The new monthly top ten email list is out. Woo!

July 2003 Top Ten

Email volume was WAY up in July compared to June. People must have really been bored. :-) Lets see, what interesting things happened? Kelly continues her downward slide in email volume and actually drops of the list this month. Marilyn, despite letting her quota fill up multiple times, puts in what in some months would be a decent performance, but isn’t quite enough to make it this time.

Following up trips in the past few years to Mozambique, Thailand and Sri Lanka, my mom is at it again…

Hi – am negotiating with my church but I may be making another almost-free trip! Just got a request that I join a small women’s delegation to Colombia in October – five days only – to visit “women’s empowerment projects” – I THINK it will work out to go but it means with previous commitments that I would only preach in church every other Sunday for six weeks – here three, gone three – so I really need some approval before I accept! Would have to pay my own way to Miami but the rest would be paid from the Latin America office of Global Ministries. I suspect we would be mainly in Bogota – which I last saw for only 3 days in 1969 (I think!)

I am jealous of some of these trips, they sound like a great deal of fun and would be very interesting and educational. Perhaps one day my random trips will expand to take me to some places of that sort. Although I must admit, that would really stretch my comfort zone! But that can’t be a bad thing, right?

On my random trips I *do* exclude places with current State Department Travel Warnings though. My mom appearantly does not. There is indeed a Current Warning for Columbia:

The Department of State warns U.S. citizens against travel to Colombia. Terrorist and criminal violence by narcotraffickers, guerrillas, illegal self-defense (paramilitary) groups and other criminal elements continues to affect all parts of the country, urban and rural. Citizens of the United States and other countries continue to be the victims of threats, kidnappings, domestic airline hijackings and murders. Threats targeting official and long-term resident Americans are expected to continue and possibly increase in response to U.S. support for Colombian drug eradication programs. Colombian groups have been known to operate in the border areas of neighboring countries, creating similar dangers for travelers in those areas. Bombings have occurred throughout Colombia, including a steady recent rise in attacks on civilian targets in urban areas. This trend shows no sign of abating in the near future, and some foreign interests have been among the targets. … There is a greater risk of being kidnapped in Colombia than in any other country in the world. In the past three years, 26 Americans were reported kidnapped in various parts of the country. American kidnap or murder victims have included journalists, missionaries, scientists, human rights workers, U.S. government employees and businesspeople, as well as persons on tourism or family visits, and even small children.

Nice.

Well, I’m sure my mom will enjoy it. :-)

So, Comcast finally, after about 24 hours, got my second IP working. Woo! I was excited. They left me a voice mail while I was at work. As soon as I got home I checked things out. Both computers could see the internet. Woo! The Internet could see both computers. Woo Two!

But… neither computer could see the other one. Which is kind of a big deal. I mean, one of the reasons I have this is to be able to easily share things between the two machines, run a print server, all sorts of other things. Not to mention being able to update my site.

I emailed Greg and Chris for advice. Greg was stumped. Chris hasn’t answered yet. I did end up calling Comcast customer service and put in a ticket that was escallated to the next level of support.

I am suspecting though that this is intentional on their part though. Which would be a major PITA.

I could get only one IP from them and change to using a router to connect my two machines, but that would cause some other hassles.

Or, Greg suggested dumpinmg cable and switching to DSL. If Comcast doesn’t let me do what I want (which by the way worked perfectly in NJ, which was also Comcast) then I may have to seriously consider that.

This sucks. I’ve actually had to dial up via my cellphone just to access things on the second computer downstairs from where I was sitting.

Not Happy.

Well, a few hours ago I got home and plugged the G3 in. It started working fine pretty quickly. But then my other connection was dead. Looked like I had only one IP.

Now, at this point let me say I *know* I could just use a cheap hub, and run everything off one IP instead of paying a few bucks extra for a second IP. A little port forwarding and everything would be fine. But I *like* having seperate external addresses… so there.

Anyway, my first call to Comcast support said that my order for the second IP was in, but it had not been provisioned yet, and sometimes it takes a few hours. If it wasn’t there in two hours, call again.

I called again in two hours, cause it still wasn’t there. I could have either my Airport basestation online, or the G3, but not both. The woman ran me through some checks, had me reboot everything (I’d already done that a few times). But nothing. Plus, she said my modem wasn’t reporting back properly. It reported back that it knew it was supposed to give out 2 IP’s, but it also reported that NOBODY was connected to it, and one of my machines was happily on the net.

She said she would keep working on it, and would call me back later tonight if she had news, otherwise I should call again in the morning and reference the case number.

Oh well. I’m keeping abulsme.com online, not my laptop, so rather than doing email or anything, I think I’m going upstairs to watch TV.

Hopefully this will all be worked out quickly. :-)