Last night for one reason or another (probably another) there was no cable connection but horror-of-horrors and even worse, no access to the Internet! The logical first step was to call the cable company who shall remain nameless. After a preliminary period on the phone of somewhere between 5-10 minutes waiting to be acknowledged by someone – anyone – accompanied by a recorded sales pitch describing their many services and new package deals, a technician finally responded. He (the technician) informed my husband who is the designated person to deal with cable-related issues and problems in case there are questions related to technical Internet stuff to which I ‘m unable to answer, that there were no reports of problems. However, he i.e. the technician sugested to stay on line after which the same offers were repeated, accompanied by information regarding their new packages. As an aside this company also provides a cable phone service, which works as long as there is cable. No cable - no phone. We have not availed ourselves of the new and innovative phone service for this very reason.
Another 10 minute wait followed by the technician's return and assurance that there were no problems that he was aware of.
“Tell him about the grainy picture!” I whispered, knowing that American Idol was starting that evening and I wanted to be able to see Simon’s sneers, Paula’s eye-rolling and Randy’s “duding” up close as they comment to the ‘wanna-be-a-stars’
“The TV picture is bad, too,” my husband related to the tech. guy, helpfully, hoping that it would help diagnosis the problem.
After leaving my husband waiting on the phone again for what seemed like forever, the technician came back and pronounced the problem to be at our end.
“Do you know your neighbour living at blah-blah-blah on your street?” the technician asked.
“Why?” my husband wanted to know. “That's near blah-blah avenue but I don’t know the owners personally. What does that have to do with my not having cable?”
There was no reason supplied and the technician moved on to inform my husband that the problem was with our cable connection and they would send somebody to fix it. My husband then told the technician in the way of being helpful that a while back when we encountered a similar situation, the cable-climber-up-the-pole guy told us that it was the fault of squirrels who chewed their way through the wire. Sure - why not blame the poor squirrels who enjoy running along the wires at amazing speeds like an tightrope walker on drugs. Anybody but them!
“So when are you coming to fix the problem. Tonight?” my husband asked hopefully.
Ha - and ha again! In your or our dreams! The earliest they could fix...whatever was in two days.
"Two days!" I heard my husband respond incredulously.
"Two days!" I repeated, my mind racing to remember which of my friends watched American Idol.
“But…I don’t have any connection with the Internet either!” the technician was informed.
After a five minute rant by my husband at the technician regarding the lack of service on their part followed by how lucky we are that our phone service isn’t on cable…blah-blah…blah...their conversation came to a mutual end.
Anyway, the bottom line is late in the morning just before I wrote this, like the proverbial miracle in days of yore, the TV picture suddenly returned to normal and the connection with the Internet returned. My husband’s conclusion was that the cable company probably had trained squirrels on call during the night to fix cable ‘chew-throughs.’ He could be on to something. Meanwhile, I'm wondering about that neighbor down the street mentioned by the technician.
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