Cable Guy

Thursday night:
Cable goes shotty, and then completely out. Crap. Not a big deal, Comcast will fix it and it will come back up tonight or tomorrow.

Friday morning:
Cable is still out, some line must be frozen or something from the storm, they'll surely fix it today.

Friday eve:
Starting to get frustrated a bit, I call and schedule someone to come check it out. "There is a $20 service charge for that sir if there is something wrong with your cable." I say "I dont agree, but come out & fix it." They cant come til sunday morning.

Saturday:
Double crap, I miss both playoff games Saturday including the Romo fumble & panic run to the endzone. 2 good games I missed. Beth & I watched DVD's all day; Lost, The Wire, Hotel Ruanda, it was kinda nice tho.

Sunday:
Cable gal comes & says there is a bad problem and they are going to have to call the Comcast maintenance and reroute the building. "You wont have cable for a while." She calls it in but the Team lead doesnt believe her. Team lead comes out, he says the cable only goes down 10ft. They go down to check the apt. below us. Some wires jiggle up here. They come back up & say they were getting our cable and either a contractor totally biffed it, or they were stealing our cable, they will do an investigation to find out. But it was fixed just before noon and we were happy, I could watch the NFL games.

Right after they left the cable went choppy. I figured they were splicing it again. This time, however, I think they let us keep ours and split off it instead of taking the whole thing. I got my NFL games, I was ok.

Wednesday:
I noticed some random channels wouldnt work that I like to watch; CNN Headline News, Bravo, HBO, Science Channel. I called it in thinking they wouldnt splice it again would they?

Thursday:
Cable guy comes out. He checks the signal strength. It should be around 14-15. Normally when someone splices it will go to 12, maybe down to 7. Ours was reading below zero, negative! He thought they had a 3 way splitter on it. This guy said he would go down there and if they were home he could give us back our full cable and he knew how to prevent them from doing it ever again. He goes down, asks to go in, the lady says he cannot enter. He was going to just adjust the wires so they get their cable for free and we get ours at good strength but she didnt allow his entry. So this guy, being the veteran that he is, knows protocol for situations like this, and I think he actually gets a kick out of it! He comes back up & says he doesnt have the legal right to go in their apt. but he can "...call in to have their phone and internet services disconnected, And thats going to suck for them!" He had a smirky laugh as he said this. He goes on to tell me that in a few days, they will want their phone and internet back and call in to get service. When they schedule an appointment, the techy will fix their phone, internet, and 'fix' their cable too.

So I'm not getting all my channels still. But as long as I know the downstairs people are getting some karma back at them, I can deal for a few days. I do at least get the channels I need for this weekend with NFL on them. Happy NFL playoff watching to you all....