This year, RFC 3251, Electricity over IP, was one of the April 1st RFCs.  Diane sent a copy to her brother who works for Avaya, and got this reply:

The really scary part is people really ARE working on how do distribute electricity over IP! This is needed to power IP telephones.

I’ll have to send this to our power group :-)

Boldly going…

[Everything in this section blatantly ripped off from Brad‘s Must See HTTP]

DOGS. IN. SPAAAAAACE! A fanpage for Porthos, Captain Archer’s faithful beagle from Enterprise. [hat tip to The Cabal]

LCARS HICCOUGH: Meanwhile, these missives from the official Star Trek news site, stardate:04012002…

• Star Trek XI Film Moves Forward
• Official Decision: Kirk Better Than Picard
• Man Reconciles Different Klingon Foreheads

The foolishness continues…

I spent too long on the phone today with Experian, Equifax, and Linkline, but it looks like I made some progress; Experian and Equifax took my corrections and will be sending us updated reports, and Linkline is still working with Verizon to clean up the mess (which, apparently, got started when I tried to consolidate my two phone bills into one — for some reason, Verizon took that as a decision to terminate my DSL service, and it’s been confused ever since). And I won’t know if I’ve beaten the X-10 box into submission until tomorrow morning; I tried to fix it yesterday, but made a subtle programming error which meant nothing turned itself on this morning.

It seemed awfully dark, though, as if Daylight Savings Time had started already. But that’s not till next weekend, so I just assumed that there were clouds outside or something and got out of bed to do my business.

Then Diane called out, asking why the radio had gone off when it was only 5:10am, an hour early. I had no good explanation, but I was relieved to know that it was, indeed, dark outside and went back to bed.

An hour later, there was no click; we woke up a few minutes later than usual, less refreshed than usual.

I’ve never had my home electronics play an April Fool’s trick on me before. I think I could have skipped the opportunity today, too.

More foolishness

When I got home, today’s mail brought copies of our credit records from two of the three credit bureaus. It’s amazing that the credit bureau system works at all.

• Experian lists Diane’s birth year incorrectly in the main part of the report, but correctly on the form to send back to dispute errors.
• Experian’s dispute reporting form gets my last name wrong on Diane’s form, and her last name wrong on my form.
• Experian shows some interesting variations on our names (middle initials in error).
• Equifax got both of our birthdates wrong.

For what it’s worth, Experian’s report is much easier to read, and to their credit, they do not print our Social Security Numbers on the report; Equifax’s report is much more cryptic, and they print the SSN right on the report and the dispute form, making the document itself more dangerous.

The good news, though, is that neither report shows anything untoward.

Yet more foolishness

I also got my phone bill today. Apparently some mysterious agency generated a request for Verizon to start billing me directly for my DSL line starting in mid-February, which, strangely enough, is when my DSL line was going up and down like a yo-yo due to mysterious orders to Verizon to cancel the line. My ISP is, of course, also billing me for the line. And, of course, I can’t call them except between 9am and 5pm. *sigh*

Hi, David!

David Singer of South Africa found my weblog and posted a message to the discussion group; he and I are clearly not twins, since he’s planning a trans-Atlantic sail, and after my one and only experience with a sailboat (in Biscayne Bay), I’m a confirmed landlubber.