in death by a year. He died in Seattle, WA, July 28, 2007.

And that's almost all I know. By the time I was old enough to be interested in his stories, he was no longer capable of telling them. I'm sure my father knows more than I do, and some day I'll ask, but hearing them secondhand won't be the same as hearing them from the man who went through it.

Rest in peace, grandfather.

Comcast tech "support"

So, the modem's been spontaneously restarting itself every 2-3 minutes for periods of up to a few hours. On Friday I talked to Comcast tech support, and they suggested I call my router manufacturer and deal with them. At first I was annoyed, but I thought about it, and then said, "Okay, maybe it's a reasonable complaint." So, the next time it started happening, I plugged softlykarou's laptop straight into the modem to see if the problem would fix itself. It didn't, and so I got another guy on their online chat deal:

( Now, I'm much more annoyed )

Yes, you read that right. I told that asshole that I had already done everything he suggested and it hadn't helped, and his response was "LOL CLEAR YOUR CACHE KTHXBAI" and then logging off.

Time to try phone tech support.

Addendum

Called phone tech support. After 20 minutes on hold, got a hold of a nice gentlemen who listened to my info and performed a remote diagnostic on the modem. When the modem spontaneously restarted in the middle of the diagnostic, he agreed that perhaps something was amiss, and so a tech will be coming to visit...

...on Thurday. But at least they are sending someone.

The only problem at all was that his voice was extremely nasal and annoying, but we can't all have a deep, sexy voice like me.

(and in a not unexpected turn of fate, the modem spontaneously restarted three times in the time it took me to write this. It's spontaneously restarted 27 times so far today).