Monday, April 16, 2007

Another definition

Main Entry: frus·tra·tion
Pronunciation: (")fr&s-'trA-sh&n
Function: noun

1. the feeling that accompanies an experience of being thwarted in attaining your goals

2. a feeling of annoyance at being hindered

3. The knowledge that you know more of cable internet troubleshooting then the clown sent by the cable company to set up your new service...who's currently sitting on your living room floor, 100% stumped.

Details: You are ignored when you offer suggestions that will *absolutely*, ***positively*** fix the problem he's having. And you sit by idly as the clown telephones his Level-2 Tech Support clown. And you quickly realize that you know more than *that* guy does, too. Yet neither will listen to you, and instead attribute the problem to your laptop, your *other* laptop *and* your router *all* being bad, instead of just accepting the fact that their cable box is bad.

4. The knowledge that, tho you are a total neophyte to the world of fancy TVs, HD, 1080i, 720p and all that other new-skool TV jazz, you *still* know more about cable TV configuration than the clown tech from #3 above.

Details: It seems that a cable box putting out a 1080i signal (high-def), will...strangely enough...not display properly on my 5 year old definitely low-def 480i TV. You would think that the cable tech would realize that was the problem by the "1080i" glowing green on the front panel of the cable box and would adjust that output to one of the other available formats that my TV might like. Say 480i. Instead, it would be easier for said cable guy to say "uhh...I guess your inputs are bad" and leave. A few hours of searching and downloading documentation later and I find that there's a s00per-secret, almost undocumented way to change the output from the cable box. You would think that these are the kinds of things cable installers should be trained in. You would think...but you would be wrong.