Egon Gone and Cyber Conundrums

I was sad to learn of the demise of Harold Ramis yesterday.  He was a true giant and as I remind myself of the comedies he was responsible for, that admiration achieves mythic status.  He dominated the comedy landscape of the 1980s, writing Animal House, Caddyshack, Stripes, and Ghostbusters – a truly impressive resume.  He always struck me as a genuine guy and he was certainly funny.  Bill Murray sure owes him a lot if you look at the movies listed above.  I’m going to miss Dr. Egon Spengler.

R.I.P.
Thanks for All the Laughs

Mondays are tough enough without my primary work computer crashing and burning.  I thought it was going to be a good day, a forecast snow storm finally decided to miss the area – definitely out of the norm for this winter.  My seemingly fine computer told me it needed a restart.  Being the dutiful slave I am to my work desktop I did that and it promptly took a powder – leaving me feeling pretty lost.  It’s kind of scary how dependent we’ve become on technology.  I forgot my cell phone at home one day last week and felt absolutely naked all day long.

This is the third time in the last few months that my computer has eaten its hard drive which HP has rotely provided a replacement for.  I’m no computer scientist ( J ) but the evidence would seem to indicate it’s something other than the hard drive itself is damaging the hard drive, but that’s for the IT dudes to figure out.

They came in and jury rigged a laptop that has about 70% of the capability of my deceased desktop.  I’m stunned at the unbelievable progress of software in such a short time.  The replacement computer is only two years old but the software seemed archaic since I’d become used to newer versions.  I’ll be with this older computer for the rest of the week.

The break while the computer was being set up did have a silver lining (other than getting out of working).  I’ve been meaning to call my cable TV provider for a really long time but have always managed to successfully distract myself from doing that.  Since distractions were at a minimum with my computer hors de combat I finally made the call.  You may have heard me mention that I personally own well over 1000 movies.  It therefore stands to reason that I really don’t need all the premium cable movie channels I have as well as Netflix (bit of an overkill admittedly). 

In the interest of reducing our cable bill my wife has encouraged me to call the company and remove the channels.  So with a heavy heart I was finally routed to a dynamic young lady who I was assured would assist me with jettisoning the un wanted (needed) channels.  I’m thinking we fall into a special category of customers who pay their bill on time.  After looking at our account she politely informed me that she could remove the channels and I would save $26.  She then went on to say that she noticed I was a victim of an old pricing package.  By the end of our conversation not onlyu did I retain all the movie channels but added the one I was missing, upgraded our internet access, and reduced my monthly cable bill by over $70.  Like I said – a silver lining.