another ode to incompetancy

here are things that have annoyed me lately.

* i have all my CDs (i own hundreds) copied into windows media player, so that if i want i can just have my computer play all my music on shuffle. i own the CDs, i have the right to play them. fine. it took quite some time to copy them all in last year, but once i did, i was set.

brother got me an ipod for christmas, which i'm totally pumped about. however, ipods don't accept windows media player files, so i need all my music to go into itunes. one would hope that i could just convert all the files already on my computer, but no such luck. when you copy things into windows media player direct from CD, windows media player marks them as "protected" and doesn't let you convert them to anything else. so guess what i get to do this week? that's right, i'm copying my whole CD library into itunes, one disc at a time again. itunes copies slower than windows media player and i like the windows media player interface better, but itunes is a means to an end to use the gadget i've been waiting for awhile to get... after 2.5 days of sticking a CD in to copy to itunes every time i walk into my room i've made it nearly through 1/3 of my collection... but time consuming indeed. if you *own* the files, why have the powers that be made it impossible to convert the files???

* the math department told me on wednesday that i was reassigned to teach calc 3, and all day i've still been getting emails about teaching calc 1... the new semester starts in a week and a half... i really should know the correct info by now and i don't... i emailed the dept. chair and asked for the straight story... we'll see if it works. (correction: the dept. chair just wrote me back as i typed this explaining concisely why i'm getting info about the old assignment AND the new... he's not incompetant... university politics are)

* cablevision... my internet connection was on for 30 minutes, off for 30 minutes all day tuesday... when i first came back, i couldn't run it through a splitter and rewired cable so that it came in here from colleen's room... i emailed customer support on wednesday to say "here's what's going on, any thoughts?" they replied that my house was giving "weak signals", and i should call them live to troubleshoot the problem. after 20 minutes on hold, a customer service rep answered, and tried to be helpful, but it was an infuriating phone call.

since we got cable and internet from them before we had a home phone line, the number they have as the main number for our house is colleen's MN cell phone. once we figured that out so they could pull up the account, he asked all kinds of things to check (the things that were repeated ad nauseum by the electronic voice you hear while on hold for 20 minutes), and i told him that that wasn't the problem and i'd tried them all.

he finally did agree with email help (which was efficient and concise) and said that my signals were weak, and did i have fuzziness on channels 2-5, which i do, but not bad enough to have gotten upset about it and call... he said most likely it's a problem with a bad splitter somewhere in the house and a tech would come out tomorrow to fix it.

problems? the only time frame they could give me for tomorrow is 8am -6pm. that's a 10 hour window i'm supposed to be on call to let a cablevision tech into my house. i'm on altar guild at church this week, so i'll be half an hour south of here in old bridge from 8:30-9:30 and i'll be driving there from 8-8:30 and back from 9:30-10. if they come before 10, they're just going to have to wait (i called my brother, who installs and does repairs for dish network in TN and he said customers periodically do that to him and if you're a tech, especially working with a 10 hour window, you understand that people have lives) ok... so if they call while i'm in old bridge i'll tell them something came up and i'll be home from 10 onwards, and just cross my fingers that they call after that.

even though i gave them our house phone and my cell phone to contact me on, the customer service rep insisted that they'd call colleen's cell first because it's the main number on record for the house... i told them they'd get my roommate who is currently in MN, but he said that's what they'd do anyhow. oi.

mostly, if i call someone for help, i don't want them to talk to me like i'm clueless, or to give me a runaround about times. i'm home alone this week -- as if i can guarantee to be home for 10 consecutive hours just waiting on the phone? i'm willing to do that for 8 hours to be nice, but i have responsibilities too... and to not be smart enough to make a note that the tech should call a NJ number instead of a MN number to do a repair in NJ... oi. brother even said the call sounded ridiculous, and he's in the TV business. ergh.

lunch, then study time... eric and me are having a pizza party tonight. :) time to learn more about syzygies in the meantime.