Borderline Fantastic

One week of classes done. So what’s the difference from five years ago?

Loooong. Two hour classes! Two of them each day with a half hour break in between. Also, about half way through the class we get a little break. Getting done at 12:30 is pretty great. Rarely will I get to go home after that, but it’s nice having them out of the way.

Discussion, ‘People talk in class?’ Not so much chatter in the engineering classes. Sure people would ask and answer questions, but never any discussion.

Laptops. I had a laptop for my senior year and a handful of classrooms had wireless. Now? Laptops are required. Desks have power and ethernet (along with spotty wireless). Every prof spends a good deal of the first class pleading with us to pay attention and not surf/IM.

Lockers! Ok, so not a first week thing, I got it the first day. Still, how cool am I? I have a locker again. I’ve already planned ahead and tossed a hoodie in. So far, its best use has been tossing my bag in the locker to walk around campus or go to lunch. I also have an office on the 4th floor. Haven’t decided what I’m going to store up there.

Campus is a different place now that all the students are here. The first two weeks on campus were great, we had run of the place. Now there are slow moving pedestrians, long lines for food, less available seating. It’s not so bad, but we were spoiled the first two weeks.

Saturday morning I decided to check out where the path behind my apartment led. I had done some research on Google Maps but there was no way to know about the paths until I actually took to them. I wound up walking from my apartment all the way downtown. I didn’t go the route I wanted, I somehow missed a turn (Google’s paths seem to often be guesses). According to Google, I walked 3.3 miles to get downtown. I did that in a little under an hour. The way back I was able to find the path I wanted and that route is about 3.1 miles. So yesterday I walked almost 6.5 miles in about 2 hours, for no particular reason.

Actually, it will come in handy. For the few football games that I won’t be driving to tailgate and that don’t end after dark (the paths are not lit, at all), I wanted to know if I could walk. That should work for at least two games. Also, it’s such a peaceful trail, if I get the urge to start to run someday, it would be perfect. I might have seen 10 total people during my time on the path.

Longing for last week, before all the students were here, I think I have found my solution: spend as much time as I can on campus weekend mornings. The place is barren before noon. I arrived on campus at noon and I had to double check that my phone had the right time, there was no one to be seen. For future mornings, I will save the walk and just drive in. Football weekends may make me forget about this, but I hope to take advantage in the spring.

Week 2 ends with some football.

I’m pretty sure I’m the only person who didn’t see Avatar last year. Well, that’s not really true. I know a few people. I’m pretty sure I’m only person who wanted to see it that didn’t and the only person who has friends that didn’t want to see it.

I avoided seeing it on Blu-Ray, waiting for some way to see it in 3D. Likely with a 3D TV in a few years. So imagine my excitement a few months ago when I heard that a Director’s Cut would be coming to theaters. Who cares about the extra footage, I just want to see it in 3D in a theater. Also, I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to find a few people at Penn State who would want to go.

This morning I went to check out the times at the local theaters only to find that it’s not playing in State College! What?!? Of course it’s at a few theaters back home. I had to expand my search to 100 miles before finding 3 theaters. That kills my opportunity to get anyone to go. I could talk someone in to a 5 minute drive to the theater. No one is going to go for a 4-hour round trip to see a 3-hour movie.

Penn State is familiar. I lived here for 7 semesters during school (and you might count an 8th if you count just about every weekend the fall after I graduated). As much as it is the same place, besides a few new buildings, it’s not the same place. What made Penn State Penn State was all my friends that were here while I was in school. A very small number are still here. So while it is the same place, I can’t treat it as the same place, like I have so far. This is Round 2. I sat back in the corner for a bit, but the bell rings on Monday.

Did I mention it’s gonna be awesome?

After all my trouble, Comcast did come out on Tuesday to install my cable and internet. It was a bit of an ordeal just getting to that point.

Let me say that I wanted to like Comcast. I hated them up until I got Fios a few years ago. Comcast internet was always so unreliable. Seemed like one weekend a month the internet would be out completely. Fios was rock solid and I was really sad to be leaving it behind. Still, it’s been a few years, Comcast can’t still be as bad, right?

I called to get everything setup a few weeks in advance so I didn’t have to worry. My first try didn’t work. The stupid system asked for my phone number. That routed me to a department that only dealt with the area where my cell phone is based. Not where I was moving to. I can’t being to express how incredibly pointless this system is. The lady was confused when I gave her the address. Then she told me what to try (making up a phone number). Then spent 10 minutes complaining about idiots who had called in and didn’t understand what the fake number would do. She also gave me a national moving number, so I went with that.

I tried that number and things hit a snag. This lady told me my apartment didn’t exist. Umm, yes it does. I’ve seen it. I have a key and everything. She said she had to have them check it out and she’d call me back in a few days. I was leaving for vacation the next day. She called and I think we were driving through Tennessee. She had good news that she discovered my apartment actually existed. Shocking! I had a feeling that key that I used to open that door was real life. It was not all good as she then complained about the previous caller asking about Xfinity, which she had never heard of. What?!?!? You work for Comcast and you haven’t heard of Xfinity? You live in the US and haven’t heard of Xfinity? It’s everywhere!

We continued on and I essentially had to do the ordering myself. She didn’t try and sell me anything. I forgot to ask for HBO because she made no attempt. (I asked for HBO when I rescheduled my appointment and was thrilled that it was $5/month for 12 months.) The only thing she did do was give me free setup and install because I was so patient when she told me my apartment didn’t exist. I’m curious to see if that is actually free on the bill.

Now to install day. I was home from school by 10am, so the 2:30 time couldn’t come soon enough. Thankfully the installer called at 1 to see if someone would be around if he came early. ‘Sure! I’m here! Come on over!’ He shows up with a cable modem (which I didn’t need cause I bought one of my own) and a giant, ancient DVR. I also ordered a SD box for my room, which was not on the order form he was given. I needed the box because MLB Net is a must in my room. That and CSN are the only things I watch in my room. He went out to the truck and got a little box that he said would work. No guide and no On Demand, but it would get the channels. Ok, good enough. As for the old DVR he brought, it didn’t have HDMI! Why do they even keep those around. I just let him install it and figured I would deal.

The next day I went to watch MLB Net in my room and it wasn’t showing up. I called and they told me the Sports Pack wouldn’t show up on that kind of box, I needed a full SD box. Awesome! Thanks so much for telling me that the thing I ordered that wasn’t brought is exactly what I needed. He told me to go to the Comcast office, which was about 10 minutes away.

I’m not sure what the point of the bulletproof glass is at the Comcast office. I guess they’ve had problems. Everyone was commenting on it. I had to wait in line for a while but when I finally got to the front of the line, the lady was super friendly. She quickly swapped my little adapter for a SD box. I also asked her if I was around sometime if I could easily swap the DVR for one with HDMI. She said sure, as long as they had them in stock. Then she told me to hang on. She came back with one. She offered to give it to me now as long as I brought the other one back by the end of the week. Deal!

I got home with these two boxes and redid the entire install. I had to call Comcast, no one told me I had to activate. It took a while to get the SD Box up and running but the DVR seemed ok. I got off the phone and started to watch something on the DVR. It rebooted. A few minutes later, it rebooted again. After a few times I hopped on Comcast Chat. I was done doing the phone thing. They, of course, had me unplug the box six times before telling me that it was busted and to take it back. I wasn’t too upset because I was already headed back the next day to return the original DVR.

The next day, I got the same friendly lady. She quickly took care of the swap. I plugged in my latest DVR, called up to activate, and I thought all was well. I started to watch some TV and the audio was dropping. Odd. It kept getting worse and I was missing a word every sentence. Maybe the receiver would work better? Hmm, no audio even getting to the receiver. Again, I turned to online chat. They had me unplug the box six more times and told me they’d sent a full reset to the box and it would reset in about an hour. I don’t believe it ever reset. I wasn’t going to be home all day Friday so Saturday morning I planned to be there when they opened.

This time a different employee, but still friendly. She gave me a brand new box. The newer version. I was pretty excited. This one was sure to work. She even gave me the sheet telling me how to activate it automatically. I’ll be watching TV in no time. Of course, things didn’t go so well. I barely got any channels. I went back to trusty online chat. Unplugged a few times. When they asked me if there was a splitter, I closed the chat window and called. The guy was very helpful. He got some of my channels back, then told me to unplug the box and I’d be fine. He talked me into being positive. Of course, that didn’t work. I called back and waited on hold for 10 minutes for a guy who didn’t want to help me a little bit because I hadn’t waited a full 30 minutes. This isn’t swimming. I’ve seen this enough times to know when you have a problem, Comcast. I hung up and called right back since by the hold time I’d be over that magic mark. This guy was also little help, but he scheduled me for a tech to come in a few hours.

I went back to watching DVDs but noticed that the box had reset. All my channels where there! I didn’t call to cancel, I didn’t want them to disappear then be stuck for the next week until I was going to be home during the day again. An hour later, the tech called to make sure things were working. He said it was him that got the box reset. Some stuff was set wrong. Weird. Cause I told the people on the phone that the box was acting like there were some incorrect codes on the box. (I don’t know what that means but I had the same problem on the SD box and the smart lady on the phone figured that out.)

I wanted to like Comcast. For some reason I’ve seen a Fios van driving around. I tear up when I see it. I don’t think Comcast has changed much in the few years since I’ve had them. Same old guide on the TV. It’s ugly, slow, and mostly useless. The remote is worthless. I have to program my own button for 30-second skip? Fios always uses both tuners, so when you are jumping between two channels, they both continue to record. So if you missed something while you were jumped to the other channel, you can easily skip back and see it. Not so with Comcast.

What’s good? Well, I didn’t have CSN when I was here at school the first time around. Being able to watch most of the Phillies games is outstanding. Also, the On Demand is pretty good. They organize the TV Shows really well. I was able to catch up on a few of the shows I had missed while moving (and while having 3 worthless DVRs). I think that’s all I’ve got for the positives. I think I can schedule my DVR online, but they haven’t given me an account number yet, so I can’t log in.

Things are stable now, and the internet has been fine the whole time. I’m very nervous about this first bill. I can’t imagine all this box swapping is going to be handled well by the system.

Everything was all planned perfectly. I’d get out of my apartment, leave work, load my last few items into the car and head up to school. Then I’d be all set for a free Friday to get all of my school stuff in order. And Comcast was all set to come at 8am and I’d be ready.

At least that was the plan. I went pretty crazy trying to get all of that in order to make Friday go perfectly. Then I’d have no worries for Janine & Kevin’s wedding and be all set for orientation to start on Monday.

Things were going even better than I hoped. My final walkthrough at my apartment went so quickly I was able to turn in my keys before heading back to work for my exit interview to turn in my badge. When I came out of work and saw a nail in my tire, I started to deflate. I knew I was stuck. I knew everything I had driven myself crazy to accomplish was a waste of time and worry. I got home and could hear the air coming out of the tire as it deflated in the driveway. I should have just taken it to the dealer, but I thought if I made it home, I wouldn’t have to worry about it and could make it up to school where it could be dealt with.

I had a flat with my last VW. My GLI had expensive tires so they talked me into it. It was so easy (and wound up being worth it) that I decided to do it again with my Tiguan. The one thing I knew was that the VW roadside no longer dealt with flats, but the tire warranty did. That’s what I was told.

I called up the tire warranty place and they were absolutely worthless. They just told me to call someone and get a receipt to submit. No no, this is not the simple I want. I’m not dealing with submitting any forms.

I called the dealer to see if I did put the spare on and got over there if they could fix it and get me on the road that night. It was already 4pm, so I didn’t have much hope. They called back and said do whatever I could to get it over there. Also, to just call roadside. I told her I didn’t think they did tires anymore, she disagreed.

I called VW Roadside. They were slightly more helpful. Telling me they could have someone out in an hour. Good enough. Oh, and it would cost over $60. Umm, what? I wasn’t too shocked by the fact there was a charge, but how much it was. The VW tire warranty covered the roadside up to $50. I told the lady it was crazy for VW to charge more than VW warranty was willing to pay. She put me on hold for a minute, then came back to tell me someone would be out in about an hour. No mention of my victory, but I’ll take free.

They guy did show up about an hour later and I quickly headed over to the dealer to get the tire taken care of. I went in, told them that I was the one that called. The guy was stumped. The other guy working remembered hearing something about it. Neither one of them were sure they even had the tire I needed. They took a look, and nope. Of course not. Whoever I talked to was just being nice and didn’t check. If they had the tire, I would have been good to go. Instead, they pointed me to Firestone a mile up the road, but didn’t give me much hope. Not only did Firestone not have the tire, they didn’t even have to look because they don’t even carry that brand.

I went right back to VW and gave up on all my hope. I told them I was leaving the car if they could guarantee it would be done on Friday. One of the mechanics jumped right on the phone to order the tire and came back to say it would be there in the morning.

I called home to get picked up. While waiting I called Comcast, hoping for a Saturday morning or Sunday install. They were all available when I had scheduled the original appointment, but of course, nothing was available now. School told us not to expect any time during the week to take care of this sort of thing. I reluctantly scheduled for the next Saturday and resigned myself to having no TV or internet for the next week.

When I got home Comcast called to confirm my Friday appointment. The one which I had just canceled. I hit the button to say the time was no good. The guy picked up and saw that I had in fact canceled. Now that I was home, I had my schedule for orientation and decided to attempt to squeeze them in Tuesday afternoon since it looked like I only had to be at school for 45 minutes (at any point in the day). At worst, I was back to Saturday, but hopefully Tuesday would work out.

Tuesday worked out, sorta, more on that later.

I made it up to my apartment on Friday night. Once my day was shot, it didn’t matter what time I arrived. The things I had wanted to do, I did manage to take care of Monday morning before I had to be at orientation. Those things were getting my new ID (my picture looks exactly the same as it did 9 years ago!) and a parking pass. Of course, in the afternoon, part of orientation was walking all over campus and taking care of those sorts of things. Not only did I have to go back to those places, there were now lines and I had to wait for my group members to get everything taken care of.

Not to worry, just a minor complaint. That day wasn’t so bad and later in the week things completely turned for the better.

I had stayed a night in my apartment the weekend before after we moved everything in. I moved the week before because I knew with the wedding it wouldn’t be possible to squeeze everything in and stay sane. Ahad helped and stayed over that night. Ahad also stayed for the wedding. When Ahad left on Sunday it was my first time alone in my apartment with a chance to start to make myself comfortable. I was approaching my first night alone when that was delayed.

My sister was driving home from a wedding in Pittsburgh and was having a rough time getting across the state via 80. She wasn’t going to get home until after midnight, if there was no more traffic/construction. Since I’m only 20 minutes off of 80, it was decided she should just come stay over and drive home in the morning. She didn’t spend as much time at Penn State in my 1st four years as she did this month. It all worked out and she was able to have lunch with our cousin before she left town.

I’m not sure I want to watch. It’s not even in Jersey. It’s getting recorded on my DVR, but my DVR is just about full and it’s getting shipped back to Verizon next week. Should I watch? If you do watch it, what did you think?

A few weeks ago I put BF on Facebook and Twitter and forgot to tell anyone. Both are essentially the same. The Twitter feed just tweets the latest posts. Facebook picks them up. So choose the version you like and retweet or like whatever you please.

Facebook

Twitter

Audio: mp3
Running Time: 35:26
Hosts: Evan and Mike

Making up for our lack of a June show this week we will be chatting while driving through the south and midwest.

Topics
Leaving a no-hitter early
Weather report at Turner Field
Nashville
Louisville Bats Game
Night life in Louisville
Cardinals Game
Stopped at Mizzou for dinner
Check-in in Kansas City
Evan rants about my breakfast choice

Email Us!

Audio: mp3
Running Time: 22:09
Hosts: Evan and Mike

Making up for our lack of a June show this week we will be chatting while driving through the south and midwest.

Topics
Heading out of Atlanta
Braves Game
Witnessed a hit & run
Holiday Baseball
Fast Food Breakfast
License Plate Bingo

Email Us!

Louis C.K.’s new show ‘Louie’ premiers on FX tomorrow night. I loved his last show, ‘Luckie Louie’. It was on HBO and got canceled after one season. I expect this to be just as good. Maybe not quite as foul.

On CBS Sunday Morning on Fathers’ Day, Louis C.K. did a commentary about fathers. I thought him a bit out of place when I first saw him. Thinking him to be a little rough for Sunday Morning. He actually fit in great with the story he chose to tell. I think it will give you a great idea of who he is. Then you can tune in and be blown away for his show.

Am I selling it too high? I’m not the only one. I was already excited for the show before seeing Alan Sepinwall’s review.