Alphabetic Rings

First, a note that my DSL was dead most of yesterday. We managed to resuscitate it this morning. The tech I talked to last night was not very helpful, for two reasons: (1) Her English was poor; I had trouble understanding her and she had trouble understanding me; (2) She didn't know much more than I did (or she was incapable of communicating what she did know, which had the same effect). So this morning I called back. The DSL light had finally gone solid, but the internet light wasn't even blinking. After a few false starts, the tech this morning had me reenter my IP address and other related info, and then it worked just fine. The tech this morning was great. Her English was good, and she clearly knew what she was doing. (Average on Qwest techs? 2 very helpful, 1 moderately helpful, 1 not at all helpful) So I'm back up and running now.

Since my DSL was dead for the night, I actually watched a new tv show last night. E-Ring. So far as I know, this is a new show. It was interesting, but cliche-ridden. Let's count the cliches:
1. New guy reminds the old crew of their original ideals
2. New guy has to play fast and loose with the rules
3. Old guys start out completely intractable, but then mellow
4. Made sure the operative in danger was female, scared, and crying
5. There's always one total jerk in the "old guys" faction, shut down either by the new guy or by a more compassionate old guy
6. Rescue in the nick of time (right before a Chinese satellite passed overhead)

There were probably others, but those were the obvious ones (note that I missed the first ten minutes or so). Now, I have no clue how the pentagon actually works, but they got stuff moving awfully quickly for a huge bureaucracy. Maybe that is sometimes possible, but it seemed unrealistic. It didn't help that blaring, patriotic music kept booming while we saw six signatures applied on whatever document authorized the rescue mission. And as soon as they got the microchip from the operative, they were able to load it in and read it and conclude "Yes! The Chinese DO have a stealth sub!" It seems a bit of a stretch that a military sub would have a machine to read a CIA microchip, especially since the sub was mainly chosen because it was already near the extraction point. Maybe that was covered at the beginning; I don't know. It seems less likely that a moment's glance at the plans would confirm stealth technology. A more subdued, "Commander, this could definitely be stealth techonology. See here and here?" would have been more believable than the sudden certainty. An expert in sub design would need to analyze the plans to be sure.

It was an interesting show, so I might watch it again if I'm bored on a Wednesday night. I hope that it gets away from the more obvious cliches, however. Parts of it felt so much like a parody, I was half-expecting to see a Weird-Al video when they pulled the info off the chip.