Elliptical Trainer Saga Continues and 300

Unfortunately, our saga with our new elliptical trainer continues. The A/C power converter arrived on Friday and Suzanne spent about 2 hours with the support folks trying to the elliptical trainer to work.

When the converter was attached and the system plugged in, nothing happened. They had Suzanne switch a connector between the electronics “head” and the base unit thinking it was plugged in backwards. Turns out that it was, but we switched many times earlier trying to get it to work. If you ask me, it’s a stupid design that the connectors aren’t keyed such that it can only be plugged on one way. It’s common practice in electronics these days.

Anyways, with that change the electronics unit powered up, but still didn’t function. The lights/digits/etc lit up but it they wouldn’t count down or change or do anything. At this point, the support folks suspect some other kind of switch in the back end. They had Suzanne start taking it apart to check out a few things, but it wasn’t easy for her.

The end result Friday was that they are shipping us a new one of these switches and also sending out a technician to check this thing out at the same time. It won’t cost us a thing. I would say they have been pretty helpful and all, but it’s still frustrating to purchase an expensive piece of equipment and have these issues.

Today, the family also ventured into Tucson to catch a movie and a dinner. I don’t think I have been to the theater in 3+ years. I don’t really enjoy the theater and would much, much rather watch a movie at home on my theater system. Savannah wanted to see Bridge to Terabithia and Sean wanted to see 300, so Suzanne and I split up. I was not anxious to see this movie as I am a fan of the original 1962 film, The 300 Spartans.

The film was very underwhelming. It was watchable, but not much more. They took a lot of liberty with history and made the movie more like a video game than a feature film. The constant and incessant flying of blood all over the place was a huge distraction from the movie. There was more blood than a gory video game. The director seemed fixated on lopping off heads too – another distraction. And I didn’t see the need for the inclusion of non-human, monster characters on the Persian side.

The movie did have some strong points as the interaction of Leonidas and his Queen was very good and built nicely through the story. With some of the character development, history and storyline, the movie had a chance to be quite good. However, the fantasy aspects and uneeded gore, were heavy detractors for me. Sean felt very similar as to me. He kept asking “Why did they make some of them non-human?”.

At least the original, excellent movie The 300 Spartans is on its way from Blockbuster for us to watch one evening next week.

Comments

  1. Our new treadmill is a nordictrack and it came with a broken console (although it worked fine, it was cosmetically damaged). I contacted nordictrack and they sent out a new one (electronics and all). I decided to keep the broken one and use it and have the new one as a spare in case the electrons die on the original one. I thought the ydid a good job of supporting us. Hope you get your issues solved soon!

  2. despite the issues, I would say Nordic Trac has provided good support… still, frustrating to spend 8 or 9 hundred dollars and have to deal with these issues… hopefully, when the technician shows up next week, all will be well…

Trackbacks

  1. […] got a chance this past weekend to watch the old classic movie 300 Spartans. You might remember my post on the current movie 300, and the issues I had with it. I also related that, as I remembered, the original 1960’s […]

Speak Your Mind

*