TV Problems
TV Problems
[Cueball is sitting by his TV, holding his phone, when White Hat walks in.] White Hat: Hey, turn on the news. Cueball (Sitting on the floor in front of a computer holding a cell phone): Can't. Downloading a CD onto my phone.
White Hat (off-screen): Why? Cueball: So I can use it to fix my computer's operating system enough that I can teach it to talk to my TV screen.
White Hat: But then you'll be able to watch the news? Cueball: (off-screen): No.
White Hat: Don't you have a computer science degree? Cueball: That just means I understand how everything went so wrong.

In this comic, Cueball has broken his computer's software so much that he is unable to "turn on the news" as requested by White Hat . Since his computer is not working at all, he is using the next best thing to download a fix: his smartphone, via a CD . This is probably one of two things:
He later states that even that first step of mending won't be enough to display the news, as his computer's state is so bad that being able to send information to the TV screen is just the first step of debugging. In the last panel, he tells White Hat that his computer science degree just helps him understand how he ended up with such a terrible situation, but did not give him enough foresight to prevent the most unexpected issues. The title text clarifies this statement with a similar problem- when things start to go horribly wrong while falling from a plane, certified skydiving instructors will be able to better understand why and how bad the situation is, but won't be able to do anything if their usual tools have failed them. Besides, while they are less likely to make a fatal mistake on a given flight and fall, they are more likely to make one in their life, because of the far greater number of attempts. This is especially true considering most people never attempt a jump in their lives, giving them absolutely zero probability of dying in a skydiving accident. This also resembles 795: Conditional Risk : the more informed a person is, the more likely this person is to suffer from the issue they know about.
Computers breaking in unexpected ways, and somewhat weird solutions to computer problems seems to be a thing with Cueball - and probably Randall as well. At that point, you might assume he probably enjoys it. In 1586: Keyboard Problems , he also had a problem involving both software and hardware. 1739: Fixing Problems could very well apply to this comic; Cueball may have ended with this situation while trying to correct a simple problem (eg: channels in the wrong order), and just made the situation worse every step of the way. In 456: Cautionary , he teaches his cousin about breaking fixing a computer.
In this instance Cueball has his single tasking phone busy while he downloads to it and cannot interrupt what he's doing just to use the phone as a remote for the TV, although it appears more that the TV is one of the things he is trying to fix.
[Cueball is sitting by his TV, holding his phone, when White Hat walks in.] White Hat: Hey, turn on the news. Cueball (Sitting on the floor in front of a computer holding a cell phone): Can't. Downloading a CD onto my phone.
White Hat (off-screen): Why? Cueball: So I can use it to fix my computer's operating system enough that I can teach it to talk to my TV screen.
White Hat: But then you'll be able to watch the news? Cueball: (off-screen): No.
White Hat: Don't you have a computer science degree? Cueball: That just means I understand how everything went so wrong.
