First "No NFL" Sunday

[WarHeel]

10 minutes ago, 4Corners said:

I’m tired of hearing about the missed free throws. Yes, they should have made them, but that does NOT excuse the awful officiating that directly influenced the outcome of the game. It’s ridiculous. UNC was robbed. This is going to be a year a team like Dayton or Seton Hall wins the tournament. 

I mean, I mentioned all factors that went into the loss. They make one more of those free throws with less than 10 seconds of regulation and it’s a 2 score game and we aren’t even having this discussion.

[GoPanthers123]

XFL and nhl games.  

[Sgt Schultz]

Let's see.  I was on the phone with Comcast about a cable outage. 

/rant on/ That took longer than it should because like a lot of tech support these days, they run from a script.  The problem is, I have been in the computer, network, or general tech business or tinkering with it since 1983.  If I call them saying the service is dead coming into the house, it is because I have already done more than their script says figuring out there is no service in the house.  Then they denied there was an outage in the area.....except my Mother in Law lives a mile from us, and guess what?  Her service was dead, too.  It does not take a rocket scientist, 37 years of experience, or anything more than a casual understanding of how this stuff works to know the problem is not my modem (when the TVs are out, too) and it is not anything in my house, and not even the cable from the street to my house, it is something farther back than that. /rant off/

When it did come back, first intermittently, I watched parts of the Bruins-Red Wings game.  Then ran some errands, walked the dog twice, and did some work in the garage.

Except for the Comcast thing, it resembled a lot of Sundays during the NFL season since the Panthers are not usually on the tube here.

[1of10Charnatives]

9 minutes ago, Sgt Schultz said:

Let's see.  I was on the phone with Comcast about a cable outage. 

/rant on/ That took longer than it should because like a lot of tech support these days, they run from a script.  The problem is, I have been in the computer, network, or general tech business or tinkering with it since 1983.  If I call them saying the service is dead coming into the house, it is because I have already done more than their script says figuring out there is no service in the house.  Then they denied there was an outage in the area.....except my Mother in Law lives a mile from us, and guess what?  Her service was dead, too.  It does not take a rocket scientist, 37 years of experience, or anything more than a casual understanding of how this stuff works to know the problem is not my modem (when the TVs are out, too) and it is not anything in my house, and not even the cable from the street to my house, it is something farther back than that. /rant off/

When it did come back, first intermittently, I watched parts of the Bruins-Red Wings game.  Then ran some errands, walked the dog twice, and did some work in the garage.

Except for the Comcast thing, it resembled a lot of Sundays during the NFL season since the Panthers are not usually on the tube here.

After 15 years of similar nonsense with TWC that often gave me the strong urge to storm their corporate hq here in Charlotte and take executives hostage, I moved across town specifically to live in one of the first 4 apartment complexes in Charlotte to have Google Fiber. After two years there, I bought a house last spring and told my realtor only to show me houses within their service area.

In 3 years I have never had to pick up the phone to call them.

For anything.

It just works. Every single day.

I get 400 to 500 up and down and it costs half what TWC did.

They can pry my Google Fiber out of my cold dead hands.

[Sgt Schultz]

1 minute ago, 1of10Charnatives said:

After 15 years of similar nonsense with TWC that often gave me the strong urge to storm their corporate hq here in Charlotte and take executives hostage, I moved across town specifically to live in one of the first 4 apartment complexes in Charlotte to have Google Fiber. After two years there, I bought a house last spring and told my realtor only to show me houses within their service area.

In 3 years I have never had to pick up the phone to call them.

For anything.

It just works. Every single day.

I get 400 to 500 up and down and it costs half what TWC did.

They can pry my Google Fiber out of my cold dead hands.

Sad part here is Comcast/Xfinity has been pretty good here.  And, if it is going to fail, Sunday is a good time since my wife and I both work at home.

But, I do not appreciate having to find a way to bypass their automated service/troubleshooting to get to a customer service rep, telling them up front what I have done, and then spending 20 minutes to prove what is obvious and has already been done.  I don't take it out on the reps, but when she told me to power down and then restart the modem, I told her "I'll bet you $1,000 this does not resolve the problem."  She did not take the bet, wisely.

My only other options out here are DSL (which is very slow, even for DSL) through the phone company, whose phone service is more prone to outages than Comcast, or HughesNet/DirecTV, which is also less than stellar.

When I lived in NC, we had AT&T DSL for a long time and then added Charter cable (my router supports multiple WANs).  AT&T did something to reset my modem, and I didn't notice it but it and the router were fighting over "whose in charge."  After six calls, the first five of which wanted me to start by connecting the modem directly to a PC rather than the router, I got a guy who asked me what lights were active on the modem.  We figured it out, switched its mode, and I finally asked him "why is it you are the first rep I have talked to that was able to diagnose the problem just by having me look at what the modem was indicating, rather than having to disassemble it from the network?"  His response was classic......"I will not comment on the competency level of my coworkers."

Sadly, and I tell the reps this, I am sure most of the calls they get are people having done something to kill their own service.  "Is it plugged in, and is the cable attached to both your modem and your computer" probably solves at least half the problems.  All I want is a way for them to figure out I need to speak to someone beyond Level 1 support, because I have already done that or I would not be calling.

[Burnout189]

18 hours ago, WarHeel said:

Aside from missing nearly 50% of our FT and allowing a 13 point lead to dwindle, the officiating was also downright horrendous and a horrible call gave Duke the ball with enough time for some buzzer beater heroics (twice-one in regulation and another in OT).

I had to shut myself in my office at home and "woo-saa" for about ten minutes to calm down after that game.

[PandaMan]

23 hours ago, 1of10Charnatives said:

Well first let me put in the disclaimer that I only started playing about a month or two ago, and have never played any Rock Star products except dabbling in GTA 5 to humor a friend. But I have to say that although GTA didn't really do it for me, I find RDR2 to be maybe the most immersive game I've ever played, and I'm a guy who normally doesn't care about immersion much in gaming. The online version now has 4 roles you can earn which each bring a fair chunk of content and as a sandbox self directed, figure out what you wanna do and go do it game, it's top notch. If you need more of the theme park roller coaster experience, maybe not your bag, but I'm really enjoying the fine craftsmanship they put into their world and attention to detail. I'd recommend it highly.

I’m definitely gonna give it a try, thanks man!  That’s what I loved about the story mode; the attention to detail and the world they built was amazing.  I love history, so it really felt like I was going there and experiencing some of the crazy poo that was happening.  If only Dutch got one more score, man.  Then they’d all be off to Tahiti.  

[Dunn]

Dedicate full time attention to the only professional sports team in the Carolina's to win a championship...the Hurricanes.  Been watching them pretty consistently since last year and going to games if possible.   

[Gesualdo]

Watch basketball and soccer. Thread is a good reminder to dip back into RDR2, though, and play Witcher 3 again. I wanna see the Toussaint expansion.