The treadmill is trying to kill me.
“The treadmill is trying to kill me!”
“Kill you?” David asks skeptically.
“Well, it’s, at the very least, trying to Gaslight me.”
“And it’s doing this, how??”
“Because I can’t load Netflix.”
David gives me the eyebrow equivalent to a face palm. “And this is driving you mad?”
“Yes. Yes, it is driving me mad.”
David waits.
“It takes me forever to log in to Netflix on the treadmill.” (I watch Netflix via tablet when I’m on the treadmill. It is the perfect way to distract myself from the fact that I hate exercise. I could read a book, but it is not as distracting – I am therefore less content. That’s not to say that I don’t LOVE reading books when I’m not on the treadmill – reading while I’m not on the treadmill makes me very content.)
“How long is forever?”
“Between 5 and 22 minutes.”
“That makes no sense. I haven’t had any problems with Netflix.”
“I’m telling you – it’s the treadmill.”
He shoots me another look.
“Only when you’re on the treadmill?”
“Yes. Only when I’m on the treadmill.”
“Does it just pause momentarily… or…?”
“It goes into an endless buffering cycle. It tells me that it can’t access the network. It stalls completely. I was on the treadmill for 66 minutes today. The tv show is only 42 minutes long – it took me 8 minutes to load the sucker and then it kept cacking out. I’d get 25 seconds of video and then it would buffer for three minutes.”
“Have you tried disconnecting and reconnecting to the Internet in the tablet settings?”
“YES.”
“Have you used the memory boost function that I added the other day?”
“YES. I have used the memory boost function that you added. I also rebooted the modem. Twice. IT IS THE TREADMILL.”
“It just makes no sense. There’s no issue anywhere else.”
“I KNOW that there’s no issue anywhere else. IT IS THE TREADMILL. I’m not making this shit up.”
“I know, I know,” he says. But really, he thinks I am. He thinks that I’m overreacting to some minor technical difficulties.
“I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP!!“
“I know. We need to go at this from a scientific perspective. Figure out the variables. You need to turn it on while you’re off the treadmill, then start the treadmill. You need to carry it around the house and see if it cacks out in different spots…”
“Carry it around the house?? My 43 minute morning walk turned into 66 because I had to disconnect from the
net and reconnect SEVEN times. I boosted the tablet’s memory. I logged back in to Netflix. I logged back out. I hopped off the treadmill, went upstairs and rebooted the modem.
Only on the treadmill, this happens. If I want to sit down on the couch
and watch the extra 13 minutes that I couldn’t get to in the morning
because I ran out of time and had to go to work, it’s not a problem. It took me 8 minutes to log in this morning. A full 8 full minutes!!” (I may or may not have grabbed him by her shirt front at this point, my temples were definitely throbbing.)
“Hey… hey… it’s okay.” He smooths my shoulders. “We’ll figure this out, I promise.”
Awesome, I have now turned into completely irrational woman, all because I don’t want to read and exercise at the same time. It wouldn’t be so bad except that in the old house I had NO problems with Netflix while I was on the treadmill.
Later…
“So you’re not the only one who’s having issues with Netflix on the treadmill,” says David.
“I’m not?” Hope sprouts in my heart.
“Nope. Apparently the electronic cycling from a treadmill motor can interfere with wireless connectivity.”
“It can?”
“Yes – we used to be grounded with a battery backup at the old house – that’s probably why you didn’t have this problem there.”
“So I’m not crazy?”
“Oh, you’re still crazy – it’s just not because of this.”
