Major Mike's Musings

What an early get-up. Up at 4:30 am for a 5:45 check-in at the hospital. Son Major said, “Are you going fishing or something?”

The pre-op process was excellent here at West Marion Community Hospital in Ocala, FL. They were very thorough and friendly. Of course they asked Mrs. Major her name, date of birth, and who her surgeon was about a gajillion times, but, hey, it’s good to be sure.

They kicked me out of the room at 7:00 am and wheeled her into surgery. She was done just short of 10:00 am and did well. She’s in recovery and will be until around noon, according to the doctor. 

There is no Internet access, here in the hospital, so I’m going to hunt a Starbucks or some other Wi-Fi hot spot.

I just read a post on Blog Oh Blog about why we should leave comments when we peruse folk’s blogs. Jai has some great points, perhaps you should hop on over there and take a look. 

Dr. Duke‘s office called and rescheduled Mrs. Major to check in at 5:45 am tomorrow instead of the previously scheduled 11:00 am. So her surgery will begin around 7:15 am.

Apparently the Comcast Saga is not over. The overcharge was not taken off my bill: my credit card was overcharged today. Evidentally, Erika didn’t take the overcharges off my bill as promised.

Mrs. Major passed all her tests today and is ready for her bilateral knee replacement on Thursday. (more…)

After much frustration, including no progress with Comcast and no replies to emails to TiVo, I decided to look on the TiVo forums to see if anyone else was having issues with cablecards. Lo and behold, I’m not the only who was having trouble.

One user suggested to repeat the guided setup.¹ In the cablecard installation instructions, TiVo recommends a guided setup before the cable guy gets there.

So I repeated the guided setup and, what do you know, both tuners are now working. This closes the Comcast Saga.

1. A long drawn out process that sets up your TiVo when you initially install it or change service providers. [↩]

Last week 90 some people were rounded up in a drug raid in San Diego. More than 60 of the culprits were students at San Diego State. One of the students, a criminal justice major, asked one of the arresting officers, “Do you think this will hurt my chances of employment with federal law enforcement?”

Ya think?

Is it today’s cultural influence that causes someone to even ask that question? Or are today’s college students just dumber than they were decades ago? Or was it just this one?

“In politics, absurdity is not a handicap.” –Napoleon Bonaparte

5/2/08 Entry in the Comcast Saga.

Got my Comcast bill today. There were about $27 added charges for my second cable card which has never been installed correctly. I called Comcast and talked to Erika. She was very nice and took the charges off my bill. After a discussion with her¹, it is apparent that I’m not going too get our system working the way it is supposed to. So I’m giving up the fight with the following recommendation: Thinking about buying TiVo HD² and you have Comcast Cable? Don’t. You’ll only frustrate yourself. I can’t speak to other cable services, but I suspect they have the same problems because the cable card technology is the problem. The best way to get a DVR and HD service is with a satellite company. You can get lots of HD channels, a DVR that will actually have two channels, and spend way less money.

1. The first person at Comcast who had any idea what the story with cable cards is and why there were delays and why they don’t work properly [↩]
2. which doesn’t work with satellite service. [↩]

“If it weren’t for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we’d still be eating frozen radio dinners.” –Johnny Carson