I just spotted some outstanding programming news: Comedy Central is bringing Futurama back from the dead!!! See for yourself here and here. But I’m still pissed at Fox for canning this brilliant show after putting it in horrible time slots. How hard can it be? Put it directly after the Simpsons on Sunday night and spend your time counting the money. But noooooooooo…

Over the past few days, Xander has really started to respond to us. Here he is smiling at mommy.

Wow, she’s already slimmer than when we first started taking these photos. And in one month!

Our favorite Mexican joint in the East Bay is, hands down, La Pinata (1440 Park Street in Alameda). It’s a bit out of the way but definitely worth the trip. The service can be a bit on the indifferent side when things get busy, but the food and prices are fantastic. Parking can be a pain and it draws the big crowds on the popular eating out nights.

Now, this place doesn’t mess around with portions. Case in point, behold their signature burrito: the Famosa Burrito.

And the Gods said, “let there be burrito.” And the skies rumbled, the sun was blotted out, and the souls of the weak were crushed as the Famosa Burrito was brought forth. In all seriousness, this thing is not to be taken lightly. I mean, look at it! It’s bigger than Tam’s arm!

After binging on their insanely addictive chips and salsa (they’ll keep bringing more), we settled on ordering one Super Famosa Burrito filled with carnitas. The “super” got us sour cream and guacamole for some extra damage. Between the two of us, we could not finish it. I repeat: WE COULD NOT FINISH IT. It was that big. I suppose I could have finished my half, but that would have required going to the bad, bad place (read: post-Spice Market Buffet-induced-haze that I entered in Vegas).

Go. Order one. Attempt to finish it.

Xander paid another visit to the pediatrician today and, man, he’s been growing! He’s now up to 11 pounds and 10 ounces, measuring 22 7/8 inches. Everything is big with this kid: big yawns, big poops, big gas, big jowls.

Eat, sleep, excrete, repeat as necessary. We’ve made it through three weeks and Xander’s packing away the ounces. He definitely looks like he’s growing like crazy. Those pants used to be slightly loose last week.

And just as a general warning, he will try to latch on to anything if he’s hungry…and I do mean anything…even my mug.

Back when I was handling the logistics of moving from our Glen Avenue pad to our current digs, I learned that SBC would not allow us to keep our land line phone number when we moved. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me given that we only moved like three miles. But whatever, water under the bridge.

The only cost-effective solution to retain our number was to abandon SBC (gee, that wasn’t a tough call) and go to a VOIP provider. I’d been investigating VOIP but really hadn’t given it much serious thought…figured I’d give it a few more quarters to mature. But my hand was forced because I really didn’t want to give up my phone number.

In came Vonage. They were and still are the largest VOIP provider (or at least the one with the biggest marketing budget) but I was hesitant to pull the trigger since reviews were mixed at best. Some people hailed them as the great savior from traditional telcos, while others spat on their necks. Going to VOIP was certainly much cheaper than throwing money at SBC/AT&T every month so I figured, what the hell. On March 11, I signed up for their service.

Things started smoothly, but I quickly came to realize that Vonage’s implementation of VOIP was still far from being ready for prime time. For no particular reason, incoming calls wouldn’t connect properly. Our phone would ring and the caller ID would work, but answering the phone wouldn’t connect the two parties. Other times, the Vonage router would seem to go down in flames on its own. Whenever I’d call tech support, I would barely be able to understand the folks in their outsourced call center. Somewhere down the line, the basic task of getting a dial tone was getting unreliable.

On the plus side, call quality was pretty good when it worked, we got tons of calling features, and it was a helluva lot cheaper than our previous traditional phone service. But the unreliability was the killer. So as I was browsing the SlickDeals.net forums (one of my vices) one day, I saw another VOIP provider, SunRocket, running a ridiculous promo. They were coughing up 2 years of unlimited service for $199. Holy Hand Grenade! They typically offer 1 year for $199! On it like white on rice.

This is the point where Vonage really started to piss me off. To cancel within 12 months of activation, they ding you $39.99. Not cool, but I’d get over it because I’ll be coming out ahead with SunRocket. Then on top of that, if you cancel within the first 90 days, they ding you with an additional $59.99. What really set me off is that I couldn’t cancel today, on the 90th day. Their reps claimed I had to cancel on the 91st day. But their call center would be closed over the weekend so I really couldn’t cancel until Monday, when a new billing cycle kicked in and I’d have to pay for another month of service that I wouldn’t use. Farking idiots. At this point, I skipped customer service and called directly to Vonage headquarters in New Jersey to complain. Amazingly, someone got back to me and after a bit of shuffling, agreed to credit me for the $59.99 and cancel my account today.

So thanks for getting me to the resolution that I wanted, but too bad that it took all day to get there. Hopefully things will turn out better with SunRocket.

Confucius say,
man go to bed with itchy butt,
wake up with stinky finger.

As if it was any surprise, Xander is growing. Look out, Yao Ming…your competition is coming for you. One centimeter at a time.

Our rough measurement puts him in the neighborhood of 23 inches, up from his 21.5″ birth length.

He weighed in at 9 pounds and 10 ounces at the pediatrician visit earlier today so that’s a gain of 9 ounces in less than two weeks. Roughly 6% gain despite the major series of grumpers he worked out before getting on the scale.

Thanks for bearing with me…I finally got the chance to get around to putting more photos up from Xander’s birth. So enough babbling from me, check ‘em out!