After roughly three years, we had our first AT&T internet outage. For what it’s worth, I had problems with Cox Cable about once a week — sometimes they were outages but more commonly it was just long periods (hours or days) of degraded service. It seems like multiple times a week I was contacting Cox’s technical support only to be… read entire post
All posts by RobOHara
When Troubleshooting Fails… Then What?
Many years ago, back when I worked on a helpdesk at work, I used to sit in on interviews. Management wanted me there to gauge the technical and troubleshooting skills of each candidate, which I did by presenting the following scenario: “a user calls the helpdesk and says they can’t print to one of our network printers. How would you… read entire post
One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Trip to the Doctor
Since people rarely read my entire blog posts I’ll start this one with a one sentence summary: while stealing a broken music keyboard from my neighbor’s trash pile I wrecked our eBike so badly I ended up at the doctor’s office and getting referred to leg wound care.
The longer version is slightly funnier.
Our story begins last weekend —… read entire post
One Great Burger in One Weird Restaurant
I’m not too good to eat at a greasy spoon diner. I’ve had some great meals at places with wobbly tables and sticky salt and pepper shakers. Last week I had a fantastic burger at a hole in the wall restaurant so weird that I doubt we’ll be going back to anytime soon.
Last weekend Susan and I were on… read entire post
A Windfall at Winstar? Visiting the World’s Largest Casino
Last week, Susan and I took a mini-vacation to Winstar Casino, located on the Oklahoma/Texas border. Winstar’s claim to fame is that it is the world’s largest casino. I don’t know if it has the most machines or the most table games, but at 400,000 square feet of floor space, I can attest that the casino is very, very large.… read entire post
It’s Fun to Sweat at the YMCA
Susan and I are both a little sore, but in a good way and for good reason as we’ve spent an hour every other night over the past two weeks working out at the YMCA.
We’ve been members of the YMCA for a long time, since the kids played basketball there I think. We bought a family plan and go… read entire post
The Snow Damage Piled Up
Over the past week, I’ve fallen on the ice twice (I’m okay), Susan threw her back out (she’s okay), and our pool has suffered a catastrophic failure (it’s not okay).
Last weekend, the winter storm that swept across the country made a stop at our home. I don’t know how much snow we actually got — some news reports said… read entire post
Our Great GE Profile Washer/Dryer Combo Experiment Failed
Four years ago when either or washer or our dryer died (I forgot which), Susan did a bunch of research and found the then relatively new GE Profile combination washer/dryer a combination. The big selling point is the ability to put your clothes into a single appliance, press a button, and come back a few hours later to clothes that… read entire post
A Look Back at 2025
While I haven’t been blogging much lately (more on that later), I wanted to take a few minutes to look back on 2025. I always enjoy looking through all the pictures, blog posts, and Facebook entries I made over the past year to remind me of all the things I did.
In 2025, Susan and I celebrated our 30th wedding… read entire post
Today I Threw Away 100 Power Supplies
My office still hasn’t fully recovered from the flooding we experienced back in October. Of all the things I had to relocate to the garage and workshop to make space for new baseboards and carpet, I’d estimate only about 30% have made their way back in. Because some of my shelves were ruined I ended up with a slightly different… read entire post