Sometimes you just want to be agitated.

Such when you're, oh, I dunno....washing clothes.

Turns out the washing machine we bought with our house -- the house is five years old, but the washer is definitely more like 15 -- just doesn't agitate. As in, that central column that moves the water and the clothes just sits there and hums. Worse, when the water drains, the tank (basin? bin?) doesn't spin, so the clothes that have sat there in their own filth during the wash and rinse cycle go into the dryer twice as wet as they should.

So, tonight, we shop for a brand new washer. And a dryer, too. The one here still has gum stuck to the inside. The previous owners let their kids eat a helluva lot of gum. Now that's quality parenting.

Ten days ago, I forgot to mention that I hit a milestone: Exactly one decade in the field of tech journalism.

And I didn't even get a gold watch.

Today, however, is another important anniversary: exactly 1/10 of my career (that's one year, for those not interested in doing the math) has now been spent in the gainful, at-home employ of Internet.com (which is/was owned INT Media, which was a dumb name; the company is now Jupitermedia, which at least sounds cool, albeit a touch incongruous). That's good. The stock is in the toilet, but the CEO says it's not our fault and he says he just bought more, which is nicer than him selling it and living in Fiji. So I guess all is well.

So yesterday, I made a joke about how much I like getting those spam messages from people who claim to be overseas sons-of-diplomats looking for a few thousand/million bucks to help them get out a few million/billion bucks which they will then send to you after you help them.

It's been in the back of my head for a long time -- why on earth does this scam still get sent? Hasn't the entire world picked up on this yet? Apparently not. Worse, this WiredNews story says that "According to statistics presented at the International Conference on Advance Fee (419) Frauds in New York on Sept. 17, roughly 1 percent of the millions of people who receive 419 e-mails and faxes are successfully scammed.

"Annual losses to the scam in the United States total more than $100 million, and law enforcement officials believe global losses may total over $1.5 billion."

I would love to meet one of the people who fell for this. So I can LAUGH in their FACE.

Most people would be annoyed to get their fourth spam message of the day that says something like "Kindly Pardon me if this my letter would be an embarrassment to you for I am Miss Zlatko Pasalic, 36years old, a native of Zenica in Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina writing you from Woomera Immigration Detention Centre, South Australia."

But not me. Because every time I get a spam that means I'm NOT getting another press release about something I should be writing about at my site but just don't have time for. So i welcome you, get rich quick schemes and weight loss fads. Clog my box with your wares. I beseech you.

I lied to my grandmother.

Right up to the last weekend I saw her, just under a year ago, I probably would have lied to her, had she asked.

My lie: That I have never regretted giving up the saxophone.

The Hornell school system, for whatever reason, decided that kids were ready for organized musical training starting in the fourth grade. This despite an amazing performance of "Little Brown Jug" by my nursery school class six years prior.

So, that year, I began to sing in not only the fourth-grade chorus, but I was also pressed into service in the school band. Did I volunteer? I don't think so. Did I pass some test that said I was bound for glory on a brass instrument? I doubt it. What got me into band, I don't know, but there I was.

I'll never forget being called to the third floor of the Lincoln School and sitting in a room where I had to pick out the instrument of my choice from a catalog. I went for the saxophone. Again, any reason for this has faded in the mists of time.

It didn't take me long to loathe the saxophone.

I hated practicing. I hated my lack of ability. I hated the music.

There's actually an LP recording somewhere in my parents house of my fifth grade band concert where I did not play one note of music. Over the two years that I made my parents pay the rental fee on the instrument (which I dutifully carried to school each day, the handle eating into my fingers like piano wire), I developed what I thought was a fool-proof method of never embarrassing myself -- I mimed.

I would run my fingers on the keys as if I was playing my heart out, puffing my cheeks out as I kept my tongue pressed against the reed so no air would actually pass through the sax. (It seemed foolproof, and Mr. Parada, the band teacher never caught on that I knew of, but the beautiful girl I sat next to, Karen, called me on it once. I stammered an unremarkable denial and fled. I don't think I ever looked her in the eye again.

I hated band and the sax so much, I started mastering fake stomach aches or migraines so I could lay down in the nurse's office during band practice. I wouldn't even pull this to get out gym class, a place were I was even worse off.

After two years of this nonsense, I finally talked my parents into letting me quit. Or maybe they asked me to quit -- it must have been better than my tantrums and tears and, oh yes, the horror of listening to me "practice."

Walking out of Parada's office the day I handed in my instrument and music, as he tried half-heartedly to talk me into staying, was one of the greatest I have ever experienced.

My grandmother, who'd taught herself to play the piano and violin, was not pleased. She'd taken great delight in making me watch the Lawrence Welk Show and pointing out the saxophone player on the show, and how being like him was something I could look forward to. But I told her then, and several other times after, whenever the topic came up, that I didn't regret giving up the sax.

It's not true. I do regret it. I first regretted it when I first heard live jazz.

I was in the 11th grade and as a theater geek I got the option of working on the crew and doing lighting when other entertainers came to the Hornell High from out of town. I sat on the catwalk with my friends and listened to the Eastman Jazz Ensemble from University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music . And I was blown away. The sheltered life of Hornellsville had not been able to hide rock and roll, not even heavy metal, nor show tunes (to which I'm still partial). But jazz I had never heard. Suddenly I knew exactly what the saxophone was truly capable of.

This past Friday night, Bon and I went up to Ithaca College and saw a free concert of Five Play, an all women jazz quintet. As I watched the two women on saxophone (one tenor, one alto), I thought about how amazing they were, how great the music was, but most of all I wished I could tell Grandma she was right. I do regret giving up the saxophone.

But I bet she always knew.

Please dear god, let them vote Robb the skateboarder off first.

I'm sitting in front of the TV and I'm watching cable television for the first time in months.

Real-time TV sucks.

One of the things I like about my new house is the planes. We're right in the path of the one major runway at Ithaca/Tompkin's Regional Airport and they make lots of noise and look really cool that low to the ground. But Bonny just forwarded me this headline:

ITHACA -- Heavy rains caused a small twin-engine aircraft to hydroplane off the runway upon landing at the Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport Sunday night, damaging only the plane's landing gear.

So suddenly all my jokes about the engine's falling off and hitting our garage aren't quite as funny any more...

But they're still funny.

As I predicted, I got to the DMV this morning at 8:20, stood outside in the rain waiting in line to get in (I would have stayed in the car but the line was already 10 people deep) and when I finally did get up to the window, the woman did not even once glance at the driver's record I was told to get from the fine state of MA to prove when the license was issued. The point is, I guess, when stymied at one window of the DMV, just get back in line and hope you get a different cashier and they'll let you through.

Consistency is the bugaboo of quality customer service.

Here's some classic customer service for you...

I called DirecTV over 6 weeks ago, knowing I was moving and requested a waiver so that, even though I was going to move to an area where they don't provide local channels, I could still get the broadcast networks that have national feeds (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS).

Yes, I understand that there are rules and laws that govern giving out the access of these channels, but I don't give a damn. I want special treatment. I make no bones about that fact.

Well, I've had my DirecTV set up for four days and 1) the networks for Boston were still showing up in the channel guide, but with no actual content on the channels and 2) the national feeds were also blank. So, right this second, as I type, I'm on hold with DirecTV to find out if I'm going to get my waiver or not.

I'm told (you're gonna laugh) by the customer service rep that they don't have my new address. Apparently only the installation company that put up the dish had the address, and they didn't bother to share that with DirecTV. Because why would you do something like that? (What really makes milk shoot out my nose that DirecTV main office had to call the installer -- I didn't do it. So they had the address somewhere. Perhaps on a Post-It note that is now shoved up their arse.)

Here's where it's gets knee slapping funny: They put in the waiver request for me to get the networks alright -- but at my address in MA. Where I already got the networks. All of them. Even UPN and WB.

Sigh.

I'm fully prepared to take this to the top. I'll fight this to the upper echelon of DirecTV and Hughes and beyond.

[[The service rep just came back on. I've been informed that they have to contact each individual local network affiliate to get permission from them to let me get the national feeds.

This just gets better and better. NY State -- it's like a technological backwater. ]]

Sorry, sorry, sorry. So much to say, so little time. It's amazing what having a life can do. Or in my case, not so much a life, as a job and lots of unpacking.

Here's how I spent my day in between working and listening to the guy who was installing my house's radon abatement system:

The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles seems to be about 25 years behind the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles. Outside of both handing out shiny metal plates to attach to cars, they seem incompatible.

In MA, you don't stand around waiting -- they give you a number and you sit at a nice bench until you're called. MA recently redid ALL of it's RMV offices, so even if you have to drive a few miles out of your way, it's worth it for the clean space, and the friendly people. Plus, they have a kick-ass Web site with all the info you could want.

In NY, the building, specifically the one in Ithaca that I became intimate with today, you step back into the 1970's before you even reach the door. You stand in line as women (go any guys EVER work at the DMV?) yell "Next!" Once you do get to a window, you're guaranteed to be sent away because you don't have the right stuff. Me, I wanted to switch my MA driver's license to one for NY, but they won't let me. Why? Because my MA license doesn't display the date it was given to me. So I had to spend $10 to get my driving record sent from MA.

I did get one of our vehicles switched to a NY registration, but not until I had to run to the insurance agency so they could take pictures and fill out forms (in MA, the insurance agents didn't take pictures and they had "runners" that would go to the DMV and take care of registration for me). When I got the plates, she gave me the registration and another sticker to put in the window (NY requires two stickers on the windshield to MA's one... you seeing the frickin' pattern here yet?) the cashier charged me $65 and said, "Here's a sheet says you've got a month to get the car inspected."

Hold the phone.

"Uh," I said smartly, "I'm pretty sure I read on the DMV web site that I could keep my current Massachusetts state inspection sticker in the window until it ran out."

"Oh, yeah," she said, taking back the piece of paper. "You understand, I don't know what people have so I've got to give that out."

Yeah, right. And perhaps primates will fly from my anus. Smells more to me like collusion, some stupid law someone put on the books to get people to inspect cars before it's needed and put money in the pockets of seedy inspection guys.

Damn, that's paranoid. But it's the exact thought that went through my head.

No matter, it is horse hockey pucks, and I'm glad I saw that much info on their worthless Web site so I could shoot it down. Who knows what else I got screwed on -- I'll bet if I'd hit another window, I probably would have my new license right now without any hassles.

Okay, back to work for me.

The results of testing my new cable modem connection (which just started spontaneously working overnight) according to BroadbandReports.com:

Your download speed : 1102771 bps, or 1102 kbps.
A 134.6 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 369378 bps, or 369 kbps.
Seems like broadband .. above the 1mbit barrier!

Life is good.

Greetings from central New York.

We survived the move. Most of our stuff survived, even. Settling in has been a bear. I'm currently fighting it out with a cable modem and dial-up and hoping to be online by morning work time. There are many stories to tell of the last week, so stay tuned....