(no subject)

Home again. *shudder* Home with the fervent hope that I can get the other car running before the next trip, and use it as leverage to stay here and NOT GO. If you ever want to know what a pawn feels like, try spending a weekend in the house of someone who hates you... but is willing to 'use' you to fix something beyond their understanding.

This trip featured the repair of my father-in-law's computer. I pulled 62 spyware programs, 7 dialers, 14 virii, and 306 registry entries out of it. The only thing that saved his arse was the override I've got on his legitimate dialup connection that sets it to pulse dialing; the wiring in the house is archaic, and only capable of pulse. So all the nifty dialers he clicked okay on (though he denies it - I checked the security settings, and that's the only way they could have gotten there) were stopped by the fact that they were trying to tone dial. Otherwise he would've had a REALLY interesting phone bill... two of the dialers went to Thailand, one to Belfast, three to the Ukraine, and one to Tokyo. Time since I totally rebuilt that machine and gave it back to him? Eight months. He's got a sheepskin that says he's smart... I have no such asset. Instead, I know what I'm doing.

< /rant >

Anyway, it was yet another interesting weekend, but there was an interesting twist to it. It seems that her father has come to the conclusion that Megan has absolutely no interest in moving back to New Jersey (absolutely true... she's nearly as venomous about NJ as I am)... so his primary goal has shifted to hammering on her to get away from me. I'm guessing that were that to happen, he'd revert to form and start pounding on her to come 'home'... but it's an interim goal I can back.

There's a prospect for a full time job for her, at a better pay rate than the temp job she has (that's been cut to around 24 hours a week). Coupled with that, I'm trying to get the mortgage sewn up into one loan at a respectable interest rate. If both of those potentials sort out, she'd be making enough money to move out on her own...

... and I'd have enough to keep the house, in theory. That's the part where the numbers get shaky... and that's what I absolutely have to hide from Megan. She won't consider moving out if there's ANY question about my ability to make the payments. With her out from under my feet, getting this place cleaned up would go faster. Whether I stay here long term or not is up in the air; it may prove a better decision to fix the place and then sell it, and I'm keeping my options as open as I can.

Yes, this is hope that's built on a house of cards; if any one point fails, it all goes up in flames. But it's the first hope I've had this year of things FINALLY resolving. Some things aren't dependant on the rest, and will be pursued regardless of what shakes out with anything else. In order to survive, in order to progress, I have to have my freedom from her. This has to be pursued, and that's all there is to it. This all basically amounts to a snowball's survival chance in hell, and I'm aware of that.

But I'm looking to make hell freeze over one last time.

SnoCone, anyone?

( Lyrical Accompaniment )

(no subject)

Well, I did my good deed for the month.

As I was sifting through the email that made it past Yahoo!'s spam filters, I happened across an email with the simplistic subject line of 'hey'. The from field said it was someone named Herbert. I skipped over it on my delete pass; I've known several folks with the surname of Herbert, and two others with it as their given name. I seriously doubted it was any of them, but figured it was worth trying.

When I got to it, it turned out to be a spam advertisement of yet another affiliate of the buttheads at File Sharing Network (NO, I'm not going to hotlink them... they're a pain in the butt)... but it was the URL that caught my attention. Someone was using a secondary page link... nestled in under the Phillips Memorial Baptist Church (Rhode Island) ... and probably stealing their bandwidth as well.

I looked at the church's website; it's clean and functional, without a lot of silly frills. These folks take thier work seriously, and that tone is reflected by their website. And while I'll admit to having some SERIOUS issues with certain individual Baptists, my stance there is similar to a lovely midwestern dolly's stance on Catholicism. While the Baptist stance wants nothing to do with me or with people like me, I still believe there's a good purpose being served for an awful lot of folks. And the more I flipped between spam and church, the angrier I got.

It should be noted that it's raining today, and rained most of the night before. I'm typically in a complete haze of pain and cobwebs, and up to the opening of this email today was the same. But getting angry and letting the rage flow... that burns the haze away pretty quickly. So all of you can thank a bandwidth-stealing, domain-poisoning spammer for me being awake and aware.

I went through the church's website again, this time looking for a contact point. After reading every page and poking at the HTML source, the only email I could find was for a member of the committee that was reviewing applicants for a pastor position. It wasn't what I was looking for, exactly, but I figured it would do. I sent an email off to the gentleman, with the spam mail stuck to the bottom. I honestly didn't expect a response, but I figured that this poor unassuming church should at least be warned that someone was leeching through them.

Imagine my surprise when, within two hours of sending the email off, I got a response from the gentleman from the committee. While his answer was short, it at least gives me the hope that something will be done. It won't hurt my feelings to see a spammer shot down in flames... and maybe give the church a bit of help rooting out their leech.

*shrugs* Maybe it'll help, and maybe it won't. I tried, and did what I could. My sense of fair play takes issue with someone being used unwilling or unwitting as a tool.

As for me, the haze is slowly rolling back in as the anger abates. I wonder if this is how Hulk feels.