MACROBLOCKING

202 – Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Good ole Ted! Ted is my Brighthouse cable TV tech - we desperately needed him today! To get Ted, you have to schedule an appointment with him at least four days in advance – much like your doctor, except Ted still comes to your house. As I explained to my female customer service representative when I spoke to her earlier, “The picture is flickering and bouncing all over the place in boxes and rectangles and it sounds like the television set is gurgling under water”. She did not understand my layman’s description, but graciously took down my explanation for the work order. A short while ago, when I turned on the set to show Ted, it took him all of two nanoseconds to announce that the problem was ‘macro-blocking in the video matrix’ – okay, so I felt about an inch tall and as dumb as a box of rocks – why didn’t I know that? I am certain that if I had told my phone contact that the real problem was ‘macro-blocking’ that she could have told me over the phone how I could fix the darned thing! About the time I think that I am getting up to speed on some of this techno-tronic jargon, along comes a well-intentioned Ted and, whoosh, I am again swept back under the carpet of enlightenment and relegated to the ranks of ignorance – though in excellent company, I might add. But this was a good thing – it forced me to go online and query ‘macro-blocking’ where I encountered 487,692 opportunities to educate myself and creep up the ladder of illumination, much in the same way I challenge some of my readers at times when I use unfamiliar words and force them to ‘look it up’! It is never my intent to brush any under the aforementioned rug – it is only my writing style to colorize the language with journalistic sanguinity.

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