Happy Whatever!

To all of my friends who are not teachers, Happy Independence Day! I hope you are having a restful and relaxing day off. To those of you who are teachers, Happy Wednesday! I hope you weren't planning on going to the bank or the post office today. I know I'm the big History Teacher and all, but isn't there some way that we could move July 4th to sometime in April when I need a good three day weekend?

So, I've developed a new pet peeve: Upgrades that aren't upgrades! Last week I got a call from Dish Network saying that because of "improvements" that they were making to my service, I would need to get a new receiver to keep all of my HD channels. Before I could debate the logic of an improvement that placed a new burden on me, the operator explained that they would send the new receiver for free. Okay, not bad. Yesterday, I finally got around to hooking up the new receiver, and that is when everything fell apart. I can't get a picture on the TV, although the audio works just fine. After spending 45 minutes on the phone with the technician, we determined that I have a "LNB line drift", which the technician assured me was a pre-exisiting problem and not unique to the new receiver. Of course, he really couldn't explain why I had no problem with seeing TV with the old receiver. Worse yet, we have always been able to tape three things with the old receiver, but now can only do two. So, yeah, upgrades that are in no way an upgrade.

To keep me from losing my mind trying to fix the TV problem, Jennifer and I went out to the movies last night and saw Evan Almighty. I know it has received some negative reviews, but I really enjoyed it. It was as close as we will likely get to a mainstream Christian movie. There were some very positive, faith-promoting messages, and it was funny as well. I know my opinion doesn't carry a lot of weight with some of you when it comes to entertainment, but you really ought to catch it while it is still in theaters.