Less vegetating...

I canceled my cable. When I moved to a new apartment in December...wait...did I ever write a post about that? No? I'm sorry. I moved. To an apartment managed by a company that's competent and actually responsive to needs. It's amazing. Also, my apartment rocks.

Ahem. Cable TV. Right.

When I moved to a new apartment in December, I had to give up DirecTV. They have a strict no-satellite dish clause in my lease. It's a bummer. I loved my DirecTV. Overall I had a very good experience with that company. But alas, I had to switch. To Comcast. Almost exactly four months later, I canceled Comcast. I had more problems with service and outages and billing (WTF with paperless billing only working if I have a comcast.com email address?!?) in those 4 months than I did in the 3 1/2 years with DirecTV. It just wasn't worth the headache. Comcast is evil.

The final straw? My cable suddenly went out for no good reason last Thursday. It worked in the morning when I watched the news and then just stopped sometime during the day. So I called when I got home and discovered it wasn't working (box wouldn't turn on) and was told that clearly there was something I did (WTF? I wasn't.even.home) and that since the sending the box a signal to restart didn't work they'd have to send someone out. The first available slot for service? SUNDAY. That's THREE DAYS LATER. Which means that unless the cable suddenly and magically fixed itself, I'd definitely be missing the new episodes of Bones and Fringe that night. I was pissed as I was really looking forward to that after a long day. Also, being without cable for 3 days meant I'd be missing my family's beloved Michigan State Spartans play Butler on Saturday. So I thought about it, and decided the so-called service I've received was unacceptable and not worth the headaches Comcast had given me the past few months. And then called them back the next day and told them to STUFF IT. Service canceled.

I watched the first part of the Michigan State game online. Thank the gods for Verizon and my remarkably reliable DSL internet and wireless service from them. I found out the final score from a TV in a bar with some friends (I may have yelled F*CK a bit too loudly when I leaned the Spartans lost). Also, Butler? DAMN if you didn't play good ball. I gotta give it to you. Pity you lost to Duke because I do think you played better ball than they did overall.

So right now I have no TV. I have an old non-digital TV so unless I get one of those digital-to-analog converter boxes I get nothing but static. I never got one because in all my previous apartments/houses/etc. I've always had to have cable as I've not gotten enough signal to get any channels otherwise. So I didn't need one. And since I'm constantly trying to get rid of stuff, I couldn't see any logic in getting a thing I didn't need and I may never actually be able to use. Oh, irony. You can be cruel sometimes.

Ultimately this means less vegetating. No more getting sucked into bad random television on the weekends. And my television watching will clearly have to be more deliberate and likely will be more choosy and specific...no more turning on the boob tube and just zoning out for hours on end and losing time and realizing it's much later than I thought and OMG why am I not in bed yet?!? Between Netflix and Hulu I'm pretty well covered if there's a show I want to watch.

Actually, I signed up for Netflix for the first time a few days ago. I know. I'm "behind the times" or whatever. I've been having fun populating my queue. Lordy there are a lot of movies and TV series I've never seen or started and never finished. Eventually I might invest in one of those Roku boxes if I find I'll use it enough.

The downsides I've discovered thus far to not having TV/cable: FoodNetwork shows are not streamed online anywhere that I can find. That truly bums me out. I'm going to have to find a new way to get my Iron Chef America fix! And I'll have to start carefully avoiding spoilers as I'll be a day behind for most shows on Hulu. But I can deal with that.

Right now I'm rediscovering radio and catching up on online reading and print book reading. I feel less zoned. I'm not exaggerating. I really do.

This does not, however, mean I'm going to actually going to start playing video games or invest in a PS-whatever or Wii-thing. Let's not go too far now.

Trying to find something positive in the midst of technology hell

My world has been full of technology related frustrations lately. I love technology when it works the way it's supposed to. But when it doesn't work it has the ability to bring me to my knees and make my life hell for hours until I figure out the problem and get it fixed and that is even if it is fixable.

I don't call a help line until I've exhausted everything I can think of and run all the tests and searched all the help files painstakingly. Then and only then will I call the help line. I've spent hours on the phone with help lines, usually connected to someone that's not even in the same country and who's troubleshooting ability is limited to the screen in front of them. They all have programs and scripts they follow, and if it's not on their screen, then they don't know what to do. Usually, I've already tried everything they suggest and then they make me do again, waisting my time. Apparently they make you repeat things that you've already done because their program moves to the next screen only after they enter a value or specific phrase from your continued error results to tell it what screen is next. I know they get paid for it, so ultimately, it's only waisting MY time. And ultimately, the conclusion their program tells them is the SAME thing I told them when we first started hours ago. I've come to expect it, but that doesn't mean I like it or even think it makes sense, because, let's be honest here, it doesn't make sense.

Last night I spent almost two hours on the phone with the people that make my wireless router trying to find out why my router lost all of my data. ALL of my data. The network I set up in August disappeared overnight. Gone. All my personal settings, logins, everything, gone. Poof. And after those 2 hours on the phone, going through every test available in their little computer help programs they read from, they still didn't have an answer for me. So I had to set the wireless network up again, which naturally took another hour because that's just how things work in my world.

This past Saturday night I lost the data in my PDA. I had to install updates to the software because Daylight Saving Time started 3 weeks early due to an act of Congress (in an effort to save electricity, apparently). So I followed the instructions, and, well, it all disappeared. Gone. Poof. I had backups for some of it, but not all it. I sync my PDA with my Yahoo! contacts and calendar, but not everything transfers. So I was able to re-sync Yahoo! with my PDA and restore some of the data, but I lost quite a bit of it. Most notably, I lost all my meeting locations and any birthdays I had entered into my PDA contacts list. The meeting locations are also in a work calendar, so I can deal with those. Stupidly, however, I had not written down those all important birthdays anywhere else. So I've had to put a call out to my friends who's birthdays I couldn't find anywhere else asking them tell me again what day they were born and now I have to re-enter all of that data.

Teach me to trust technology. Paper trail. The all important paper trail. I forgot it's importance for a moment and I got spanked for it. Damn.

In the midst of my technology related frustrations, I did have one positive technology experience. I finally got a new cell phone. Same number, because apparently there is no way to put a forwarding message on a cell phone number if you change it (you know, those "this number has changed, the new number is..." recordings? yeah, not an option), but a new phone. It's sleek. It's black and silver. It has a camera (shoe abominations, look out, I can now document your existence at any time) and even video. It's kind of sexy, actually, all sleek and black and ultra-slim (about a half inch thick at most). Fits nicely in my pocket. Even better, it has a nice long battery life.

Anyway, I decided to try the online "contact list backup" program offered by my wireless carrier in an effort to not lose anyone in the phone transition and to avoid the possibility of having to re-enter all my contacts by hand. It's a simple enough program. You create an account and basically the system uploads your contacts to the online account and gives you a web interface (which is also much easier for editing purposes). You then set up regularly scheduled backups that sync the list of contacts in your phone with the list online. If you make online edits, they get downloaded to your phone and vice versa. If something happens to your phone, you can download that list from the online account back into your phone. So when I got my new phone, I told it to download my contacts and poof! There they were. Easy. I printed out the list "just in case" for nothing, apparently. It worked the way it was supposed to and made my life easier.

Now isn't that the point of technology, to make life easier?