This morning I had a bit of a rude awakening. No, the cat didn’t tackle me in my sleep… nor did Chel. When I went to check my email this morning (it’s a compulsion, I know), I found that I didn’t have connectivity. Ok, I’ll try the infrequent DSL Bridge Power Cycle; no dice. Maybe it’s the Router; nope. I tried to use a neighbor’s WiFi to check my ISP’s MOTD to see if they have anything to say; the neighbor seemed to be experiencing the same outage. I grabbed my mobile to check see if there was anything on sonic.net’s site via the mobile browser; it didn’t have service. Weird. I managed wrest the television remote out of Chel’s hand see if the morning news had anything to say. I only caught the last 8 or so seconds of a bumper-piece that said that “…both Verizon and AT&T were attempting to restore service as soon as possible.”

Great, if the news station is Monterey was saying this….? I decided to just forget about trying to get my morning podcast and head into work. I picked up a morning coffee at Lulu Carpenter’s. Alisa, the very barista, mentioned that AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile were all down and that their shop didn’t have land-line service either. Totally weird.

On my commute in my mobile service came back for a moment somewhere around the summit on 17 (I got ‘new email’ notification), but was gone again when I tried to make a call. When I got into work, I punched up Sonic.net MOTD and they said:

At approximately 2:30 AM today, AT&T lost ATM connectivity to the Santa Cruz area, causing all DSL in that area to be non-functional. AT&T has no ETR at this time, but we are in contact with them and will update as soon as they have any new information.

I did some more digging and I found an article on one of Monterey’s local new station’s website, KSBW, that said AT&T was claiming “…the outage is a result of one of AT&T’s fiber optic cables being cut.”

What!? Did I read that correctly? A single Fibre Cable was serving Santa Cruz? And what do they mean “it was cut”? Was this a malicious act? Did some tech get a little overenthusiastic with a pair of dykes? WTF!?

They better get that fixed pronto. I can live without Internet for a day or so, but I really don’t like being without phone service… that said, I’m guessing it’ll be fixed around noon, given the amount of money they’ve got to be loosing from “five-nines” service contract penalties alone.

UPDATE: Yes, both land-line and mobile service was out in Santa Cruz this morning. It would seem that cell towers are just stupid slaves that go dark when connectivity is lost… no local phone calls for you!

When I got to work, I tried calling Michelle at home (AT&T local) and got an “all circuits busy” recorded message; the call to her mobile went straight to voice mail. My parent’s landline (Verizon, I think) gave me a fast-busy, “not in service” tone. I have no idea the state of Comcast’s Internet Service this morning… but does it matter?

UPDATE 2: KSBW revised their story. They’re seemingly confirming the land-line, mobile and Internet outage in Santa Cruz was a result of a single Fibre Cable being cut. And apparently AT&T has a twitter page.

On Long Weekends in Tahoe…

Got back today from a long weekend in Tahoe. George and Candice, friends of Chel and me, managed to get a condo-cabin in North Tahoe. Apparently it’s been sort of an annual thing for George in the past; hasn’t done it since before he was married and sprouted a kidlette.

I eluded to the fun I had in my twitter post: “Managed 7 hours of snowboarding across 2 half-days after not for 13 seasons. Windy, icy, packed green runs not fun. Fuckme, I’m sore.” Wasn’t exactly complete in information, though. I have been boarding, once, in the past 13 seasons.

Some history: About 7 years ago, in college, I went on the All-UC 4 day trip Aspen… It was supposed to be a really great trip, super cheap, lots of drinking, etc. Well, the first morning, a little grommet decided to board flailing straight down the hill and bailed right in my path. In order to not plow completely over him, I decided to go high…. edge caught and I also bailed, right into a wood post. Yeah, 10:30am, first morning of a 4-day college ski trip of a life-time to Aspen, CO, I fractured my leg. They dragged me off the hill on the back of a snow machine; the stupid clinic took X-Rays, told me I had a simple fracture, gave me an ACE bandage and crutches and sent me on my way… Yes, I was on crutches in the ice and snow… with an ACE bandage… to support my fractured leg. Did I mention that I still had to deal with my rental board and boots? Yeah, that transit bus ride was fun. Miraculously, I returned my rental and made it back to the condo. Roommates and parents both convinced me that an ACE bandage wasn’t enough; I plead pain for lack of brain function, there. I called the clinic about it and apparently I missed that I was supposed to go across town to the hospital to pickup a walking air-cast. Convinced a friend to go with me, you know, to pick me up in case I fell while trying to traverse the ice on crutches? Got the air-cast. Felt much better. On the coach-bus ride back from Colorado, I was on the cripple-section of one of the busses. There were half a dozen broken or sprained wrists, one girl with a matched-pair of wrist casts and me with a broken leg. IIRC, I didn’t have it as bad as the girl who flew back to Berkeley with a broken pelvis… that must’ve been a great flight. So, yes, I have been snowboarding once in the past 13 seasons… for an hour and half, 7 years ago.

Anyway, Friday, George and Candice, Adam and Deadra, both of their their kids and Chel and I made it to Tahoe around noon and decided to do a half day at the very-close Diamond Peak. In the few hours we were there, I managed to get in 10 or so runs down the nice little Green Run they had, but my knees and bum were too freshly-sore to get up the courage to take a chance on something more challenging. The five of us that went that day were all a little bruised and battered by the end… the other four in my party had been at least 2 seasons missed, so it was to be expected. Chel, bless her heart, had decided to stay back at the cabin-condo with two(!) one year-olds. She said she was fine until Trixie (12mo old) got a little fussy at the end. How she managed that for four hours, I don’t know; I know I couldn’t. We all sorta hobbled back to the cabin. Dea made a stellar dinner of a super-veggie stew with separate/add-in beef-meaty chunks; awesome idea, considering Chel is a lifer-vegetarian. Sleep came easy that night.

Saturday, Dea and Candice decided to give Michelle a reprieve from sole child-minder (I think the soreness had something to do with it) and forgo skiing. Adam and George made their way to Squaw Valley for an all day session. I hung around the cabin-condo and made my way to Squaw for an afternoon session. Considering my previous days performance, I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up with Adam and George, even if I wanted to. I get to Squaw Valley, meet up with G&A fresh off their lunch-n-beer to hand off the sunblock they forgot and made my way up to the top of the mountain… Squaw does things a little backward, their Green Runs are at the top. I’d heard there was a nice 2,000vft Blue run that went down the entire mountain, and I had hoped I’d be able to work up to making that trek (or at least psyching myself up to it). I did attempt the top 10% of the Blue “Mountain Run”, but the fall that both knocked with wind out of me and broke my sunglasses popped that dream; I took the Gondola back down the mountain. Dinner that night was a tasty, carb-rich spaghetti and meat-balls, again made by the glorious Dea.

There were plans for a half-day at Sugarbowl, but between the kidlettes and group-soreness, those plans were shot. Chel and I decided to boogie a little early to meet up with her parents, Mike and Kim, for lunch.

I have a bruised bum and knees, tight forearms, half-sprained wrist and a pulled shoulder muscle; basically, I’m a heaping pile of sore today, but nothing a little Tiger Balm, Ibuprofen and a day or two taking it a little easy wont fix. Will I go again? Definitely, but probably not this season… and I’m going to need better gloves if I’m going to be falling as much as I did this last trip… they’re still a lottle damp.

Horay! I just picked up Mario (the Cooper) from the repair shop.
I got a more complete story out of the guy at the repair shop. The noise that started 7-8k miles ago was the mainshaft bearing getting ready to go. The bizarre thing is that it would only make noise under load and the noise followed the speed of the car, not the speed of the engine. I figured at the worst it was a U-Joint in one of the drive half-shafts; but alas, transmission.
Apparently I was lucky in I got it to them when I did. The tech didn’t get 100 yards on their eval test-drive before the transmission completely gave out: [PING!-clunk!-BANG!], couldn’t get it back into first after making a U-Turn, push back to shop leaving a trail of transmission fluid. When he got it apart, the [clunk!-BANG!] the tech heard was the mainshaft bearing finally seizing, shattering and putting a three inch hole in the bell housing… so my transmission was quite literally cratered.
Wait, catastrophic transmission failure at only 110k miles?! The official line from MINI is that “It’s not common, but it’s not unheard-of”, which I would translate to “the dealer sees this around twice a month”. The quiet story/rumour is that transmission mainshaft bearing seizure was a problem known to MINI, but the frequency-to-complaint/possible-litigation ratio was such that a recall would have been be cost-prohibitive. The story further is that all MINI replacement transmissions have this issue fixed. Did I get a transmission from MINI? According to the repair shop I did.
So, my “no problems so far” car has turned into my “no problems except this one really expensive one” car. Will I see the same issue again at 220k miles? I hope not. Really, I’ll be happy if I don’t have any more big issues with my car in the 16-18 months. I figure by then I’ll have gotten my money’s worth out of the repair. After the collision three years ago, I had intended on “driving the wheels off the car”; we’ll see if I get far enough that hindsight isn’t too painful to my pocketbook.
They had boxed up the old transmission, but hadn’t sent it back yet, so I was able to kind of see the hole, but wasn’t able to get pictures of the damage; suffice to say that exposed drive gears aren’t a GoodThing™. They did give me a plastic bag of pieces that fell out when the tech dropped the transmission (picture here).

Monday (yesterday) was interesting. Work and such was ok; it was the drive home that was of interest. Pulling out the parking lot, I noticed that my car was shifting a little funny. Then when I got into second gear it was making a new grindy-wakka-wakka noise. The last thing I wanted at that moment was to be stranded on the side of the freeway with a borked car, so once I got on the freeway and it into fourth, I left it there and drove home. Luckily, traffic was such that I didn’t need to downshift. The drive home was ok, but when I got into and was driving through Santa Cruz, it started making new noises. Bad noises.
This morning, I took the Cooper into a local auto shop that specializes in European cars to have them figure out what was wrong. I was hoping it was a CV joint or clutch and not an entire transmission. But alas, my fears proved true: this afternoon, the guy from the repair shop called me and told me that his tech was pulling bits of metal out of the fluid fill port with a magnet. Basically, the transmission “…was cratered”. He gave me the run-down on the work that needs to be done (refurb transmission, new clutch, various seals, labor, etc) and the pricetag… $4,700. Ye-ouch.
After Chel and I discussed it (along with a brief consult with my dad), I called the guy back and gave him the go-ahead to do the work. It looks like the work on my teeth are going to be pushed back a couple months and we’re going to be living extra-frugally this year if we want to get into a house.

Monday morning I had a bone graft procedure.
Some history…
When I was ten years old I was hit by a car. Both of my front teeth came out and had to be re-implanted. Around a year later, one of them broke and I had both capped. The caps lasted around 15 years, until one of them started to fail, crack and break apart. I had it pieced back together and it lasted a little while longer. This past March, one of the failing crown’s roots became infected (I’ll spare you the gory details). As a result, I had to have both of the remains of the teeth extracted. Around a month ago, I had my head scanned to get an idea of the bone density and structure to get an idea of my candidacy for dental implant. As it turned out, my case was non-typical in that usually the front side of the tooth socket needs reinforcement in the form of bone grafting. But in my case, the back side of the socket was completely gone (the surgeon supposed it was a result of the accident) and the front side wasn’t ideal.
So Monday, I went in for bone grafting. It was interesting. I took a couple pre-op loopy pills and Michelle’s parents drove me to the dentist’s office.
This was the third time I went under for oral surgery, so for me it was old-hat. It was different this time in that the surgeon chose to take the time while I was being prepped to explain the change in plan (he added the graft to the front of my arch, in addition to the rear). I don’t remember where the conversation left off, I think I was conscious for around 10 seconds after he said “and a little pinch” somewhere mid-sentence. After that, I remember being ‘walked’ out the ‘back door’ of the surgery, then sort of coming to in the chair in my living room. Apparently, I danced with Chel’s dad, Mike, at some point; he probably foolishly asked me, “are you alright?” and I responded with a jig.
As for the bone grafting, he harvested a piece from each of my wisdom tooth extraction sites in my lower jaw and put pieces of bone on each side in the front of my upper arch. Now, I’ve got sutures at the back of my lower jaw and a line of them on the back side of my upper arch behind the front four teeth.
So, now I look like a chipmunk from the swelling where the surgeon harvested the bone.

Here’s a picture of me looking like a chipmunk.

My parents came over this morning to have brunch with Chel and I. Actually, it was the six of us as Michelle’s parents were in town and we weren’t just going to ditch them. The four of us had breakfast the morning before at Walnut Ave. Cafe, and I didn’t want that a second day in a row. My mom was apprehensive about going to someplace new, so I figured ‘you can’t please them all’ and went out on a limb and chose Brazil Cafe, a favorite of Mike and Kim’s. I really wasn’t sure my folks would like it as my mom poopooed Rosie McCann’s. It turned out my mom liked it… w00t! Now there are two places in SC where my mom will eat breakkers.
The day actually turned out to be quite nice. My parents came back to our place and the six of us, my parents, Mike, Kim, Chel and myself, had a really nice chat for a several hours; breaking out the Lemon tart that was overlooked at the party last night really was a nice cap on the afternoon.
Later my mom called me and said she really enjoyed the time we all spent together.