I am hopelessly disorganized. I'll admit it cheerfully. So, I have my credit card accounts set up to send me email reminders for various reasons. Different issuers have different options (one, for instance, will email for purchases over some threshold). But they will all email you a few days before a payment is due. This is great, as I can check the credit union bill-pay site to make sure I've paid or scheduled a payment, and, if I haven't, I can remedy that in time to avoid a late payment fee and, possibly, a ding on my credit record. So, today I got email from my backup card, one I almost never use, reminding me that a payment is in 5 days. Well, I hadn't paid or scheduled a payment, and I couldn't find a paper statement. So, I went to the credit card web site to check the current balance. Yep. The payment that's due in 5 days is for the sum of $0.00. Phew!

Dear Microsoft,

Today I had to, for the first time in eons, write an actual business letter, on actual business letterhead. The letterhead is, you know, a template. I want to save the letter as a document. I do not want to save the letter as a template, because it is a letter, not a template. It is not helpful for you to tell me that I cannot save my letter as a document but rather as a template, especially when the Save As… dialog allows me to select Word Document for my file and even, helpfully, changes the file extension from .dot to .doc. You are not enhancing my productivity, not in the least.

ETA At least doing a -A and pasting the contents of the letter into a new, blank document also copies the letterhead and lets me save the letter as .doc. But I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO DO THAT!!!!!

Dear WFSB,

Yes, it's snowing. We get that. It's been forecast for several days. And you are showing a playoff football game. Even though it's Baltimore vs Tennessee, some CT residents actually want to sit in their warm, snug houses and, you know watch the game. These people do not need to have approximately 20% of their television screens filled with a crawling listing of all the towns and cities in Connecticut that have overnight parking bans, due to the storm. Oh, look, bingo is cancelled at churches in Milford and Ansonia. And Thomaston still has an overnight parking ban, as does Waterbury.

And, some arcane rule means that, even though Comcast carries WCBS from New York, when WCBS and WFSB have the same programming scheduled, the WFSB feed appears on the channel allocated to WCBS. As a result, the only way I can avoid seeing, yet again, that Stonington has an overnight parking ban, along with Thomaston and Tolland, is to turn off the TV and go shovel some of that snow, or something.

ETA In another instance of the awesome power of an LJ rant, within a few minutes of this posting, WFSB decided that they no longer needed to give screen real estate to a repetitive listing of storm closings.

I suppose I should be grateful that Comcast is willing to provide a pixelated, artefact-ridden video signal with distorted audio for The NHL Network for the World Junior game between Canada and the US. But, somehow, I'm not. Out of all of the digital channels on my system, including the other sports channels that they throw in for free when I pay them $7.99/month for the NHL Network,* this is the only one that they can't manage to keep on the air. I've subscribed to this channel for two months, and this is the second time the channel was unwatchable, and there have been two additional times when there was no signal at all (I suppose that counts as unwatchable as well).

The good news, though, is that by the time I called to complain, so had many others. I'm not the only hockey fan who'd planned to stay in on New Years Eve and watch this heavily bally-hooed game. There were multiple trouble-tickets open on this issue. It's nice that they recognize that hockey fans care about actually seeing hockey, not to mention that if they sell a value-added service for $7.99/month, they ought to actually provide that service. All of the Comcast CSRs I've talked to about problems with the NHL Network have been quite pleasant, as was the tech who came out last week. But that doesn't negate the fact that I can't, ever, count on watching scheduled programming on the NHL Network.

ETA: Picture and sound are back, with 4 minutes to go in the second period, within 2 minutes of my posting. If I'd known I had that power, I would have posted this during the pre-game!

*This is a matter of framing. Comcast would say that they are selling me a package of about a dozen sports channels (NBA-TV, NFL Network, channels dedicated to tennis, NASCAR, college sports, etc.), but, if it weren't for the hockey, I wouldn't be subscribing, so that's what I'm paying for, and, if I watch an occasional hockey game or Thursday night football game, well, they're available, but nothing actually worth subscribing to.

WFSB in Connecticut just cut into the Jets-Seahawks game, during play, with a breaking news item: The storm is over. It's stopped snowing. Yep, that's worth interrupting a Jets drive for.

Good job cutting out the last minute of the third period of a tied game for the monthly test of the Emergency Broadcast System.

Aside from anything else, the test failed, as the audio wasn't audible.

From this morning's NY Times

Summary for those who don't care to click: it's possible to eat well for under $50 a person, not counting wine. Gee, ya think?!?!?

Today did not start out very well. I got to bed late last night (I decided fairly late that I needed to wind a ball of rather sticky yarn so I can start a scarf today, as it's cold enough for scarves now). And the college boys on the next street were being noisy enough at almost 3AM that I considered calling the police. (I should call during business hours on Monday to find out what the local noise code is.)

I woke up around 8, wondering why the radio wasn't playing. (Even though I don't have to get up early on weekends, I still set the alarm.) I tried to turn the radio on, but nothing happened. It finally occurred to me that that's precisely what should happen when there's a power failure. The clock-radio has a battery to store all of its settings, but you can't listen to the radio on battery. So, I turned over and went back to sleep, assuming that the power would, somehow, be fixed.

Around 9:45, I woke up again. The power still wasn't back. So I stumbled into the kitchen, and squinted at the phone book, looking for the trouble number for United Illuminating. But, I got an "all circuits are busy, try your call again later" recording. Twice. That's more than a little scary.

I do have a boom-box radio in the kitchen, that will run on batteries. However, it has digital tuning, and the LCD display is broken, so it's almost impossible to see what you're doing. I mostly use it with the AUX input to listen to my XM inside, but, fortunately, it was tuned to a known station, from New York, when I switched away from the AUX. The known station was on its normal programming (sports talk), but it's a New York station. I was able, very carefully, to tune in a local station, that was also on its normal, albeit non-local, programming. Even though it was some Fox news crap, it was still strangely reassuring. At that point, I looked up, and my microwave was blinking 12:00. I waited a few minutes for the cable modem to finish resetting itself, and went to the UI web site, trying to figure out what had happened. According to the site, about 25,000 customers in my town were experiencing an outage, but there was no indication what had happened. As of now (12:30), more than half the town is still out.

I have a bunch of errands to do, and a pot of soup to make, so I'd better get going. But I'm wondering whether my normal stores (grocery, liquor, etc.) will have power and whether traffic lights will be working. This could be interesting.

At least I have yarn ready to go so that I have something to knit during the hockey games tonight.