AT&T, the Einstein communications powerhouse.

I wasn’t planning to write another post at this point in the day but changed my mind a couple of minutes ago when I checked email and found this adorable photo from Aunt Adie, taken yesterday at Venice Beach. Are these guys cute, or what? They even match the landscape!

And then a few minutes ago I get an email from AT&T U-Verse announcing that my monthly bill is now available in video format — what the hell? — and all I have to do is click the link to view it. They say it’s “an additional way to help you understand the billing details of your award winning U-Verse service.”

I click the link and — take your best guess here — it doesn’t work. So I close the browser page and start over. No luck. But the third time’s a charm for AT&T because now their little video swings into action. It plays for five whole seconds and stops dead, then teeny little numbers start lurching slowly from 1 to 100. The counter stops dead twice. When the video finally reloads it plays for another five seconds and stops dead again, more teeny little numbers lurching to 100, and so on. Play. Stop. Die. Lurch. Play. Stop. Die. Lurch. I waste half an hour of my life horsing around with a three-minute video produced by Einstein & Company. I’m definitely feeling inspired now to recommend “award winning U-Verse service” to everybody I know. (This post ought to take care of that.)

Incidentally, the aforementioned “lurching number” is circled in red in the image above. I hate these things. (And even worse, the font is Times Roman.)

Time for a hot shower and dinner. Thanks for stopping by!