Tacos Rule --> What I'm always doing sometimes: May 2007

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Modern Times

Here's an exerpt from the wikipedia (known for it's lies and falsities) article on my home town, HomerSimpson, CT:


"HomerSimpson is a town in Litchfield County, Connecticut. The population was 3,494 at the 2000 census. HomerSimpson was named after HomerSimp, the Greek playwright who wrote the tragedy Al Gore. HomerSimpson is known for it's magestic forests, exotic wildlife and cool residents, such as Mike and Logan. "

While that bit has some misstatements, it's generally, true, especially the part about the forests. From my house, I can barely see the sky through the leafy canopy. For the most part, that's a good thing, as it adequately hides my stills and weapons of mass destruction. But, this past week, it proved to be a nuisance.

We pay Charter (the only game in town) about $5,328.97 a month for cable and high speed internet. It recently increased with the addition of HDTV service. Michelle seemed to think that the money would be better used to buy me a Martin D28 or something, so she looked into satellite service.

It looked like a great deal:
- 30 HD channels, not the measly 10 that Charter has
- 200+ channels, including Sport South, the channel showing the Thrashers games
- $60 savings per month, including phone and DLS internet.

They mailed us a DLS modem and I installed it fairly easily on Thursday, and we were going good. Friday they were scheduled to come and install the dish, and then bam!, I spend the entire summer inside watching high def sports. Sweet deal.

Then things went crappy.

Dish Network contracts out the installation of the dish. The tech was supposed to come between 8 AM and noon on Friday. At 8:30 AM, Michelle got a call that they'd be late, but there between noon and 1 PM. No big deal.

Noon, no tech. 1 PM, no tech. 2 PM, no tech. 3 PM, no tech. We hadn't heard anything from them, so Michelle started calling to see what was going on. She was on the phone (or on hold) with Dish Network and the installation contracters back and forth for 2 hours. Still no word on where the tech was and when he'd get to the house.

Then, at 5:05 PM, the phone rings. I answered it because Michelle was feeling the opposite of not pissed off.


GUY: Hi, This is John, the tech. I'm running late.

ME: No shit. I realized that when you didn't show up at 1.

ME: I realized it again when you didn't show up at 2.

ME: I realized it again when you didn't show up at 3.

ME: I realized it again when you didn't show up at 4.

ME: Then I realized it again when you didn't show up at 5.

GUY: Sorry, I had....(insert excuses I really don't care about here.) I'll be there soon.

ME: No, We're leaving at 5:30. Get here first thing tomorrow morning.

GUY: Um, the contractor has jobs scheduled for me tomorrow. You'd have to call them to get them to have me come out there tomorrow.

ME: You suck.


It wasn't exactly like that, but that's the gist of it.

So Michelle calls the contractor and they tell her that he called to say he would be late and that we were making the decision to cancel the scheduled install on Friday. She, nicely, pointed out that telling us he's running late 4 hours after he was supposed to be here is not our decision to cancel the scheduled installation. Then he told her they could not come Saturday, and would have to come out on Tuesday. She tells the guy he's an idiot and then we re-schedule for Tuesday morning, since "the job takes 5 hours," and we had to leave the house at noon on Saturday anyway, effectively not giving the tech enough time to do the entire install on Saturday, even if he could make it out then.

Pause: The job takes 5 hours?! So the monkeynuts was going to show up at 5:30 PM and stay until 10:30 PM climbing around our house? Funk that. Idiots...

So anyway, Michelle tells the contractor we'll let Dish Network know that they contract jobs out to morons, and we expect some sort of reconciliation for the inconvenience of having to talk to these buffoons. The guy tells her that Dish Network will likely oblige (i.e. He knows he's a dunce.)

Now fast forward to Tuesday.

At 8:07 AM, the tech arrives, and tests for an adequate signal reaching the house.

Can you guess what he said?





Can you?




We don't have an area on our house that will receive a direct enough signal. We could stick the dish on a 6' pole on the roof, and that might work, but a normal installation might be iffy. He's leery of installing everything to only find out it doesn't come in well. He wants us to get a second opinion, which means scheduling a different imbecile to come back at a different time.

Yeah...



Needless to say, I'm watching Charter cable tv tonight.

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Monday, May 07, 2007

This post is intentionally left mostly blank





I'm deleting all comments too.