Darkavich's Daily Ramblings

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This last year has come and gone. I celebrated my 44th birthday with Angie. We drove up to Anaheim. On the way up, we stopped at Farrell’s Ice Cream parlor. It has been MANY years since I have been there. I remember going a lot when I was younger. When I went to college their service went downhill and so did the quality of the places. I remember one evening when a cockroach ran across the window sill next to where we were sitting. That location was shorty closed down by the health department. All but one Farrell’s closed. I believe the only location left was the one at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. A new company bought them out and has gone back to the roots of the business, they have even kept in touch with the founder to make sure they get it all right. There are now four locations, two in California and two in Hawaii.

We had to wait about 30 minutes in line. Once we sat down, we ordered dessert. I had a banana split sundae. While we waited, there were several presentations for birthdays and pig troughs. If you order a pig trough (basically two large banana splits) and finish it all yourself, they embarrass you with a public presentation ending with a ribbon presentation and announcing that you “Made a Pig of yourself at Farrell’s”. As we were leaving we saw the running of “The Zoo”.

After Farrell’s we headed up the freeway to Disneyland. We checked into our hotel for the night. The next morning we got up bright and early to have breakfast and then head to the park. The line to get through security was outrageous. It is about -100% effective because they don’t search you. They just make you open your bags and they quickly peak inside. They clearly are not looking for dangerous items as they don’t check pockets or jackets, etc… Oh well… One of these days they will get it and give it up. The line went quickly even though it was really long. We went to the ticket window and picked up my free admission ticket.

The day was spent at Disneyland. The morning was not too crowded. The line waits were about 5-10 minutes. We took the Holiday Guided Tour. This was a great tour. I highly recommend it. We walked down main street. We stopped at the candy store and learned that they have vents below the kitchen that pump candy smells out to the street. MMMMMMM….

We were able to cut in front of the lines for It’s a Small World, Haunted Mansion and The Disneyland Railroad. It’s nice to get the VIP treatment. To top it all off, we got front row seats to the holiday parade, with actual seats!

Dinner was at the Big Thunder Ranch. If you have not eaten here you should try it out. It’s an all-you-can eat restaurant with lots of BBQ food (Ribs, Chicken, Sausage, Beans, Slaw, and Corn Bread). They also put on a musical floor show. We relaxed and ate dinner, then we went to ride the Jungle Cruise (now that the sun was down), Buzz Lightyear and Indiana Jones and the temple of the forbidden eye. We had a fastpass for that so we got ride on the ride. We saw the castle lighting ceremony as well. That was something we had never seen.

This was the first time I have been to Disneyland on my actual Birthday. Normally, we do not go to the park at this time of year because of the crowds. It was crowded. I heard they actually were at capacity. Regardless of the crowds we had a good time, because we didn’t feel like rushing around and waiting in every line. It was a very pleasant trip.

As many of you know this has been a hard year. The end of 2008 was extremely difficult with my job and carried over into 2009. What was once a very pleasant place to work turned into a bitter unwelcome work environment. I left their employment the beginning of September. Looking back, I really needed to leave shortly after starting there, but I was convinced to stay and ride it out. This was extremely bad advice to take. When your boss quits two days after you start working for them should be a huge wake up call.

I also started my masters program at National University. This turned out to be a horrible program as well. I blogged about this previously, so I won’t bore you here.

My technical problems got worse through the year and I had to waste months of my time trouble shooting problems with low-end techs, because they would not listen to me and address the real problem unless they went through this process. I am at least happy to report, I only have two technical problems left to solve… One more day left this year to solve them. Yeah!

I received two wonderful gifts this year from my wife. The first was a fantastic new lens for my camera. I am totally in love with this lens. The second is a banjo. I have already started learning to play and will be doing a separate blog thread on my experience learning to play.

So with what I can consider my worst year of employment and technical troubles behind me I look forward to a much more exciting 2010.

OK, so today I wasted 3 hours with Time Warner. Channel 4 Padres hi-def went out on my cable a few weeks ago, but only on my TV. The initial call went like this:

Me: I am calling to report a problem with channel 704 on my TV

TWC: Is this on your Tivo?

Me: No, it’s my TV

TWC: Do you have a cable card?

Me: Yes (Thinking, how the hell else would I get 704 on the TV?)

TWC: Oh, we can’t help with that, we have to send someone to your house.

Me: <sigh> Ok, I need an evening appointment

TWC: sorry, the latest we have is 4pm – 6pm

Me: <sigh> Ok, I will waste my weekend and have you come then.

A week later (this morning), they show up at 7:30am. The guys comes in and I show him the problem. He says he will  replace the cable card, and goes out to the truck. 15 minutes later he comes back with a cable box and tell me he is going to test. I look at him funny as he starts to plug it in to power and ask him how he intends to hook it up? I explain that:

1) I have no free ports in the TV or my reciever and I will not be uncabling anything

2) How is this testing my cable card, as the box does not have a removable one to put this one in and since all my other cable cards are working it’s not the cable.

He finally gets it and then admits to me he doesn’t have any spare cards in the truck. I am dumbfounded and ask him how he can be dispatched for a cable card problem and not show up with spares? He makes some lame excuse that TWC doesn’t like these cards and they don’t carry them. I am just shaking my head at this. I politely told him he is full of crap since Tivo’s are not going away anytime soon so you will not be going away.

Anyway, he disappears for another 30 minutes. He returns from meeting another service tech. He has two more cable cards. One is a single stream and the other is a multi-stream card. We them in the TV and they both generate a 161-1 error. He calls it in and nobody in tech support has a clue and passes him off from one group to the other.

HUGE SIGH!

I do some quick internet searches and tell him this is a known problem when a card is bad. I notice that neither card was in a sealed static plastic pouch so they are probably bad. I finally gave up and sent him on his way and told him to make sure the notes on the account so when I call them back they will know what we have already tried.

I wait about 30 minutes to call them back and get the standard on hold music. It tell me the wait is 6 minutes. 30 minutes later I get a service tech. I explain my problem and what has already happened and she tells me that a few weeks back they changed the frequency that channel 704 is on and that I should do a re-scan of channels.

I do this and Eureka, 704 is back. I had a long chat with her about why the very first tech didn’t know this as well as put in a complaint about the guy who showed up this morning being totally unprepared. (Oh BTW, he had to use my phone to call in because the cell phone he had was crap and kept dropping calls).

The second thing of the day was I planned to take my jet ski into the shop. I go out to hook up the trailer to my truck and discover that one of the wheels is flat. Not a big suprise because it has been sitting for 3 years. It appears the sidewall has cracked and split. No biggie, I will just take the wheel off, go get a new tire and then return. You would think it would be that simple, right? Well no!

I get out my jack from the truck and get the wheel ready to be removed. I am able to remove four of the 5 lugnuts. But for some reason the 5th one will not come off. It appears to turn, but is not unscrewing. It does not appear that the bolt is turning and the nut does not appear stripped. I spend a good hour trying to figure this one out when I just give up!

If anyone has any idea, I am all ears 😉

I finally got around to taking a picture of my new pants and jacket. I have to say I love this jacket. It’s so warm, comfortable and protects me from the wind. It also has some armor inside to protect from scraps and scratches.

I have been able to ride with my pants without the liner, so I am sure it will be nice and toasty when I put the liner in on cold/rainy days.