AmazonThis month I'm not writing about anything to do with writing. I'm ranting.
This has been one aggravating week. Husband decided he wanted Netflex. That sounds easy, right? Grrrrrr. It is easy if you want to stream down to your computer. If you want to stream to your TV, well, just find the right directions. Netflex says buy one of three devices. We don't play games so I sent him off to buy a blueray, wireless built in. OMG! He ended up paying three times as much for the built in rather than one and an adapter, brings it home to me and disassociated himself from the process. I spent three days fighting my way through the connect process, starting with press the DPS button on your router. Sure after you tell me what a DPS button is. After I dug it out from behind the desktop, there wasn't any buttons on my router that I could see and nothing was marked with a DPS. That meant I had to find the software for the router, fire it up on the desktop in the other room, run back and forth comparing DPS WPA, SSIN and several other combinations of letters to find out what security system I have on the router, how to disable it in order for it to allow the blueray to connect. It took two days of working on it, quitting when I wanted to stomp on it, calming down, thinking about it, working on it, trying something different, etc. The second day I connected. Hoorah! Then the device tells me to go online, type in a code when prompted to activate it, and--there's no place to type in a code and no prompt to do so. Why, because they failed to tell me I had to register the blankety blank thing first. Another couple of hours of being sent to places online that didn't have what they sent me there to do before I finally happened across where I needed to be to register. Now back to trying to connect with Netflex on the devices confusing menu. Click and the device tells me I have to download update software for the device before I can. After waiting and waiting and waiting for the download to finish, a new message comes on telling me the signal was interrupted. I quit, start again, quit, moving the router, moving the device, etc, trying to find a stronger signal. Didn't happen. Every time I tried again, wait awhile then get the same message. The router manufacturer is willing to sell me a boaster system guaranteed to carry the signal to every room, just $200. No way. So frustrated beyond belief by the third day I go online to Dish, who have been advertising Blockbuster through their box. They have a boaster, 25 bucks, but you have to order online and have it shipped. He doesn't want to wait that long. Thinking a WiFi BB Connector is a WiFi BB Connector, I sent him off to the electronics store to return the blueray and wrote down not only WiFi BB Connector, but the brand name. He comes home with something five times as much and not wireless. Aghhhhh. So I took it back, cornered a geek, found out a WiFi BB Connector is really a signal boaster. Sigh. I really don't want to know all this stuff. I'm not even the one that wants Blockbuster or Netflex, and why he does when he hardly ever watches movies anyway is beyond me, but now I'm challenged. Oh, the boaster the geek wanted to sell me was three times as much and while I'm standing there I noticed a smaller thing that I'd seen on Dish's list of accessories.
So I ask, ”What is that?”
He says, “That's a receiver.
So I ask, “If I get a boaster and don't have a receiver is it even going to work?”
He says, "I don't know. We don't sell Dish here so I'm not familiar with it."
I say, "I'm not going to buy anything until I find out."
Okay, back online. Yes, you do need a receiver and without it, even if you have a boaster you ain't getting a thing. I have to add that I have a receiver that I bought for an older computer and I'm thinking if I went through all of this crap for days and have what I needed at home the whole time--well, the humor of the irony escapes me. It didn't work. It's a couple of years old, so this time, instead of getting in the car and driving 40 miles. Back online to get the manufacturers name of the receiver Dish sells. Ain't none. Call Dish distributors. Since it was a Saturday, only one answered. He doesn't have one in stock and really can't tell me anything because he doesn't do that part of it, but he does know Dish ‘sometimes’ makes their own and sells them so no one can go to the store and buy one easily. By now I'm so tired of it, I'm not even cussing. I just went online and ordered the damn thing. So after days of fighting incompetent, vague, and confusing directions and feeling like an idiot, the first question you know who asks is, "How long is it going to take to get here?"
I almost cussed again. ALL of the crap was because he didn't want to hardwire from my router to the box to start with. MEN!
But then when the new thingy gets here and a friend stops by while the husband is punching a hole in the wall to get the receiver (on an extension) closer to the router because there’s no way now I’m going to spend more on getting this setup—whew, long winded sentence—I make the comment or started to about why he even wanted it. He gives me that look and says, “I’m doing it for you.”
Yep, that shut me up. While thinking, You should have asked if I wanted it, which I very discreetly did not say, I couldn’t help feeling touched that he wanted to do something nice for me.
So, is this story over? Nope. With the hole on the other side of the wall, Dish receives just fine. That was when we discovered the deal with Blockbuster is a little different than Netflex through blueray. I kept wondering why Dish was being so generous, offering a way to get movies through their box for free instead of their pay for view. Well, golly, gee, not fine print, but pay attention to the wording. Blockbuster ‘rents’ the movies to you through Dish. If you want the unlimited number the monthly membership pays for, it’s on the computer or by mail. Now we have a receiver with nothing to receive, and I’m watching for a good blueray on sale, wireless not built in, hoping the otherwise useless receiver isn’t Dish restricted and the new blueray speaks in English instead of letters.
Larriane AKA Larion Wills, two names one author, thousands of stories
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Eek, I admire your incredible patience, I would have stopped at "he wants". Seriously, why does this stuff have to be so incredibly complex? I liked the old days when it all came in one walnut elegant case and you just plugged it in. All this component stuff is for the birds. Luckily my daughters seem to have more of a feel for it than I do, so my new tv did actually work first time and I have the list of instructions to make the dvd player work that I follow implicitly, - it needs the use of 3, yes three, of the hand held remotes, to play one dvd. And the tv has to be switched on an off with its own switch on the front of it. I hang on to that bit of paper with daughter's handwritten instruction like a life line. DH is not allowed anywhere near any of it. lol
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