OK. Granted, I should have been bright enough to realize that there was no way in hell that my move, and concomitant change in ISPs, would go smoothly. You see, I've never had the installation of anything come off without a hitch. When it comes to installations of any sort, I was born under a dark star. I pray I never need a pacemaker.
But those of you who know me well know that my outlook on life is all fuzzy bunnies and lollipops. I would never permit a mere 43 years of life experience to override my eternal optimism.
So, yes, I really believed Comcast would have my new service installed last Monday, even after the person who took my order got the date and time for installation wrong—a fact that was only caught because AT&T refused to release the phone number. You see, the phone number didn't match the address, as the sales rep got that wrong too. But, hey, we caught it in time, and I figured that would be the snafu for this installation.
Monday morning I got up bright and early and waited for the cable guy. To my delight, my phone rang at 8:05 a.m. to confirm my appointment, and then again, 20 minutes later, to inform me that Mr. Comcast wold be arriving in less than half an hour. To my further delight, he arrived right on time. I pointed out the two cable outlets on the wall, and he set out to figgerin' out the best way to hook me up. Fabulous! He'll be done early and I can go to work and not use a vacation day! Lollipops for everyone!
Of course, it was not to be.
'I can't tone either of these lines,' Mr Comcast said, furrowing his brow. 'I'll have to go and check the outside of the building.' A half hour passed ( and with each passing minute, a fuzzy bunny died ) . Then came the knock on the back door. 'Come out here. I want to show you something.'
Now my life is not a porn movie, so the phrase 'I want to show you something,' is never, ever good. It's uttered by mechanics who want to show me some broken little flobberknob in my engine that's going to cost me half a paycheck to replace; or by plumbers that want to show me some ancient, corroded part they have to special order, damning me to a week of cold showers; or by cable installation guys who are about to show me that they can't complete my order, and I'm going to be without Internets access FOR?GOD?KNOWS?HOW?LONG.
What he relayed next is a bit of a blur, something about there not being a proper box on the building, and that I had to get my landlord to deal with that; something else about the one of the lines from my apartment running into an RCN box, and having to get them out to disconnect it as he couldn't touch it; and then something about the other line from my apartment going to the roof for satellite, so he couldn't use that either.
My simple, smoothly running installation now required that I coordinate my landlord, Comcast, and either RCN or the Dish Network.
I was fresh out of bunnies, and the lollipop supply was looking mighty feeble, when the Universe relented. Just as quickly as things had gone south, they turned around.
I contacted my landlord and she was johnny ( joanna? ) -on-the-spot and has Comcast installing a box tomorrow.
I contacted Comcast to reschedule my installation and they had an appointment available this Sunday.
I contacted RCN, and they never returned my call. Fuckers. That's OK. If they won't drag their sorry asses out to disconnect me, well, I have wire cutters of my own.
So, by the time this sees print, all should be right with the world. I should again be spending hours basking in the cold mercury-lamp glow of my LCD, shunning any human contact that isn't funneled through iChat, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, or M4M4SexNOW.com, and filtering through the dross of the Internets, searching for the really tasty nuggets for you.
