Poor Susan. When you have a public meltdown, do it right.
The British Airways official statement is, well, quite British.
Remove one vowel, and add another to the same word in the first sentence in THIS article, and the mental image changes completely (and is much more relevant).
I swear, I really hate me some telecoms at times. I just got Mom’s HD cable receiver online. But that’s not the whole story. Lets rewind a couple of months.
She got a letter in the mail saying that her current internet modem was going to stop working due to a network upgrade and to contact Cox so they could send a new modem and downtime would be minimized. Great plan, on paper at least.
At any rate, she decided to upgrade the plan and get VOIP and HDTV. Sounds simple, and it should have been. (Spoiler alert, it wasn’t). The installer showed up and proceeded to hose it all up. First, unhook everything except the main TV. Second, relocate the modem to the basement, which required pulling wire from the computer room on the second floor (by the end user, or me specifically). Third, install a low def receiver box on the 720p LCD TV.
I pulled the cat-6 and got the internet online without too much grumbling. A pain, and a time sink, but nothing too difficult. Then Mom told me about the snow on the TV’s in the kitchen and upstairs. WTF? Tracing the coax was pretty easy, but hooking it back up the way it was took a little while and some head scratching. It got done.
Now fast forward a couple of months. Mom redecorated a room upstairs into a den. I donated an Xbox and a small HDTV. I was happy when the TV picked up a number of HD channels all on its own without a cable box. Woot, a freakin victory. It’s kind of cozy up there now.
So, one night she’s down stairs watching NCIS on the large TV. I used to watch NCIS, so I hit the couch. Then I noticed she was watching it in low def. I asked her why, and she said she didn’t know the channel number on the box. I poked around the guide and found it was 707. Well, that shit didn’t work. The TV flipped out and wouldn’t display the video track. Sound worked, but no picture. We finished watching NCIS, and then I dug in and found out that the TV had to be on Ch3 for the cable box. Guess what, Ch3 is low def. And on top of that, the box had no HDMI or component outs. Only composite and coax. Now I’m truly pissed.
On top of hosing up the wiring, the installer put in a low def box on an (obviously) HDTV. Thanks a bunch there Retardo. Oh yeah, and they were charging for a HD package each month, which with the provided equipment, would not display on the TV.
We got another box (HD this time) and I just fucked with that thing for the past hour or so. This one does have all kinds of ports, some of which don’t make sense, but they’re on there anyway (like a firewire and two USB ports, and some others). So, I hooked this thing up to the TV with an HDMI cable and fired it up. Side bars and a 4:3 aspect ratio big as shit. I farted around with the remote, but the only buttons that worked were power, and the channel buttons. Nothing I did would change the aspect ratio. Time to RTFM. Oh, you gotta call and have the box update it’s settings, which takes a whopping 20 minutes. Ok, whatever. It is however displaying HDTV on the TV now, just scrunched up to 4:3.
Back to messing with the remote (since there are zero buttons on the box itself. I finally get the settings menu up, and there’s the output setting. Only problem is that nothing will change it off of 1080i output to 4:3. You evil fuckers. I hate you. Thank God for nicotine. I got the idea to step down to component cables and see what would happen. Long story short (too late), as soon as I fired it up on component, HD was at 16:9 full screen.
Life’s good. Puppies and rainbows are being pooped left and right. I still hate telecoms. And once again I’m reminded why I don’t have cable/sat down home. That shits nothing but tears and sorrow.
Oh yeah, I should have put an “epic post” warning at the top of the litinay of rage.
The evidence before the court is
Incontrivertable, there’s no need for
The jury to retire.
In all my years of judging
I have never heard before
Of someone more deserving
Of the full penaltie of law.
Due process, due schmosses. Glad I don’t live in TN.
Read about it HERE
Note: This is a parody, but does have extra meaning since it was posted prior to 12/24/09 (March ’09 in fact).
Well, for the first time in a bunch of years it’s snowing, and snowing hard. It looks like nearly a foot so far and it’s still going strong. I guess I’ll be up early tomorrow running the Troy Built blower, but it’s not my Gravely.
It’d be nice to be home, but at the same time it’d be kind of scarry at the same time. I’ve been trying to locate a dog catcher blower for the Gravely, but they all seem to be up in PA, and that’s a ways to drive (not to mention the absolutely shitty experience driving in PA is on a good day). Sure, the plow blade probably does the job, but I wonder how big of a job a half a mile of driveway really is. Don’t think I’ll find out this time around though. I am kind of bummed about not getting to try the buggy in the snow, I was really looking forward to that.
Oh well. Maybe next time.
Ok, this is pretty cool. Admit it.
38 Years and counting.
This is just a test of Windows Live Writer. Nothing special, so just move along, nothing to see here.
Woot! This thing rocks. One drawback was having to pony up for the H265 codec to play all my mp4 movies. Still, pretty badass with a 5″ screen, 250Gb HD, and the helmet cam & DVR snapon. And yes, I am writing this using an Opera widget.