Oh! What a Weekend! November 20-21, 2021

 

I feel like the gods have been conspiring against me, or I was cursed by the recent lunar eclipse!!!!   I am still having trouble with Suddenlink, and I have not had cable service on my primary TV since November 13.  I can live with that. After all the techs were done, I could not access wifi on it either! I am at the point that I have to call New York and can do so on Eastern time.  I would assume they open at 8 or the latest, 9 EST.  I have called several times, and the upshot is, they wanted to send a tech out, for the 5th time in a week and a half.  I said enough is enough.  It is a systems problem, and if they cannot fix it, I can live with something else. 

Saturday, my car flunked its state inspection, due to a headlight!  I went three places to try to get it replaced, but all 3 said they could not because they have to remove the front assembly to get to the light bulb.  I could not dispute that, because I could not understand the owner’s manual instructions, and could not see how I would get at the bulb, without doing so, either.  Through the magic modern technology, I was able to schedule an appointment on Friday, the 26^th (first date available) at Scoggin Dickey.  This might be the most expensive headlight replacement in the world!  

Sunday morning, when I woke up, I did not have a working furnace.  Fortunately, after a while, I was able to figure out that the programable thermostat needed new batteries.  I try to keep stocked up with everything I can image, but had to scrounge in my junk drawer but found 2 double A's.  Situation resolved.  And new supply purchased same day!

Sunday afternoon, when I started laundry, after the first load was done, it was apparent that the washing machine was not agitating or spinning.  I tried separating the amount of laundry and spun it again, no such luck.  I now have a mega load of super soaked laundry that I am nursing through my 16-year-old dryer!  I could shlep the rest of my laundry to a commercial self-service laundry but who wants to do that?   I have enough clothes to get through a 3-day work week. Again, through the miracle of modern technology I was able to schedule a repair appointment for Friday, the 26th, begging for the last appointment of the day, due to my car appointment earlier.   (They could come out Wednesday but really, I can wait.)

My ESPN+ account did not work Saturday for the men’s basketball game.  I was really frustrated, and when I went into ESPN costumer service chat, the help I received was immediate and successful.  The suggestion:  use Google Chrome for the browser.  That has been successful since!

The Second Part of My Rough Day 4.18.16

This was really anxiety producing to me. I know my user ID and password for my bank account, but they did not allow me to access my bank account.  The first time I contacted the 24 hour customer service number, the person who helped me did a hard sell on an American Express credit card, when I really wanted to just access my account. She did give me a temporary password, and sent me on my way before I could tell if that would work. Not good.

My second attempt was much more productive: No sales pitch. and the customer service representative did not rush to disconnect until I was sure I could access my account. What a difference in customer service. 

And, I was relieved to see that the funds in my accounts were still where they were supposed to be.  Yeah! Whew!

Video Problems Persist

The video problems persist with my laptop.  I know how to correct it, every time it occurs: I go the Power Options panel, and choose "When to turn off the display."  The option is "never."  Then I have to restart the computer.  This is laborious, cumbersome, and inconvenient.  But, is it worth doing vs. paying someone to fix my computer?  At this point in time, yes.  Maybe in the future, no.  But for now I will limp along like this.

Video problems again

Well, last night, I started having video problems again on my computer.  It extended to the DVD player not working. Well, I poked around and looked for trouble shooting.  I am not sure where I went, but I found a Toshiba user's guide, and found a way to correct the video problem.  But it still would not play the DVD, which is from Netflix. It is an Acorn Media DVD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_DVD.  It might be a faulty DVD.  I loaded one of my own that I know works, and it worked.  I wonder if this was just a coincidence, or maybe not?

I like it when I am smarter than my computer!