respublica

Too much cable interference at the conventions

We've been attempting to watch each political convention. Last week the democrats, this week the republicans. What has been frustrating is how the cable people have been inserting themselves into the proceedings as though we can't interpret what is happening for ourselves. They have been talking over whatever is being presented on the convention floors.

I about had it last night and found I wasn't the only one bothered by this, many on twitter were exasperated as well. Many began advising to just go to CSPAN where they showed just the convention speakers with no commentary. I'm not sure I even want to bother anymore, cable people believe they are the be all and end all of what is going on for each party.

No volume, he said

We still haven't had our smart tv replaced which was broken by the movers, but having the Roku set up in the bedroom has been very handy. But I had to laugh at Dale's vague understanding of most tech things. He got rather addicted to watching a Netflix series on the history of ancient Rome while we were still at the seminary. Once we got the Roku going this week he was thrilled to go back to watching how horribly the Romans killed each other. That was my impression on the series anyway.

So last night he went up to the bedroom, pulled a chair in front of the tv and watched all this again. Each episode is 45 minutes long and I'd guess he watched two last night. I went up to see how he was doing and was surprised he was sitting so close to the screen and he said, "the sound is really low on this series for some reason, the only way I an hear it is to sit right next to it. He couldn't find the volume control on the actual tv. When he finally shut it down for the night I went up and looked at the Roku remote and sure enough, there was the volume up and down control on the side.

Too late for him, but there is always another day.

I conquered the Roku

I'm pretty pleased with how easily setting up a Roku player was. I didn't believe I'd have the smarts to do this. I was initially stymied by the fact that I couldn't find the remote to our bedroom tv and wasted at least half an hour going through some of the boxes in the basement we hadn't unpacked yet. And, the tv in question did not have an obvious turn-on button. But when I finally found it and got it on, it wasn't long before Roku set up screen came on. 

I did a lot of going up and down stairs to set up passwords and such on the laptop, but everything I did went immediately to the roku screen on the upstairs tv. I was daunted by the time it will take to get the stations we watch most. Roku screens are filled with all kinds of program icons and choices. It seems, and you may know, Frank, but each of the programs we want in there have to be activated by going to their websites. It takes time and I'm not at all sure where they end up.

But we have some of the news channels and HGTV. Also Netflix. Today I'll try to make sense of how these show up on the screen. And, whatever shows we have on our Spectrum account will go to the Roku tv. That's cool. But I have to spend time choosing and activating the on the computer or my iphone. 

Even better the Roku remote does everything from turning the tv on and off to letting me use my voice to control it.

A new tech conumbrum

We've had to make adjustments to setting up our televisions since we moved back to Collinsville. Work has been done on the house and the cable line to the bedroom tv was taken out. We called Spectrum to have the line put back in and here lies the issue which is a mystery to us. The Charter guy came out and took a look around and then suggested a way of using that tv without an actual cable line.

I have no idea if this will work so I'm going to try to explain it here.

He told us the best and cheapest way to get that bedroom tv up and running was to skip the cable box and line and instead go out and get a Roku steaming player. Put that into an HDMI outlet on the tv and it will communicate with the downstairs cable box through our wireless network. This sounds too good to be true and I wonder if this was just his way of not having to go through all the work involved in setting up cable lines. 

I am going to go out and get the Roku, but I'm skeptical of the tv working with what we have and instead be filled with options we have to pay for individually. How does this work exactly? He said it is being done all the time now, we shall see.

The tv hooked up to the downstairs cable box is not a smart tv, the movers accidentally broke our only smart tv and will hopefully replace it. That had wireless the current one does not so I do not see how the bedroom tv will communicate with it.

While stuck at home, try boxing

We watch the morning local news every day, sometimes channel 2, other times channel 5 and we've become fascinated by KSDK (5) in St. Louis' traffic reporter, Monica Adams. Like many TV reporters, she's reporting from her home and it turns out she's quite the fitness fanatic. Most every day she is shown in her basement surrounded by all types of professional fitness equipment. Every day we're more amazed by what she's showing us what we can do.

We had a huge laugh when she focused on her professional boxing bag hanging from the basement ceiling. Rather several big boxing bags. She put on the gloves and began whacking the bag while describing how this can help our fitness. Another day the full basement was shown with all the machines. It has been quite an eye-opener and so different from other reporters who report in their kitchens or office in front of bookshelves.

Here is a link to all of her basement reporting. Scroll down to the videos and one is the boxing lessons. The others are great too even though not many of us could duplicate this.

What's cooking?

While spending all our time in the house these days just like everyone else, the thing which I've focused on is food. What do we have, what can we make, how long will it last.

I'd guess this is difficult for many people, especially those who don't ordinarily cook. If you haven't learned the basics of roasting, frying, baking, boiling, it has to be quite a learning experience. Back in the early days of the Food Network, the programs revolved around real cooks, chefs, etc, actually teaching us how to use knives for chopping onions, garlic, slicing meat. Also how to use vegetables-roasting, boiling, baking etc. When was pasta done. Then there was the baking-measuring, use of baking powder and soda, how to frost a cake. They even discussed which pans and pots worked best for what.

This was very helpful to me and the cooking stars did this in a friendly, often funny way and I learned a lot. Now the Food Network is all about competition among various cooks. Not really helpful. Now is a good time to bring back people like Ina Garten, Tyler Florence, Emeril Lagasse, Jamie Oliver, Giada De Laurentiis, Bobby Flay, Alton Brown, Rachel Ray, Martha Stewart and on and on.

If they can't be brought back for some reason, how about re-running their old shows.

These have to go away

TV commercials are a fact of life, we either ignore them and use that time to get something to eat or use the bathroom. Or resume a game on the iPhone. But, one company's commercials just can't be ignored and they are part of every news, sports, regular programming all day and all night and I have to say, I just can't tolerate them. It's the Liberty Liberty Liberty gang. That jingle is the most aggravating.

I wonder how much business the Liberty company is getting after spending what must be a ton of money on shows and sports every day. They've annoyed us so much we automatically turn the sound down when the ad begins.

The things you find

While going through old boxes in the basement over the weekend, I came across this gem. No idea of the date but we figure it has to have been taken when Dale was with the Lutheran Hour. If you don't know who these people are, you may be too young.

Name his wife, I'm pretty sure many of us recognize the man immediately, but I had a memory slump trying to remember her name.

What to do when there is nothing to do

This was weekend we learned what it was like to not have television, computer and wireless anything. While planting some flowers early Saturday morning, Dale shoved his shovel into our buried cable line. Everything inside the house stopped.  Well, not everything, the washer was still going, but the things we count on went out.

I went around checking things and hoping this was going to be an outage area wide so that the cable people would send someone out. But finally after an hour I realized it was just us. I knew this by going out to the yard and saw where Dale had been digging. The ground was exactly above where the cable line was buried as it was laid from the back of the house to the pole at the edge of the property. I asked him if he'd noticed an orange cord and he said yes. It never occurred to him that this may have been our cable line. He did admit to moving it as his dug, but didn't think he'd actually cut into it.

But he did.  Calling Charter or probably any cable provider is a pain. You get the automated answer which will require pushing one number or other and answering "yes" or No" to a mechanical voice for any number of questions. I gave up the first time since none of the choices met out situation. I tried again later and again was frustrated. Finally I decided to just press 0 when the voice came on and sure enough I got a real person finally.

She set up a time for a service person to come out Sunday morning. So we had all of Saturday and Saturday night to pretty much sit around and try to find things to talk about in a very quiet house. We both found our cellular data almost used up by the time we headed for bed. We've never been in that position before and we both wondered what it would mean if out cellular allotment ran out before the cable guy got here. Would our phone just shut down and be useless?  We did not find out because we managed to squeak by.

I spent some time during the boring Saturday giving some thought to getting one of the Over the Air antennas. They are pretty inexpensive and at least we'd be able to watch local things that night. So I did it. I went out to Best Buy while Dale was out running other errands and bought an over the air antenna. It sounded so easy.

But like all tech things, easy is in the mind of the beholder and in the tv's they own. Turns out we have a TV without a built in tuner which you must have in order to make the over the air antenna work. Who knew? Lots of tv's are being made without them these days. If your TV has a coaxial cable slot, you're good. If not you have to buy some other part to make it work. I will not buy another part. I may just use this over the air antenna on a different tv one of these days.

Technology! Always wanting you to buy one more thing.

Nasty business

Last night was tough on the fans of the Dallas Cowboys and Seattle Mariners who subscribe to Charter Spectrum cable. They weren't able to see the playoff games since the Fox Network channel was taken off the air. It's still off the air and has been for at least 3 days. It's a nasty bit of business being carried out by Charter and more guiltily, the Tribune company, parent group of Fox Network and others. All have been off. All because the Tribune company wants more money from Charter and Charter won't pay.

This angered so many football fans last night as I saw while reading the Twitter feed for Spectrum and the Tribune group. Most were threatening to cancel cable tomorrow or on a rant over how much money they spend on cable and the greed of big providers is horrendous. Most want a refund on their bills for the days channels have been off air.

I can sort of agree with refunds. Why pay for what you don't get. I would prefer to pay Charter/spectrum for a certain number of channels we really watch and forget the scores of channels we don't. How this is going to play out is anyone's guess. Who will give in first?  I'd guess charter will give in, they have the most to lose if many of us decide to go to a streaming way of viewing tv and quit them.

I do miss the Fox2 local news each morning, but do we want to go out and buy a cheap over the air antenna and then figure out how to set it up?  Or, subscribe to various streaming groups and puzzle out how to use them? bleh