Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Monthly Archives: March 2014

• We Interrupt This Program

  Posted at 2:18 am by kayewer, on March 30, 2014

  When it comes to television programming, do you like 9:00 programs to start late because of basketball playoffs, or would you prefer the old the “Heidi Game” policy? Let me explain.

  On November 17, 1968, NBC broadcast a football game between the Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets which ran longer than the expected time allotted. In those days, programming was run by the clock, so the network promptly cut off the game at 7:00 PM on the east coast to present the scheduled film, “Heidi.” According to the story, viewers were calling their affiliates as early as 6:45 wondering if the movie would be on time and, unfortunately for the football fans watching, it was. Executives at NBC were unable to reach their own people because of the phone inquiries from their viewing audiences, so nobody got the instructions to run the game to its conclusion. Oakland was losing 32-29 and managed to score two touchdowns for a spectacular comeback in the last-minute of the game, but they both happened after 7:00, so many fans didn’t see them.

  Today CBS is running college basketball games under the current policy, which was started after the irritable events of 11/17/68: games are aired until they are through, and are often padded out with additional commentary from the booth to round out any floating minutes of time. What we know by rote as “regularly scheduled programming” picks up on the hour or half-hour. Usually. I’ve never used a TiVo or other such automatic recording device, but I wonder how it works if a show starts at 10:24 PM? Does one still get the last 24 minutes of the game? Of course, the scheduled commercials always air.

  March Madness serves more than two purposes (determine the best basketball team and revive bars and betting establishments after weeks without football), because series are filmed in 22-episode blocks each year. If we didn’t let basketball and Christmas interrupt the flow, new television programming would be stale by Presidents Day. As it is, once the din of the cheering for the Final Four grows silent, we will have some reruns at their regularly scheduled time until May sweeps roll in. And maybe there will be a broadcast of “Heidi” in there somewhere, too.

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  Posted in Commentary, Theatre/Movies/Entertainment | 0 Comments | Tagged heidi game, march madness

• Time for a Solution

  Posted at 1:58 am by kayewer, on March 23, 2014

  My clock radio has been a few minutes fast–and gaining–for a while now. I finally fixed that problem.

  I got a new clock radio.

  Seems like a drastic or foolish solution when a current gadget does a somewhat decent job of telling the time. However, if you have followed my blog for a while, you recall that I hadn’t replaced a clock radio in about two decades until my old unit’s LED clock face went out  (see “The Half-Dead Clock Radio,” 3/21/10) and I braved a heavy rain and power outage to find a new one. I bought a Sony, because I rely on brand reputation. Over the past three years (nearly to the day), the new clock has gained minutes steadily until, upon its recent retirement, it was ten minutes fast. I tried replacing the backup battery and unplugging it, hoping to get it to reset itself, with no results. It’s determined to be fast, though I wonder if, just because we are in one time zone, we are really all supposed to be observing the same time. If each time zone represents an hour forward or backward, wouldn’t the half-way point along the latitude or time zone lines be a half-hour? Maybe that old gadget is smarter than the rest of us.

  It doesn’t matter. I could just keep reminding myself that I have ten minutes to snooze in the morning, but my military training won’t let me. I went back to the old standby store, BestBuy, to find a new clock radio. What a culture shock. Most of the units on display were designed to dock I-Phones(R). I don’t own an I-Phone(R). The prices, however, were the same. Many of the boxes had been opened and, therefore, discounted. I decided upon a slim modern version from a company called Insignia, with a blue digital readout and priced about the same as I paid on my last trip. The cashier gushed over my purchase, saying, “You know, a few of my customers today bought this model.” That may have explained why the shelves were emptied out except for one box, mercifully unscathed by curious shoppers who don’t believe the picture on the box is what comes inside it. Also, they obviously didn’t want something that wouldn’t dock an I-Phone(R).

  The first night felt rather strange, being bathed in a blue light as if fairies were hovering in my room. Since I was on vacation from work, I didn’t have to use the new alarm yet. What surprise awaits me on Monday morning?

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  Posted in Commentary | 0 Comments | Tagged BestBuy, clock radio, Insignia clock radio, Sony

• Railroaded

  Posted at 2:55 am by kayewer, on March 16, 2014

  The PATCO High-Speedline is a rail line like others in America, but after today I wonder if its staff is trying to be a disgrace to the institution of rail travel or just being lax.

  Today I pulled into a parking space at one of the suburban stations to board a train for Philadelphia, and was dismayed to find one had just pulled up. The normal schedule didn’t seem to match the time of this train’s arrival, but recently the company responsible for the line’s daily operations tried to limit service on weekends so they could install new track on the Ben Franklin Bridge, the train’s route between New Jersey and Philadelphia (they since discontinued that idea because of complaints about service delays affecting commuters), so I sighed and figured I should have arrived sooner, certain that at that point I could not possibly run fast enough to board before it pulled off.

  Normally trains pull off immediately after everybody boards, but in the time it took me to pass through the turnstile, climb two dozen or so stairs and gain the platform, it still had not moved, nor had it signalled that it was preparing to pull off. As I reached the doors, they closed and the train pulled off. If the driver was looking, he should be cursed with socks that bunch at the ankles.

  The next train pulled in some twenty minutes later to a crowded platform filled with early St. Patrick’s Day revelers on their way to bar hop like premature Easter bunnies on a binge through the local Irish watering holes in the City of Brotherly Love and liquor. We pulled off in a timely manner, but stopped midway to the next station, accompanied by an announcement that they would be resuming the trip in a couple of minutes.  That was a relief, because the wait was going to make me late for a 2:00 show and it was 1:48 already.

  At the next stop, the announcement came that the train had a problem and had to be taken out of service. So much for being there for curtain time. So a few hundred passengers were deposited at the station to board another train brought in for the occasion on the opposing track. We were a little more than fifteen minutes late resuming the trip.

  PATCO has been having many difficulties with broken escalators, train cars well past their retirement age and lackluster use of whatever funding they do get. The experience of punctuality and quality service were lacking for my trip. I’m sure Londoners would not put up with such poor handling of even a weekend service. Next time I will be tempted to give more than an hour’s time for my trip (which normally takes about 20 minutes) or else take my car and pay way too much to park.  You know things are bad when you can’t trust the trains anymore.

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  Posted in Commentary | 0 Comments | Tagged high speedline, Patco

• The Knowledge Pool

  Posted at 2:32 am by kayewer, on March 16, 2014

  When contacting a tech support center, you are stuck with the luck of the draw. Sometimes you can be connected to somebody who truly knows something. On the other hand, you can get a person who can’t help you because they don’t know the right thing to do.

  This is what happened to me when I had a problem trying to get mobile broadband. For some time I had two devices; a USB version and a MiFi, or free-standing, version. Some devices don’t take USB. The MiFi provider had changed their policies about automatically billing for monthly access, and for three months in a row I was caught short, with no access, because my efforts to pay for my MiFi and set up billing did not work.

  When all else fails, Americans don’t wait around. They move on. I figures, why not just get a better broadband and just use one. Heck, it will save me money and I can use all my devices on one unit. So I bought a MiFi from my USB provider and tried to set it up, but it wasn’t helping me get started. I called tech support and got a nice-sounding woman who tried to help by suggesting rebooting the system, moving the unit closer to a window and using a paper clip tip to hit the reset button. She suggested that Windows 8 might not be right for the unit. This after I had already been assured that it would work and the box was mangled beyond return status.

  Nothing worked to get the MiFi working, and I was getting upset enough to do what many a computer user has threatened to do: take the entire laptop and all the accessories and unceremoniously drop them from the fifth floor roof.

  Instead, I took her advice and later retrieved an old laptop with Windows Vista (old technology), called tech support back and got a fellow who went over what had been done so far, then suggested I press F5 on my Windows 8 machine. Suddenly a choir singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” sounded throughout the land when the Internet sprang to life. The call took ten minutes, while my previous calls took up nearly an hour. It was all because he knew one thing to do that the others could not. Also that I didn’t know to do in a pinch. He explained that the system was locked up, so F5 reset it.

  I’ll have to remember that when life itself has me all locked up.

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  Posted in Commentary | 0 Comments | Tagged mifi, tech support

• Put Some Clothes On

  Posted at 2:58 am by kayewer, on March 2, 2014

  I just came from Wal-Mart, and on my way in I spotted a woman in a heavy jacket suitable for the cold weather, but with flannel pajama bottoms and furry metallic tinged slippers from the waist down. I would not be caught at the end of the world wearing my bedroom attire with outerwear thrown on top of it as an afterthought, so I wondered what kind of people think it is okay to not at least put some effort into personal pride before stepping out the door, whether it’s Wal-Mart or the Waldorf Astoria.

  The appearance of Wal-Mart, with its basic layout and discount merchandise, does not immediately imply that one must appear as if the store has a shopper’s dress code. When one dresses slovenly, they tend also to behave slovenly. I have seen racks and shelves with their contents moved about and not put back, with dented boxes and holes in packages. The parents often scream louder than the children. Some days in Wal-Mart it seems like a parade of what famed author Edward Bulwer-Lytton called “the great unwashed.” To be dressed above or below the mass of humanity in the store is uncomfortable.

  In the good old days, no woman with any self-worth would be seen outdoors without gloves on. White gloves. Ask your great-grandmother. Women wore hats, and not just to church. In fact I would like to see an entire church congregation march into Wal-Mart to shop some Sunday after services. It would be like a breath of fresh air. At least they might wear dresses and pant suits, and the men would look a bit dapper.

  Speaking of men, what happened to shirts, jackets and ties on occasions other than weddings and funerals? The stores are patronized by, and cater to, the tee and polo shirt crowd. We have dressed down to a style which used to be only designated for farm hands or farriers.

  The folks–even the lady with the fuzzy slippers–seemed clean enough, so they must be raiding the bottoms of their dresser drawers to find and wear some of the abominations I’ve seen passed off as public clothing.

  For goodness sake, at least wear decent shoes. Don’t make people wonder if you have a pair of underwear between your pudendum and the flannel pajamas, or socks on your feet under the slippers. Make an effort to look good, and even Wal-Mart might thank you for being a better looking patron.

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  Posted in Commentary | 1 Comment | Tagged casual dress

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