The Random Comic Strip

The Random Comic Strip

Words to live by...

"How beautiful it is to do nothing, and to rest afterward."

[Spanish Proverb]

Ius luxuriae publice datum est

(The right to looseness has been officially given)

"Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders," wrote Ludwig von Mises, "no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interest, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle."

Apparently, the crossword puzzle that disappeared from the blog, came back.


Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Issues... I Got Issues


I'd like to start out with an update on my DVR troubles... I didn't tell you about these? Well, here's a quick summary:


On Tuesday last week, about 4 PM, the living room DVR (a Motorola DCH3416) went through multiple reboots. A DVR is nothing more than a computer which stores programs as digital data on its hard drive. After three reboots in 20 minutes, I called Comcast. While talking to a tech, it rebooted one more time. After that, it stayed stable. The tech scheduled a service call for Thursday. The next day, I received a call from another tech; this one at Tier 2. It appears that the trouble had been escalated. He suggested the problem might be related to the signal and that they had tweaked it the night before after getting the escalation. The unit had worked fine since the night before and his explanation for the problem seemed plausible so I allowed him to cancel the service call.

On Friday, the unit went through 5 unexplained reboots in quick succession. I did not call tech support because it stopped happening and seemed stable.

On Sunday, about 5 PM, the DVR began rolling in reboots and did not ever stop so I unplugged it. I called Comcast, told them I wanted a new unit and I wanted it Monday. He scheduled a service call for Monday between 1 and 5 PM. He showed up just after 1 PM on Monday, replaced the unit with a different model (Motorola model RNG200N). After he left, I began re-programming my scheduled programs. Which irks me no end; why can't we use the USB port (which all DVRs appear to have) to store the data on a flash drive and have an option to reload it from there????

I have three DVRs in this house; 0ne in the master bedroom, one in the living room, and one in my sister-in-law's room (the same model as in the living room). Only one of these (the living room unit) is on  UPS, the other two are on surge strips.  I am beginning to suspect that the UPS/DVR combination is where the problem lies. If so, it can only be fixed by the unit maker (Motorola) because I want the DVR in the living room on a UPS so I do not lose any recording or part thereof.

Though the new unit is working fine now, I doubt the problem  will ever be fixed.



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