I've spent the past three days fussing over my Cable Service with lingering doubts about something going on in the background with the Cable Modem.
About three AM Tuesday morning while I was working in the basement the TV signal went of and on a half dozen times over an hour period and I didn't think anything of it.
Yet another late night "Service Interruption" for "Maintenance Purposes" I guessed and since I was busy making noise with my air guns and saws and drills and other crap I wasn't concerned because I couldn't actually see the TV picture and most of the time I couldn't hear the dialogue over my own cursing and mechanical noises.
So any way, three days...going on four now...later my home Cable TV System is in total disarray and I didn't touch anything to cause the problem.
The only thing I did was buy 100 feet of new RG-6 Coax anticipating rewiring the living room TV connection shortly for the THIRD TIME because of ongoing signal "issues" we've been having and at the same time adding another feed serving the Wee Pub behind the bar for the new TV we recently purchased.
I haven't put in the new cableing because of the problems, and now...get this...
As of right now my kitchen TV hanging under the cabinets won't work at all, the TV in the living room refuses to pick up things like Food network, the new 1080p digital TV we've been test driving (the one for the Wee Pub) in the Master Bedroom only picks up about twenty or thirty channels with no Food Network or FOX News signal, my TV Card in Server PC is in the same condition as the Master Bedroom, AND...
the crappy old 32 inch TV I have down in the basement shop picks up EVERYTHING that it picked up before the recent strange outages.
What adds insult to injury is that yesterday I spent a half hour on the telephone with some idiot at Comcast in "technical support" who was obviously reading from a script (or a teleprompter like our current president) and no matter what I said or the detail I told him and in spite of the fact that I said I was an Injuneer...
the customer service guy...probably named "Peggy"...insisted on asking stupid questions like it the cable box plugged into the wall outlet?"
..."is the TV on channel 3?"...
This after I had told the guy everything was working fine on Monday and I had wired the house myself almost four years ago and not changed anything except their stupid digital adapters way back in FEBRUARY and AFTER THAT EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE LIVING ROOM TV WORKED PERFECT UNTIL MONDAY NIGHT.
Didn't matter...
The guy either didn't have the brain cells and/or the training to help me trouble shoot what should most likely be a problem in the wiring between the house and the street or in their immense central offices located somewhere in India or Pakistan.
The final question that caused me to give up and hang up on the poor stupid bastard was this one...
"what's the serial number on your digital cable converter box?"
He asked this doosey while I was hunched over in the kitchen fumbling with the wiring which I had neatly wire clamped and tied together up out of sight behind the wine rack beside the TV under the upper wall mounted cabinets.
In order to answer that question I was going to either have to go to the basement file cabinet and get out the original paperwork, or go to the basement shop and get
So I just hung up before I was arrested for making terroristic threats and possibly charged with verbal racial hate crimes.
It's truly a screwed up world we live in...Ladies and Gentlemen.
When I was four years old I spent weekends and weeks in the summer in a house hand built from timber harvested on our farm. A house that didn't have electricity until after WWII, and had a windmill and a Hay Barn and a Corn Crib and a Smokehouse and a Sugar Cane Mill and a hand dug water well...
But no Air Conditioning or cable TV or Internet...
We drank water from a large basin in the kitchen with a communal "dipper" you sipped out of when you were thirsty.
And I was happy.
I wish I could re-gain some of that sanity and satisfaction today.
You know?
MORE AT 6:15 AM
I forgot to mention earlier that what pisses me off the most about utilities like the Cable TV or Satellite or Phone company, is that unlike the Gas Company and the Electric Power company or the people selling you water...
the cable company charges FULL PRICE every month no matter how many days or hours or weeks you signal is screwed up.
At least with the TVA or Georgia Power or Atlanta Gas Light Company or now First Utility District if our electricty was off for a while we didn't have to pay for the priveledge of having a wire connected to our house or if our water service was interrupted we didn't have to buy water we weren't using.
Dammit...
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