Revenge of the gadgets

It's been a rough week, downright shitty. Personal problems, family problems, me hemorrhaging money, not a lot I can talk about publicly frankly. You are up and then you are down and the ground comes hard sometimes. I may be on the cusp of my annual depression, have skirted it all year but maybe I am due, we shall see. Could not be much worse than today...

The one thing I can talk about is the fact that many of my electronic devices are picking this particular time to revolt and take a dump.

Started with the iPhone 12 last week. It had the weird habit of calling my friend Retha over and over again, unprovoked. Retha is a good friend and a good sport but I don't think she really needed the newfound attention and for a time she wasn't even in my time zone.

It also would mute mid conversation, also on its own volition and change channels when it sought fit in Apple Carplay. I tried to reason with the rebellious little piece of recycled tungsten but to no avail. So I called ATT, spent four hours getting shuttled from department to department, refreshed, rebooted, blah, blah, blah, did not fix the problem.

I then tried Apple, and they couldn't quite square it away. I ended up having to do a factory reset on my own and then get all my data put back in, what a pain in the ass but I did it and it appears to be working.

The next issue was the television finally giving up the ghost after about fifteen years, our old Sony Bravia. It was a great television but it took the long journey to electronic heaven last week. We have a very small space for a television, had been using a 32" but started shopping for a 43". Dreadfully small by todays standards but thankfully, we don't care.

I stated reading all the ratings and we took a drive to Best Buy. The salesman showed us an LG he really liked. We bought it, super cheap but my heart was set on the Samsung Qled. We got the thing home and wrestled and argued it on to the existing Vesa wall mount without too much bloodshed and bickering.

I thought that the blacks could have been better and the Samsung seemed brighter. Leslie didn't like the tiny buttons on the remote. But the picture was beautiful.

After two days I took it back and paid an extra $250 for the Samsung. We set it up, after two trips to the hardware store for the proper M8 screws and guess what? The salesman was right, no comparison with the LG in picture quality. So now we have to take it down, suck it up and try one more exchange for the old unit. Wife says I can do it.

Anyway, that is not all, the nose hair trimmer also took a tumble. I got a long white hair coming out of my nostril that Rumpelstiltskin could sashay down like a tram cable. 

And then there is the new router I bought, the Netgear Nighthawk. My old Asus was antiquated and I convinced myself it wasn't up to the job with all these fancy new electronics, like the Lenovo Thinkpad I am pounding this screed out on that delivers multiple r's without prodding or intent. It was free but I fear it is not long for this world and will soon find itself hurtling out a second story window towards the hard earth below.  Probably freezing letters due to excessive junk food consumption on the keyboard.

I had heard the Netgears had miserable instructions and were a bitch to set up and whoever said it was correct. Destroyed my network last night. Four hours on the phone to India, could hear the woman's husband chattering and her baby crying and after multiple hangups and worthless instruction she tied to blame the problems on my isp, which I knew was bull.

I finally did my best to eradicate all history of the new router on my phones and computers and dug the Asus out of the trash (after cleaning the lettuce off it) managed to finally make everything operational again. I will revisit the Netgear when I have a little more patience and fortitude but this is definitely not the week.

I hesitate to ask; what next?