• Tag Archives comcast
  • A Serious Man

    Spring                                                           Bee Hiving Moon

    Saw A Serious Man tonight.  Coen brothers.  Might not have quite the resonance if you are either A) not a minnesotan or B) not a Jew, but if you are both or if your wife is Jewish and many of your friends are, too, and you live in Minnesota, this is a must see movie.

    So many in-jokes.  “Ron Meshbesher?  Is he expensive?”  “Well, he’s not cheap.”  A past conductor of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Hugh Wolf’s son, Aaron, plays a major role as a stoner Bar Mitzvah boy and a neighborhood in Bloomington became the perfect 1967 setting for poor schlub Larry Gropnik’s modest 60’s home.

    A black comedy, this movie moves with great pacing through a short period in Larry’s life where he’s up for tenure, his wife declares her affection for another man, his son listens to the Jefferson Airplane in Hebrew School, his brother hangs around like an unresolved note, his neighbor is a bigot who comes home in one scene with a dead buck lashed to the top of his station wagon and two rabbi’s give him hilariously bad advice.

    If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth it.

     

     


  • Gadget Obsessed? Moi?

    Samhain                                                          New (Thanksgiving) Moon

    To call me gadget obsessed might take reality a tad too far, but not much.  I saved up some money and bought a TIVO.  It took me this afternoon to get it set up and working, putting the cables in the right places, getting the codes right, creating a few channels on Pandora, wondering at the limited Netflix options when the full menu is available on my new Play Station 3, (OK, maybe it’s not quite far enough.) and deciding whether or not to ditch the cable tv subscription from Comcast, my least favorite company of the week.

    In spite of myself it looks like keeping the cable subscription is still the best way to get the most out of the TV.  I’m gonna keep checking though since new ways to watch movies and broadcast shows keep popping up.  Most of what’s on tv is low culture, but often compelling anyhow and even the stuff I like that’s not compelling entertains me. With streaming movies the content available at home on demand has increased a hundred fold.

    As a general rule, I don’t watch tv to get educated and I’m rarely disappointed.

    Even with the increased quality and options though, nothing on the tube–that phrase dates me like saying icebox–compares to the live music, open studios and visiting with friends at Art Attack last night.  Remember Alvin Toffler?  The futurist from a long time ago.  He talked about high tech, high touch and I’ve found him right on that score.  I use the internet, the facility of cable tv combined with the internet and software like WordPress and Microsoft Word to make me much more productive in the work I choose to do, but going in to the MIA and seeing my docent friends or over to Paul’s house for a Woolly meeting, a Sierra Club meeting on Franklin Avenue are equally important to me.  Without them I would be a hermit.

    A lot in the hermit’s solitude appeals to me, so I’m happy Kate and I have created a place here where we can be alone and creative, just the two of us, but I need face to face time with others, too.


  • When Bad Service Is All You Expect

    Samhain                                               New (Thanksgiving) Moon

    Over to Comcast offices, a 20 minute drive, to pick up the multi-channel cable card a Comcast chatline worker told me I could pick up there.  After taking a number, 14, while the number being served was 90, I sat down, thinking the wait was worth it because I’d driven the whole way.  So I sat.  As the numbers ticked off, I watched a guy who had an angry countenance grimace, a man a good 6 feet five inches walk in with a cable box under his arm.  His pants had a belt and suspenders.  Safer that way.  A small boy with a mischievous smile ran up to the number dispenser and started to take one, then looked back at his mom so the proper expression of dissatisfaction could register, smiled and ran over to her.  Most folks sat resignedly cable boxes, dvr boxes or modems clutched in their hands, having done Comcast the service of getting in their cars, using their gas and coming all this way just to do business with the folks to whom each of us shell out so much money each month.

    (I’m not the only with complaints against Comcast.)

    13.  “13.”  “13.”  Ah.  “14.”  “I need a multi-channel cable card, please.”  “We don’t carry those, you have to schedule a service call.”  The drive, the wait, for something I could have handled over an interminably long phone call, but at least I would have already been at home.  Unhappy camper here.

    I’m gonna start looking at alternatives.  Right away.  Like right now.


  • The Wonders of Cable

    Winter      New Moon (Wild)     Weather now available at 3 sites under Andover Weather + on the right side of this page.

    “Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen but understanding it for the first time.” – Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

    I read an article in the latest Wired about Comcast.  The article identified Comcast as one of the five most hated companies in the us.  It was number 56.  Number 58?  Our very own Northwest Airlines. That’s a twofer for those of us in the gopher state.

    Comcast frustrates the living bejesus out of me sometimes, but ever since they finally got the fiber-optic laid to the highway about a thousand feet from our house, both TV and broadband signals have been steady.  They don’t make working with them easy though.

    I got a new DVR box, hoping to increase the volume and the picture on our downstairs TV which both Kate and I use while exercising.  They wanted me to go over to their company store and pick up the new one.  I’m ordering a product that will make money for them and I have to drive all the way over to Brooklyn Park?  Nope. Deliver it.  Ok. 10.95 charge.  Maddening, but OK.  Will they take my old box?  Oh, Sure.

    Last Wednesday the delivery guy shows up.  Oh, no.  I don’t work for Comcast.  I put the box in  his hands and said, take it anyway.  He did.

    Then.  Power up the box and…  Nothing.  Sigh.  Calling Comcast has the same desirability as dragging chalk slowly across a black board (for those of you old enough to know what a black board is.).  Still.  I did it.  The guy sent me a signal.  Nothing happened.  He sent it again.  We powered down the box and powered it up.  Nothing. It might take a half hour to an hour, he said.  Right. OK.  If it doesn’t work after an hour, what then?  Well, service calls are running 3-5 days so you need to go—wait for it—to the nearest store and exchange it.

    Good news?  By god it did come on in an hour and I was able to adjust the box using the handy guide delivered along with it.  A feat amazing in and of itself.  So, the volumes up and the picture is better.

    No harm, no…  Nope. I’m within an inch of switching to the dish.  Still, inertia will set in as long as it works this time.