Its 1:00 in the afternoon and I sit here waiting for the Comcast guy. INFINITY. I had them come out to the house two weeks ago to change over from FIOS to INFINITY. But the service guy said that he couldn’t do it because the order didn’t mention anything about me wanting a DVR. Huh? I guess there are different ‘boxes’ for that and he didn’t have any on the truck.
OK, really? Do I look that stupid, I realize its 4pm in the afternoon and you want to get home, but come on. I am assuming he is on salary. Then he said, “well, I can just put the regular Cable on and come back at another time to give you the DVR.
“uh, it’s the fall, no chance. The majority of my shows I watch are on the DVR because time is precious and I can take an hour show and with my DVR make into a 35 minute viewing because you can FF through the commercials.
So why the switch? Well, for one thing, I can’t afford it anymore. They have been ripping me off for years now. Another thing, the damn thing just doesn’t work. It just shuts down in the middle of a show where it has to constantly reboot. So it’s time for a change.
As I sit here waiting, I realize how much that television viewing has become its own sport. It takes a high degree of technical expertise to understand and get the full potential of what your TV can actual do. I remember my parents saying, “It used to be so easy, we would just get up off our lazy asses and turn the damn dial.”
My parents talk fondly of how the biggest challenge they had was adjusting the rabbit ear antennae that sat on top of the TV just to get good reception, and how papa had it down to a science.
However, today’s TV, you really do need a degree in computer science. I for one, do not have a degree in computer science, so I am stuck with the just the most basic clicker functions.
And that is pretty much how I get by in this high-tech world. I only use the functions necessary to get by. Sad I know, but it works for me.
Heck, I don’t even change my car’s clock during day light savings time because I would spend hours trying to press all the buttons to figure out, and then it dawned on me, if I just waited another 6 months until standard time started again, I would actually have the right time again.
But I have figured out with my current TV provider that I am able to find my Law and Order SVU program. I can hit the record button and, if I have too, play it back later. I even know how to rent Spiderman for my son on pay per view and get this, you ready; I have even managed to work the volume control. Woo hoo!
What I don’t get is that stupid message box when you turn the TV on. Every time I sit to watch special victims, a screen pops up listing all these different options available to me. This really does piss me off. Call me crazy, but when I turn on the TV to watch Law and Order SVU, it’s usually for one reason and one reason only, and that’s to watch Law and Order SVU. I don’t know about you, but I personally expect to see my show and not a screen suggesting other things I could be doing instead of watching my SVU. Or ‘SUV’ as my mama likes to call it. (Itry to tell her it’s not a car, but she doesn’t really care, frankly, I don’t care either).
I realize that I am starting to get older. I remember making fun of my parents who wouldn’t use the ‘call waiting’ feature on their phone. I would tell them that the ‘call waiting’ is to alert them that another call was coming in, and yet they would purposely ignore it.
“You just have to tell them to hold on while you get the other call” I would say.
“Well it’s just rude Sholanda” Mama would say “I was already in the middle of a conversation”
“But what if it was an emergency?”
“Well then, it would be easier for you to just dial 911”. Can’t really argue with logic.
So, last weekend I turned on the ‘ol TV to watch some lifetime movie that I saw at least 8 times before. Sure enough, there is that lovely message box; it’s an announcement about some new service FIOS is offering.
I actually stopped and made the mistake of actually reading the announcement. And it sounded pretty good. They said with a FREE app, I will be able to watch television on all my “devices” in the house.
The thought of being able to watch DR. Phil while I was sitting on the crapper, seemed really intriguing to me, so in a moment of weakness or lunacy, you decide; I decided to go for it.
This seemingly simple act had escalated into a cascade of wrong moves on my part, too numerous to even go into in this post, but the end result was that my account login name and password were shut down. This even affected my email because apparently all forms of communicating with the outside world are all in the ‘bundle’ I have. When one goes, they all go.
The solution required me to do the one thing that I dread more than anything, and I even wrote a whole post about it once. Calling the 1-800-customer-service number. I can’t even say those words without experiencing a symptom of PTSD.
So, an hour of horrendous hold music later and then an actual person finally came on and help me resolve my ‘bundle log in password’ problem.
So the next day, after I finally finished watching my Law and Order SVU, I gave mama a quick call to check in on her, I don’t hear from her everyday like I use too, she has been so busy hanging out with noodledoodle and dollyblanket. (See previous post)
As I was talking to her about my problems with the TV, she said,
“You know, we never had these problems with our little black and white Zenith TV. “
I paused for a moment.
“But mom, you also couldn’t get reception above channel eight, either.”
I guess everything is relative.
The Armedella 