Rants

So, I had to call Bellsouth AT&T DSL support this morning - something I very rarely do. I hate telephones so much that I'd usually rather slog through on my own until I figure it out, no help needed thankyouverymuch, but I was desperate today. Shockingly, it went well. The guy knew his stuff, and I could understand his accent well enough. However, that doesn't change the fact that it was a simple problem that shouldn't have required a support call to fix. I had changed my account password away from the default via web (as they instruct you to do in the intro packet) but didn't have a clue* how to update it on my end. The solution was super simple and would have definitely been covered in the modem manual, but of course Bellsouth AT&T didn't provide one of those, just an shiny welcome guide full of nice fonts and pictures of smiling DSL users**. Personally, I'd rather take a solid, if dull, ink and paper user manual over online databases (rather useless if your DSL isn't working!) or overseas call center workers, but I suppose I'm in the minority..

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*Usually I also prefer to install stuff on my own instead of using handy guided CD-ROMs, but this was one computer topic that I will own to complete ignorance of. At Christmas I tried to 'help' my uncle fix his wireless network and made a complete mess of it.

**One photo shows a family of three - one of which is a child - all gathered in the living room, each working at their own laptop. The family that computes together stays together, I suppose.

After giving Blockbuster Online two months of my life, when I went to cancel today there was a place for comments. "How can we improve?" it said. "Would you mind taking a minute to explain why you've decided to cancel your account?" So I typed up 5 or 6 sentences (more information about the DVDs on the website and on the disc sleeve; either open a store here or shut up about those free coupons; don't leave me hanging for a week wanting to know how Bleak House ends while you suddenly decide to ship #6 from my queue; etc.) and I got the message in the title of this entry. I had to pare my comments down to 3 compact sentences. So... you want to know but not really, eh, Blockbuster?

It looks like a fingerprint smudge (there’s another on the opposite edge), but it’s actually a disc defect that goes all the way through the second layer. It’ll play up to the scene in Tia Dalma's shack, then the DVD player freaks out. Bah! Hopefully I’ll finally get to see it Friday.

On the bright side, tomorrow's Doctor Who episode has Shirley Henderson (AKA Moaning Myrtle) and Peter Kay! After such a crackin' start, I’ve been mostly disappointed with the second series. The Cybermen were a bore. Mark Gatiss’s Idiot's Lantern had a good premise, but the ending felt slapped on. Ditto for the Impossible Planet. "The show's running short - just have David Tennant make faces at the Devil for ten minutes. That’ll fill the gaps!"

Other than complaining about TV and DVDs, not a lot has been happened around here. I still haven’t gotten the new computer fitted so I can abandon the old. Part of the difficulty is that I’ll trying to start on the right foot with a firewall, anti-virus software, and Windows Update up-to-date. Now I remember why I gave up on all that - it takes hours and hours to download all the new updates on dial-up. The anti-virus updates alone were 30 MB (~3 hours) and it wanted to download even more last night. Windows Update had 48 critical updates - another 35+ MB. If I don’t get DSL soon, I shall pull my hair out.

But all that extra ROM is super nice. I’ve started toying around with copying backing up DVDs. My first attempt at ripping to mpeg2 (for eventual SVCD) looked beautiful but sadly came out soundless. I need to do some more tinkering. :)