life as a dog…

I cannot stress how much I hate Comcast.  I know they have their crappy reputation for their internet service (throttling anyone?), but that’s not why I hate them.  I hate their digital box.

I came home tonight, and my Tivo is happily going along with its red light on.  I turn on the TV and….damnit!  Those assholes at Comcast.  The digital box has reset itself.  But WHY???  It didn’t lose power.  Everything else on that power supply is working fine (i.e. a clock and my hard drives – the hard drives would not be working if it lost power, even for only a second).

Here’s why I hate comcast.  Those damn digital boxes default to the stupid OnDemand channel.  And there is ONLY one way of getting off the channel.  By hitting Guide on the remote.  The Tivo THINKS it changed the channel…but it didn’t.  So now I have and hour of "your session has timed out" blinking around the screen.

I absolutely hate the fact that the VOD channel is the default.  I DON’T WANT VOD AVAILABLE ON MY BOX, YOU ASSHOLES!  Give me the choice of deleting it completely.

This was without a doubt the shortest time I’ve spent in Vegas.  I didn’t even get to the strip once…and no gambling.  Kind of weird being in Vegas and not seeing a casino once.  It was a pretty uneventful trip.

One thing about the flight home…  I was in a window (I always choose a window on red-eyes so I can sleep).  There was nobody in the middle seat.  Great…more space.  We took off and I fell asleep.  Maybe 20 minute later, I woke up…and there’s this VERY large woman sitting in the middle seat.  WTF?  She looked like she was about 20 years old…the woman in the aisle seat must have been her mom, because she was cozying up next to her.  So there are two problems with this (aside from the fact that I was quite happy without anyone next to me).  First, she was 20 years old…what 20 year old decides to sit next to their mom so they can cuddle up??  Secondly…she moved from the AISLE seat across from her.   Um….  Aisle seat or middle seat?  Which would you choose?  Which would any normal person choose?  Anyway…

The biggest story of my trip?  I thought the dry air was doing a number on my throat – it was scratchy the first day I was there, but had gotten better the second day.  But no…I went to a doc-in-a-box and lo and behold…it looks like I have strep.  The only place I can figure I got it was on the flight to Vegas.  I guess it was only a matter of time before I caught something on a flight…it’s never happened to me before.

Next trip…Houston in a week.

Today was another full work day.  After physically building the encoders yesterday, the only remaining job was installing all the software.  Through a glitch (ok, a dork move on my part), about 4 hours were lost and we had to start over.  I finished right about 8pm.  I’m now at the airport waiting on my redeye back to DC.

As I write this, a huge group of kids just passed by…on their way home, I assume.  Why the heck would a kids group have something in Vegas?  I supposed they could be Vegas residents going somewhere else.  But the hotel I stayed at did mention that there was some sort of kids sports thing going on.  I know Andre Agassi has his tennis camp here.  Maybe it was along those lines.

I’ll post a little more in the wrap-up post.

Didn’t get much sleep.  After finally getting to bed at 3:00am, I woke up four hours later…and couldn’t fall back asleep.  Guess I jumped to Vegas time instantly.

Today consisted of filling out some paperwork and building encoders.  Seven of them…  1 flight case, 1 CPU, 1 audio compressor/gate, 1 rack mount power strip and 1 keyboard drawer.  It took a little bit longer than expected…we didn’t get out until about 7:30pm.

After that, we went to eat and came back to the hotel and I promptly fell asleep. (Yeah, waking at 4:00am came back to haunt me.)

Today was pretty much travel only.  I had a flight at 8:30pm out of Dulles.  Nonstop on JetBlue.

It was the epitome of stupidity at the security line.  But it wasn’t TSA.  Oh no.  First, some woman (couldn’t have been more than 25) comes up and has bottles.  LOTS of bottles.  Lots of HUGE bottles.  I mean seriously…are people this idiotic to still be carrying bottles like that around?  She had full sized bottles of hand lotion, shampoo, condition and who knows what else.  So of course she had to be pulled aside.  But here’s the kicker…the security guy went over the stuff and…let her through.

The very next person…bottles, too.  She had the right size.  BUT… she apparently had decided at home that she didn’t need to put them in the baggie until she was putting everything on the conveyor belt to go through the x-ray machine.  Seriously?  Are people this idiotic?

Come on people…it’s been well over 6 years since 9/11.  Get with the frickin’ program.

I arrived in Las Vegas at 10:30pm.  That would be 1:30am my time.  I didn’t get to the hotel and asleep until about 3:00am.