Nightmare

No, not Tim Burton's flick, but trying to get the new television service set up. 

For a number of reasons -- don't ask -- we changed our telephone and television service to the same carrier who provides our fiber optic internet. The guy came to make the connections this morning. All would seem well ...

But then Tom discovered that we don't have caller ID or voice-mail yet ...

and the televisions (which we already had) with their amazing high def pictures -- which fascinate the cats -- don't want to give us closed captioning. Which we need and want.

Of course, nothing comes with a manual, so Tom spent some time trying to figure it out on his own -- he is an IT professional, after all -- and then went to search on the computer. If push comes to shove, he will call the provider.

Not really a big deal, but annoying. On the other hand, the picture is great.

On a different but still tech front, for some reason my cell phone account that is set up for automatic payment failed to process last month. The nice woman who helped me sort this out was unsure what had happened. The bill got paid and I will just keep an eye on it for a while. We are not sure if the glitch was with the phone service provider or the credit card. There has not been a problem for the past four years and the credit card has not expired.

Most annoying to me was that I did not receive an email or voice-mail alerting me to the problem. Instead they sent me an automated text message -- but I don't text and don't pay for text service. So it was only by chance that I discovered the problem today.

La, la, la, la, la, tech-no-lo-gy!