Rant #2.039: Hyperactive

First, congratulations to Israel, and congratulations to our President.

His bold move has simply stated the obvious: Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, has been the capital of Israel for generations, and will be the capital of Israel hopefully forever.

And also, congratulations to the Palestinians, who, in their days of rage, demonstrated once again to the world why they cannot be dealt with, why they are barbarians, why they are like spoiled children who don't get their way, and why, due to their behavior, there will probably be no peace in the Middle East in the foreseeable future.

Anyway, yesterday was a difficult day for me in particular, but for my family in general.

Due to a number of circumstances, we had to get the entire house retrofitted for our phone, Internet and television service, and let me tell you, while I didn't do the actual work myself--a repairman did it of course, and he worked as hard as can be to do it over a span of about five or six hours--the entire day played on my head, worse than anything I have experienced in a long while.

I had to take the day off from work to begin with, and even though work for me has been slow as molasses lately, I did not want to waste a day where I would be stuck in the house the entire day, which I pretty much was.

The length of the work also forced me to miss my allergy doctor appointment, and my allergies have not been good with this up and down weather. Now we are supposed to get snow after experiencing 60 degree temperatures as recently as Wednesday. This has played havoc with my allergies, and I was hoping to get my shots yesterday, but it simply wasn't meant to be.

I basically was stuck in the house yesterday, without TV, without Internet, and without phone, for the entire day.

Heck, people are worse off, I sure know that, but at least for me, having pretty much nothing to do for the entire day, except eat my meals, get my son off to work, read the newspaper and stare at the walls, wasn't that easy.

It wasn't his fault, but the workman also came about an hour late, which didn't help matters, but I have to say, it appears he did a fine job.

Everything is working, including my son's new TV, which he hooked up to the new system with ease.

The aftermath of this day was that I had to hook up all my devices to the new system, and let me tell you, hooking up about 15 devices isn't as easy as typing in the new code we have.

I really didn't have a problem with any of them, except with the bulk of time it took to do each one, but I did have a problem with our Dot, because Ms. Alexa would not cooperate with me in setting her up.

I tried and tried, but this thing simply would not hook up to the Internet.

My wife saved the day. After she came home from work, she remembered that the setup was through her own tablet, and once we got that going, Alexa cooperated.

Alexa has gotten a bit uppity with me lately, anyway. The other day, after I asked her a routine question, she actually had the audacity to tell me that she wasn't going to listen to me anymore, and she turned off until the next question I asked her.

Yes, it has come down to that, me actually talking to such a device as if it were human.

Anyway, I have connected almost all of our devices to the Internet, except my parents' own Dot--I did not want to go through all that again--and my son's new Xbox One, which I will have to deal with over this weekend.

The gaming unit was his Hanukkah present for this year--he bought the TV himself, and got a very, very good deal with it--and we gave him his present early because we anticipated problems, and we were right about that, necessitating a new TV.

But whatever the case, I will get to hooking this up over the weekend, hopefully, and then everything can be hunky dory once again.

It was a busy day, just about all inside the house, and it kept me going, and yes, I conked out on the couch not only during the day for about five minutes, but in the evening, and I slept fairly well, I am happy to say.

So onward and upward ... we are connected, we are operational, and ultimately, we are happy.

That is all that counts.

Speak to you again on Monday. Have a great weekend.