Mid-Month Check-In

Movies
I finally got around to seeing both AVATAR and INCEPTION. I thought INCEPTION was alright, but I felt it tried a bit too hard to be complex. I thought AVATAR had some nice visuals in parts, but I don't see why it was such a big hit. I dozed off at one point, and I didn't bother to rewind.

I also borrowed RED on DVD, and gave that a watch. Nothing like the original comic whatsoever. In fact, they could've easily gotten away with calling it something else and saved themselves the money they used on getting the film rights to the original story.

Other than that I've mostly been watching old movies. (Even more now that we final got Turner Classic Movies when we upgraded our cable package recently.)

TV
I'm happy that COMMUNITY got renewed for a third season. It’s the only bubble show I was really worried about this year. Hopefully we’ll get another great season. I figure we've got at least one more good season before the statistical likelyhood of a decline in quality (I’ve come to expect a quality decline for any show that runs longer that 2-3 years, with a few exceptions.)

I suppose I'd like one more season of V, given that season finale. It's probably not very likely to happen though.

Internet
It seems that every few weeks I have a few days where my connection does a combo of having lots of packet loss or constantly dropping off completely. Even when my signal levels look fine. This is one of those weeks. It started late at night on Wednesday, where it went out for about 45 minutes. Then it was fine until Friday afternoon. Since then it's been spotty. Like it was fine all day on Saturday then between 9pm and now it's been dropping in and out like crazy. So frustrating.

Cable TV works fine. It happens at different times of day, so it doesn't seem like they're doing maintance or something (which I could see them doing at like 2-3 am or whatever). The signal level on the modem is fine, and the same as it is when everything's working fine. There's no bad weather, or downed lines or anything. It also never seems to last long enough to justify a service call. 2-3 days often.

I'd think that it was because on Friday we ugraded our cable package, and got a new Docsis 3 modem. But the problem started before the package and equipment switch. (Plus our internet supposedly isn't getting the upgrade until our phone service starts, which is next week once Verizon releases our old phone number to Comcast.)

Poker
I was doing pretty well, then on Friday things went bad. Within my first few orbits, I dropped around three buy-ins. Then the disconnects started, which just tilted me even more. Playing with an unreliable connection is pretty much impossible, since it sucks putting a bunch of money into a pot with a good hand and then losing because you get disconnected and somebody raises and you get timed out and they take it down.

Video Games
Only thing I've played in the last few days is the first SAINTS ROW. It's a good game, but the second one is better.