late night movie, almost

the lightning must have struck a transformer and the power blinked out for a split second... unfortunately, the cable box can't handle that the way the computer can (which is technologically stupid since all it would take is a back up battery and some circuitry, but that would reduce the number of service calls and increase the life span of the cable boxes which would reduce the planned obsolescence factor and make less money for yet another greedy u.s. corporations, to hell with good service and qauality products), so the movie is gone... and since the cable box takes fifteen to twenty minutes to reboot, the crap equiptment brighthouse provides prevents me from watching the end of the movie i just spent an hour and a half watching... brighthouse sucks, i mean, really really sucks... their equipment sucks more...

twenty minutes later, the cable box appears frozen on e-7... e-7 is an unusual screen icon, so i am suspecting an error... so once again i shudder and call brighthouse again...

4:09... yes, another hour of my life has been consumed by brighthouse and i pay them $130 a month to do this... this culture is sick, very sick... the only good news is the number i called was not the usual india or far away sounding tech, it was canada and the woman on the other end of the phone sounded educated and was rather helpful... at least i hope she was... many issues were discussed... the new "please wait..." service problem is a known issue in the new software upgrade and they are working on that... and after discussing costs and service, she was able to find me improved services for two dollars less each month... still ridiculously high cost for the services, but that's the business and all the companies charge about the same... what i will be getting for my $2 savings is an upgrade to full turbo for the internet (30mbps)... another new cable box and an upgrade to DVR service... it's probably a mistake because this package will probably expire next year and it'll be an increase in price, but the faster internet and dvr for less than i am paying now, well, i decided to go there because jackson needs the internet for her work and this will help with her occasional issues online and she's missed dvr, so she act like i did something wrong and say that she didn't ask and i didn't have to do it as she does with everything i do for our benefit or for her benefit (a simple thank you seldom comes... she's frustrated cuz she doesn't pay towards much most months, but she can still appreciate and not be so defensive, right?... oh hush, i know), but she will love having DVR service, if she ever makes time to watch what she DVRs and the internet is needed for her job... i could have cut ten bucks off the price and stayed with what i have now and probably should have given my zero income and near zero help from jackson with the monthly bills, but $120 a year did not seem like a big savings so... whatever...

meanwhile, the current cable box is sick... it keeps looping around back to reboot itself and hangs at e-7 and loops around again... after an hour of that, i unplugged the cable and suddenly it ran through L-6, L-5, and is now hung on L-4... how it received information when it was not plugged into the cable is a mystery... unfortunately, it's still hung on L-4... so after 15 more minutes i unplugged everything and started again and we did the usual download and are waiting at L-8, which apparently takes a while...

4:30... and we reached L-7 again... do we get to L-6 or do we get hung at E-7?... tic tic tic... can you stand the suspence?... this is obvious proof that i have lost my mind in modern day madness because anyone with half a grain of sanity would simply unplug themselves from technology and live their life with natural pleasures and all the wonders that living can bring... at least 90% of the time... there, see, i am still allowing for some technological pleasures... meanwhile, we've made it down to L-3 for the first time in about 100 minutes... are we having fun yet?...

actually, it was two and a half hours... suffice to say i fixed it without brighthouse tech support help except to get them to send a boosdted signal to the cable box after i played with it and rebooted it a half dozen times... we will still get a new box on wednesday... more of my time given for free to brighthouse... wonder how the movie ended... yeah, i read the synopsisi... would have rather watched the film, but...