Checking in on those New Year's Resolutions

I'm not going to lie, I'm failing miserably on my New Year's Resolutions.  This really shouldn't be much of a surprise as I've never been a fan of resolutions anyway.

I tried really hard with my photography project.  Remember, taking one photograph a day for 365 days.  I was going along just fine taking photos of the Steelers Gnome, but then I just kinda lost interest.  Actually, I'm going to blame the cold weather and stupid Comcast (remember when I had no Internet for days) for my failures at this goal.

As far as the dressing more appropriate for work.  Ha, that's tough one, I'm usually crawling around on the floor in the computer lab installing equipment or dragging cables around to dress nicer at work.  Who knows, maybe I'll have a change of heart on this one and put some effort into it.

Okay, okay enough of the excuses.  Let's really be honest.  My main hang up is my love affair with TV.  I can't get enough of it and it is super easy to sit down on the sofa and just zone out.  I know, I know, this is absolutely terrible.  I really need to adjust my lounging time and make more of an effort at the things that really matter.

We'll see how things go.

Blogging Woes

Not only have I been struggling with what to blog about and ill motivation to blog, now I'm stuck with not being able to access the Internet.

Over the last couple of days I've had no television, no Internet, and no telephone.  All three are tied into Comcast, as part of their triple play package.  Late Thursday night I called to see if there was a known outage in my area.  I spoke with someone who suggested that I power cycle my cable box and she was having a hard time understanding the fact that it must be a Comcast issue since all three of my services were out.  She asked me if I wanted to speak to the Internet group for a solution to possible fix that service, but I knew this would be a fruitless effort and I gave up.

On Friday my wife called to complain and the individual that she spoke with was also having a hard time understanding that this was an obvious Comcast issue.  He suggested that we have someone come out to the house to look at our equipment.  After much complaining about having to wait around all day at the house to be here during the "window" that a Comcast service rep. would show up, my wife finally agreed to this suggestion.  We could not get pass the fact that we did not need someone to checkout the equipment in the house and we could also not talk to a supervisor because they had gone home for the day.

So, come Saturday and we still don't have Comcast service.  About mid-day service came back and was mostly working.  No Comcast service rep. had should up yet.  About two hours into partially working service the Comcast rep. rang the doorbell.  He checked the box outside and of course that is were the problem resided.  He said a truck would be out to fix the issue within a day or two.

I really wish that the Comcast telephone agents would get a clue sometimes and figure out that the customer is always right.  They said that no one else in our neighborhood had complained about service so therefore it must be isolated to our house.  What they fail to realize is that people typically don't want to deal with them because of the crappy customer service.  No one wants to hear that they will have to wait for the service rep. to show up at their house sometime during an eight hour window.  So, they just go with the flow and hope that someone else will call or that the service will just fix itself.

Maybe it's time to switch to FIOS.

I'm calling BS!!

Now I don't normally do this and I'm not a financial wizard, but I've had enough of hearing about the state of the economy.

I'm tired of hearing about how bad the economy is, about what company needs a bailout, about the housing bubble, and about how horrible this Christmas season was because of the economy. 

Like I said I'm not a financial genius, but shouldn't everyone's (i.e. individual's and company's) purchasing power be the same.  I can understand if you don't have money saved up, if you are up to your eyeballs in credit card debt, if you spent too much money on a major investment (like a house), or if you lost your job.  Only then can I understand that you probably don't have money to spend, but everyone else should still has the same amount of money to pump into the economy.

During the holiday break, I cannot tell you the number of times the "Today Show" talked about saving money and all other things financial.  If television newsrooms continue talking about the state of the economy, why can't the newspaper companies use this opportunity to report about other things.  Instead of begging for a bailout, how about changing things up.  Report something different, turn to the community for newsworthy ideas (it's tough to get community news from television and the Internet), or find new clients.  Forget about that bailout for your dying form of media and do something about it.

One final thing.  When did Americans forget about the idea of lower ones' expectations?  It would appear that we Americans feel that we deserve everything and that we've been living during a long prosperous time period.  Just because you grew up with all the new/cool toys/things doesn't mean that your kids should have the same luxury in life.  Now, I know you want to give them a good life, but a good life doesn't mean having everything and not teaching your kids about responsibility.  We Americans need to learn how to grow up and maybe, just maybe, lower our expectations for the future and this economic crisis that we are going through might not be so bad.

Peace out, bailout!!!!

How cold is it?

Apparently the cold temperature has dramatic effects on all forms of digital communications.

It was soo cold yesterday that my Comcast service was dorked up for the entire day.  I got home from work to find that my Internet was working at the pace of The Slowskys.  Then I find out that the television was just as messed up.  One channel worked, the next one didn't.  Every once and a while I found one channel that had some form of snow pattern and inaudible message, which did not lend itself nicely to watching television.

It was soo cold yesterday that my Verizon service was also jacked up.  I got a phone call in the evening that I did not get to in time.  I figured the person would leave a voicemail, but time past and no beep.  It wasn't until this morning that the voicemail registered on my phone. Maybe all the people that come with the network didn't want to leave their homes to deliver my voicemail because it was soo damn cold.  Hopefully, today will be better.

Please share with me your cold weather horror stories over the last couple of days (please leave out the obviously "I'm super cold").  Did I mention we're having a heat wave, a tropical heat wave?  Oh, different day, sorry.