Doo-doo-doo-doo, Doo-doo-doo-doo...

[dr_phil_physics]

You're About To Enter...

Odd little Twilight Zone moment last night. Ended up watching three hours of Mythbusters on Discovery Channel, and at 11pm, we switched to Channel 3 to see the news... and it was stuck on one video frame. Hmm. Must be Channel 3 having troubles. No, actually, channels 6, 7, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20, 23, 24, 27, and another dozen more channels all had frozen frames. Therefore it was the cable company.

Probably some piece of equipment at their ground station crapped out -- welcome to digital television, whether you're digital or not.

No real "plan" to those frozen channels. A mix of local and satellite networks, sometimes adjacent numbers, sometimes not -- very odd. But when you were changing channels through a block of frozen ones, it definitely felt like some sort of End Of The World scenario. Maybe more Outer Limits than Twilight Zone, since both shows had "caught between a moment of time" episodes. But if you were caught between time, could you still change the channel? (grin)

Anyways, it'd been going on for over an hour when we caught up to it, based on what was on the screens, and they didn't get it fixed until after 2am. Alas, since Cartoon Network was affected, I lost an episode of Bleach, dammit. Now I'll "never" figure out what's going on... wait, it's anime, I never will. (double-grin)

Dr. Phil

Comments

ah, the digital age...

[wendyb-09.livejournal.com]

now, I don't have cable at the moment, but I do have a digital TV and most, if not all of the local stations are similcasting in digital. So occassionally I end up with frozen blocks as well. Also get digi-mini blocks, and the same block will appear regardless of which channel you're on. When a plane goes over or nearby (I'm a mile or so away from a small air field) I'll lose the signal-always right at a crucial piece of dialog or discovery.

And you'd think I'd get better reception in clear, sunny weather, no such luck, I usually get the ubiquitous "digital signal strength is reduced" which results in a black screen. Which will also lock on the black screen of death, and the only choice is to reboot...off...wait 30 seconds...on...

Re: ah, the digital age...

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

Remember when you could just turn things "on", instead of "booting"? Our new cellphones are Motorola Razr's and even just plugging them in to charge, the cover's mini-screen stays blank for half a minute while it gets far enough into its boot cycle to say... "Oh, I'm just here for a charge... nevermind."

Idiots.

Dr. Phil

No...I really didn't want to do that now...

[wendyb-09.livejournal.com]

Same goes for plugging stuff into USB slots, the pc automatically thinks it knows what you want to do...

Plugging in the camera - it auto-starts the Canon program - NO, I don't want to use the program, I just want move the photos from the camera to the harddrive...using the program changes the file dates. I only use it to change the size of the pics for ease of email size restrictions.

Plugging in the i-pod - it auto-starts the apple-tunes program - NO, I don't want to download music, I just want to charge the little sucker...

But will it let me set up a mini network between the two old & cranky pcs and the new one - even with a mini-hub and appropriate network &/or USB cables running between the machines, the hub, the dsl modem... NO!!
...cantankerous #%**~&!!! AND I KNOW how to set up a mini-net.

maybe the terminator movies were right...the machines are taking over.

I could go on, but the boss expects me to do real work today, even if I was out late last night, at the Braves game...

Re: No...I really didn't want to do that now...

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

How is the little sucker doing, now that you can run iTunes and rip your CDs onto it?

Dr. Phil

I'm sure if I had more time...

[wendyb-09.livejournal.com]

to fool with it right now, it would work fine.

Just that between long work days and volunteer commitments and job searching, there has been very little time for recreational computing or i-podding.

Although I may try to stuff a few new things into it tonight or tomorrow, so while I'm waiting for the golfers to come in from the tournament I'll have something to listen to...Oooo...wonder if I can get the pod-cast for this week's wait wait on Friday, since they tape today...

Re: I'm sure if I had more time...

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

Probably not. They don't make them available until after the typical broadcast times on Saturday.

Dr. Phil