Still clueless as to what was going on, I decided to flip and vacuum the mattress and wash the sheets today, as a preventative step. I caught a bug shoot across the corner of the exposed mattress that I was able to stop and kill. The tissue I used to kill it was marked by a tinge of blood. This was not good.

These are bed bugs.

Now, I’ve never experienced them before, but from what I’ve read so far this afternoon, they’re not going to be easy to get rid of.

Spent the rest of the day doing three things:

1. Washing all of the bed linens through the hot cycle.
2. Being thankful that no signs of the bugs are in Henry’s room (he shows no bites either).
3. Freaking right the fuck out.

So far, this has been an absolute nightmare. I realize that these little bastards have been chomping on me for about a month. But what’s kept me sane is ignorance. Without that as a shield, it’s becoming very difficult to deal with psychologically. As I type this, Henry is asleep in his room, and Laura is out trying to find king-sized mattress and box spring covers for our bed, on the advice of the one pest control guy who found it in his heart to call us back on a Saturday and offer help.

He’s coming Wednesday morning for the first of three planned treatments. No, they aren’t cheap. No, I don’t care. Wednesday morning has never felt so far in the distant future.

Meanwhile, we’ll be sleeping in our bedroom. Apparently, it’s not a good idea to retreat to another room in the house, as the little f-ers get wise to that quickly and could spread themselves around the house. I’m already freaking out about where the eggs might have already traveled to, so I need the thought of spreading them further like I need a hole in the head.

Wish us luck. This is going to be rough.

Luckily, the majority of the servers were shut down gracefully. I say the majority, because one of the six UPS boxes we use didn’t hold its charge. So that’s one piece of hardware I’ll have to replace. The office closed early as a result, but I knew that I’d have to come in early today to assess any further damage and get things back online.

So that’s what I did. Rolled in at around 6AM, and got all of the servers back up. So far, so good. Unfortunately, when I went down to the first floor, none of the VoIP phones had any power, and on the third floor, no one had any phone service.

Went to check the switch, and it was dead. No ethernet, no PoE. I had some older non-PoE switches, so I was able to get everything back on the ethernet—including phone service—but without PoE to power them, the phones on the first floor are worthless. I called our phone vendor, who said that the switch only had a 90 day warranty and that they’d have to order and configure another.

These damned things were new as of last November, but that’s not even the real kicker here. When I left the office late yesterday afternoon, the switch was up and running and the storm had passed. The switch is on a UPS with the rest of our telco equipment, so I was able to make calls over it yesterday once the power had gone out. So somewhere between the time that I left the office to when I returned early this morning, the switch called it quits.

Thankfully, that’s the worst of the damage. *knocks wood* We should have a replacement here early next week, and everyone will be back up and running again. In the meantime, they can use their cellphones or run up to the third floor if they need to call someone.

Looking at the premiere list of titles, not a whole lot jumps out at me as cause for a double dip, but I’m sure there will be more to come. Walkabout should be an especially interesting choice, as I don’t remember the DVD looking all that great to begin with.

Meanwhile, if you don’t already have The Third Man or Wages of Fear, you now have something to look forward to for your Blu-Ray player PS3.

What this REALLY means however, is that at 1PM EDT we get a new version of the best damned browser around.

I’ve tried a pre-release version, and while the toolbars were a bit different, the only thing I really didn’t like is that Google Brower Sync didn’t support it, and even worse, has been abandoned. We’re supposed to instead migrate over to Mozilla’s upcoming Weave, which is at the highly mature release version of 0.1. Damnit.

On one hand, I have always disliked the National League’s insistence that pitchers take an at-bat in the rotation. Opposed to an outfielder, who may spend entire innings just standing there at the ready, a pitcher has to throw with speed and accuracy (unless your name is Tim Wakefield) on every defensive play. To then insist that, instead of resting, they get up and have to then swing the bat and run bases never felt right to me.

On the other hand, in feeling this way, I’m agreeing with a Steinbrenner.

Either way, another Yankee’s pitcher is thrown onto the DL. Who’s in the standings to replace them at 2nd place? Toronto? No. Tampa Bay. The baseball I once knew and loved is all but gone. In its place stands this bizarro equivalent.

Not much happening to speak of. Henry got sick last week, followed by my own short bout of illness this past weekend. Friday night was the worst of it, I fell asleep early while Laura was out visiting a friend. Normally, having the house to myself like that (save for the sleeping child upstairs) would be impetus for all sorts of video entertainment-related debauchery, but alas, it just wasn’t going to happen.

Thankfully, I may be getting another shot this coming Friday. Received word today that Rob picked up Rock Band this afternoon, and this should be enough time for my blister to have healed. Not that it would necessarily stop me, mind you, but there’s something to be said for granting a couple of weeks in these situations to let such physical ailments settle. I’ll remember to remove the ring anyways.

Now that The Wire (and before that, Deadwood and The Sopranos) are over (until August), I’ve actually had the time to watch some movies. Readers will note that I used the verb “watch” and not “review”. Long story short: CACHE — Surprisingly gripping and thoughtful. JUNO — Funny, but not bulletproof.

Either that, or at least remember to take off the wedding band before playing a demanding set.

So, what can the great city of Taunton deliver this film that nowhere else can? According to the article, they’re going to clean out “the old campus section of the Paul A. Dever State School, a restricted area containing empty and vandalized brick buildings”. Hey, that’s nice. We know how long it takes the locals to clean up after themselves, so they’re doing us a favor there. (Sorry, my images folder got accidentally deleted and that pic went with it.)

In it’s place, they are building “a set resembling a fully-formed community—including a garden, war memorial, greenhouse and radio station”. I never miss a chance to take a shot at Taunton, so the fact that they’re coming 3000 miles to build a set of a “fully-formed community” just makes me smile.

This weekend however, I saw a movie called THE AMATEURS which I thought was cute and funny, and—were I not a lazy ass—would probably give the film a four star (”Great”) review. (But since I hate reviewing comedies, you can forget about that.)

Then I go to Netflix’s page for the film, and notice that the professional critic reviews are terrible. Richard Roeper couldn’t even spare the slightest fraction of a star. (I’d love to know what he said about it, but all of E&R’s reviews are online in video format, complete with commercials. No thanks.) What’s worse, I go to Rotten Tomatoes, and nearly everyone there trashed it.

14%? Really? It’s not quite into Uwe Boll rating territory, but it’s pretty freaking close!

OK, so THE AMATEURS didn’t move mountains or change my life, but I thought it was really funny. I didn’t know I’d be putting myself so far out on a limb saying so.