We’re at SJC, on our way to St. Louis to visit a friend and take an Ohio River Cruise. As everyone knows, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single sandwich – today’s sandwich was a pastrami Reuben at the only remaining Gordon Biersch restaurant in Santa Clara County, the one at the airport.

When we got to the gate, we were greeted with an announcement that they were going to try to leave a few minutes early; boarding went smoothly, and we were ready to go when suddenly, the captain came on the PA to tell us that there’d been a small miscommunication and the ground had dropped power to the plane before the APU (Auxiliary Power Unit) had been fired up. So the computers had all crashed and needed to be restarted – as he put it, it’s like hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del.

They’ve almost finished the reboot (the screens are showing the Delta logo), and he just said we should be ready to go in two-and-a-half minutes.

Onward!

Our two-year Comcast agreement will expire next week, so I called them to see what they could do for me. Two years ago, the agent I got was able to increase the speed of our Internet connection (in both directions) without changing the monthly bill, which was a surprisingly good result.

This year, I went in with a different objective: stop giving any money to Fox News. That meant switching to the “Choice” package, which includes all the local channels, a few shopping channels, and not much else. The call to the agent was straightforward. He did try to sell me on Comcast’s “NOW TV” streaming package for $20/month – it’s got a lot of channels I used to watch (and no Fox News), but nothing that I watch actively these days, so I passed on it. The whole call took about 25 minutes, and I was happy until I got the confirmation note, which said that they were going to cancel the CableCard in my TiVo which I did NOT want to happen.

I called back and got a different agent. I explained the problem; he checked my account and said “oh, they forgot to add the video code”. Two minutes later, he asked me to turn on the TiVo and check a few channels. The local channels were there; the channels I’d discontinued weren’t. And the Internet and phone continued to work as expected. I think I’m set for another year.

Today was, of course, Independence Day; there’s been a bike parade through the neighborhood for about 15 years (except 2020), and it’s fun to see the kids (and adults) out for a ride.