ThayerAvenue.com

Thank You.
First of all, thank you to the families (you know who you are) that so graciously put on the Thayer Avenue Picnic. Once again, a great turnout, great food, and great company. Something we always look forward to every year. Also got to meet the kiddies our Maggie will be growing up with for years to come. Looks like a great crop of overachieving youngsters.

Just Like an Episode of Cops
I was getting RCN cable, phone & internet installed on Friday (more on that in a moment), so I was home for the duration of the day. At one point about 2:30pm, I looked out my back window and saw two cops in the backyard next door with their guns drawn. Pretty cool, right? Well, my wife came home shortly thereafter saying that there were MoCo Police crawling all over the street. She had the chutzpah to stop and ask what was going on, and evidently there was a burgular that had been chased by the police in between the rows of houses between Thayer and Easley. They recommended she get in the house and stay there. Last update I heard was that he was chased out of the neighborhood, but not apprehended. Updates to the situation are welcome.

The Coming of RCN
A guy named Mike knocked on our door a little over a week ago with an offer from RCN Cable: Get loads of channels, telephone service, and the InterWeb with 20Mbps download speed for $109.99/month. I had seen some traffic on the listserv with generally positive comments about RCN and figured, with a “switch you back for free” guarantee, I’d give it a try. Here’s what I’ve deduced:

• The internet is blazing fast. I noticed it when I first opened up Firefox after the connection took hold. I’ll look forward to that with all the porn video and audio I upload/download/view on the Web.
• Got an HDTV box, and both that one and the standard digital version look as good as Comcast’s. The only issue is learning a new channel lineup and making sure TiVo is updated.
• SMTP outgoing mail server settings for RCN sort of piss me off.
• Make sure the phone works before they leave.

We rarely use our home phone. My in-laws call that number regularly, and we get lots of telemarketing crap that we usually ignore thanks to call waiting. (If the DNC is reading this, QUIT CALLING ME. I won’t give you any more money until you PICK somebody to run.) So the fact that the phone didn’t work after the technician left wasn’t that big of a deal – except for TiVo. For those of you that have a DVR, you know what I mean. It updates via the land phone line, and I felt like my left arm had been cut off. No updated channel lineup, no buffering – pure torture. We ended up going to Strosniders to get a 100-foot phone cord so TiVo could update from the one active jack in the house. Well worth the $10.98 it cost. And they’ll be here tomorrow to fix the phone permanently, thank the gods.

If you’d like to give it a whirl, call Mike Dato at 301-512-5775 and tell him that Eric sent you. I could use some referral bonuses.

Why Do I Need Referral Bonuses?
Excellent question. We went stroller shopping this morning (and that, in and of itself, makes me cringe as much as what you’re about to read), and we found out why Bugaboo strollers are so damn expensive: Because they ROCK. For a mere $900, you can get a stroller that defies any previous stroller technology and will last you through an entire Irish family’s upbringing. I’m always looking for the latest and greatest of anything I buy, and in the world of strollers (in which, it appears, I am firmly entrenched), these are the shit.

The reason I mention this is something a little more comedic. One of the stroller brands we looked at was “Quinny,” which is not cheap, either. Seems innocuous enough, but my wife’s comment was, “Isn’t that renaissance slang for vagina?” Turns out, she’s right. Sure, it’s the Urban Dictionary, but it was evidently referenced in the movie Elizabeth, as well. I’ll leave you to your own jokes about babies being rolled around in $500 vaginas.