Alright, so I decided I was gonna watch the Mavericks play the Magic the other night. Wasn’t a die-hard fan of either team, really, but I heard some chatter, figured it might be a decent game to have on. You know, just something to unwind with after a long day.
Got home, kicked off my shoes. Thought I’d do it properly, make a bit of an evening of it. Grabbed some chips from the cupboard, got a cold drink. Settled onto the couch, picked up the remote. Simple plan, right? Just turn on the TV, find the game, relax.
Well, that’s where the simple part ended. Fired up the streaming service I use. And of course, tonight of all nights, it decides to throw a fit. First, it was buffering like crazy. Spinning wheel of death. Okay, fine, maybe the internet’s choppy. Reset the router. Still acting up. Then, it logs me out completely. Said I needed to sign back in.
No big deal, I thought. Except I couldn’t remember the password off the top of my head. Had to dig through my emails on my phone to find the last time I reset it. Went through the whole password reset process again. You know the drill – type new password, type it again, make sure it has a capital letter, a number, a symbol, the blood of a unicorn… took ages. By the time I finally got logged back in and found the game stream, I’d missed a good chunk of the first quarter.
Sat there watching for a bit. The picture quality was iffy, still buffering now and then. The game itself? Honestly, couldn’t really get into it after all that hassle. My mood was kinda shot. Found myself just scrolling on my phone, half-watching. The whole initial idea of just chilling out and watching some basketball kind of evaporated.
It just got me thinking. You try to do something simple, something straightforward like watching a game. And it turns into this whole production. Troubleshooting, passwords, resets. It wasn’t even about the Mavericks or the Magic anymore. It was just the frustration of wrestling with the setup. Feels like everything’s getting like that. Nothing’s just plug-and-play. There’s always some update, some login, some compatibility issue waiting to steal your time. Sometimes you just want things to work without a fight, you know?
