I love technical things and TV has become very technical, and I am quickly learning to despise TV. In this world of user names and passwords it becomes mind boggling to keep track of it all. My iPhone is a perfect example of stupidity. It seems that every ten seconds I am pumping in the pass code before I can do anything phone. Why? Apple does it to protect me from guess who? Me. I know I’ll be the first one crying if my phone gets hacked but I think we have gone a bit too far to make this a secure world. The TV service emulates Apple in regard to pass codes, pass words, and all things Apple.
I sit in front of a computer, to use it I must enter a password. Then I want to use a program like Adobe, and I have to enter a password. If I want to access my online banking I must enter my account number followed by a password, then by one of those scrambled letter things which disappear if you take too long to figure out what the distorted letters are. Finally, I make it past the four digit squirrely-thingy and I face answering security questions, “Where was your honeymoon?” Which one I say? in all of this, if you miss three or four times in a row the program shuts you out.
My latest enemy is Amazon Prime a fringe service of Amazon. At first I used it for faster shipping, then I expanded the usage to watching the free video content. I’ve stated several times before that I am hooked on a series titled Heartland. Each season has eighteen episodes and I am at the tail end of season nine( 156/162 episodes). All along I was a happy camper, I love watching the beautiful scenery in high definition color on a big screen. A couple of weeks ago, I began having problems getting a specific episode to work. Why? Only God knows. I have been into all the help screens on my TV, on Xfinity my streaming service, and now on Amazon the competing service to Xfinity. There are user names, passcodes, passwords, and security id’s on all of them. Reading computerese on the help screens easily takes an hour just to find a sentence that will point at some trick they use to get around a problem. I don’t have enough hours left in my life to be spending them on technology that fails.
Last night I resorted to using Chat on Xfinity. When I hear the word chat I expect to speak with a real live human being. Instead I get to type my questions and a computer interprets my question to give me a stupid answer(artificial intelligence means no intelligence, and even less common sense). I’m positive that if I eventually connect with a human it will be a British-english speaking high pitched voice coming at me from India. Nine times out of ten, I apologize to them and ask them to speak more slowly and to enunciate their words because they are speaking to a deaf man. The the fast talking voice will begin interrogating me to determine if I know my name and address, phone number, last four digits of my Social Security number and where I spent my honeymoon before he asks me what my problem is.
This afternoon, I was prepared to spend two hours with my laptop on my lap, and the TV remote in my hand to finally figure something out. I went through the process to connect to my favorite series and everything worked beautifully. Why? Only God knows. The real test will come tonight when I turn on my nightly episode of Heartland. The real question is will I watch on the big TV, or will I be forced to watch on my laptop which by the way operates flawlessly in very few button pushes to get me to my program. Why? Only God knows.
Filed under: Aging, Biography, family, Technology | Tagged: Amazon Prime, Heartland, Streaming | 3 Comments »
