Bundles of Fun

I don't have a lot to complain about. But every now and again, some minor annoyance combines with another and I have an irritating situation on my hands.

Annoyance #1

When you have young kids, as I do, it is inevitable that they will figure out how to use the TV remote control. It must also be assumed that they will drop the remote control on the floor, throw it across the room, spill stuff on it and harm it in other, unforeseen ways.

My remote control has been taking abuse for a couple of years. At first, the plastic end-piece was knocked off and replaced a few dozen times. The piece was then broken and only partially replaced. I'm not sure what happened next, but the piece has not been seen in months and the internal workings of my remote control are now exposed. I have learned that exposed remote control pieces have a very short shelf-life when thrown, dropped and dunked.

For a while, I carried on, sadly pointing my remote at my television, looking as though I was stabbing the air with a broken beer bottle. Two days ago, the stabbing no longer changed anything and I admitted defeat.

This wouldn't be such a big problem, if it weren't for...

Annoyance #2

In the past couple of weeks, Rogers Cable launched a new sports station called Sportsnet ONE. It seems to exist for the sole purpose of televising Blue Jays games and carries what feels like every other game on the schedule. The station is being offered as a free preview at the moment, but someday soon I will be asked to pay if I want to receive it as part of my bundle.

I know that it will not be included in one of my existing bundles as this is never how it works with Rogers. They will figure out a way to combine this one station, which I must have, with dozens of channels I will never watch. Someday it will be discovered that Rogers only agreed to carry these additional channels in exchange for the exact location of the holy grail. I will buy the new bundle and I will hear call centre employees snickering at me as I do so.

Why this is such an annoying situation for me right now is that the new channel is #394. When I had a remote control (even the broken beer bottle version), this was no problem. But last night as I stood at my set, pressing channel up to go from channel three to 394, I was not a happy guy.

At least it was a good game...oh wait, no it wasn't. The Jays lost badly to a horrible Baltimore Orioles squad.

If I hadn't invested so much just to see the game in the first place, I'd have changed the channel and spared myself the misery.