Testing, testing...

So the transition to cable tv, phone and internet after life in the dark ages hasn't beeen all that smooth sailing like I thought it'd be. I won't go into all the unimportant details, but we've only had spotty (at best) internet service these past two weeks and if we ever hoped to connect we had to reset (unplug) the router every time to reset it for 5-15 minutes worth of connection before it'd go out again.

After many visits from technicians we now have a new router and quite a few credits to our bill and it seems to have done the trick.

In the process I've learned a few things. Communicating with the cable company and having a problem fixed is no easy task, and that as far as tv channels go, I'm afraid the satellite was, ahem, better. But we'll take what we can get to have the high speed internet which is hopefully fixed so I can show you more pictures. I took these with a 30+ year old lens and I can't tell if it just needs a good cleaning, if someone needs like years of photography lessons, or if that same someone just might need glasses to be able to adequately focus a manual lens. Hmmmm...

Glory day

If you've been following my random thoughts here on this blog for any given time, you'd know by now that we've been stuck on dialup internet service for the past 10 years and we've had satellite tv, which isn't so bad (the tv that is) except that you have no tv when the weather is bad which is precisely the time when you'd really like to have some news, especially during hurricane season. The dialup, on the other hand is torturous. Well, it was anyway, until we finally had Comcast (high speed internet/phone/tv) installed yesterday. hallelujah.

The most frustrating part was that the people directly across the street from us could, for the past 10 years, have Comcast but we were simply too far from the cable to get it. We had men out 3 separate times to investigate and it wasn't until the third time this past February that they agreed to bury the cable up to the house for us. That was only after I chased the cable man down through the field and across the street (he later fessed up that he saw me coming and ran) and he let me talk to the lady in charge on his cell phone, standing there in the field, both of us, on a cold February day. hallelujah.

So the long story has almost come to a close. We had to buy a new phone, we needed a new one anyway, and currently the internet connection is spotty, until they come to bury one last cable that leads from the pedestal to the house. They say there's quite a bit of interference currently and we can't drive over the cable, which makes our circle driveway user unfriendly. And there you have it, the whole saga in a nutshell, and hopefully in a couple of days you will never, ever have to hear me moan and groan about dialup anytime again. hallelujah.

Icing on the cake

As if last week wasn't exciting enough, well, all except for the quarantine I'm running here, it seems in 60-90 days we'll be getting cable, folks. And you know what that means....high speed internet! Silence the collective gasps, it is true, I do all my business and blogging on a dial up internet connection.

Here's how it all played out. It was Friday afternoon and my cell phone rang. Kevin.

"Honey! Get a pen and pad of paper and go out in the field, there's a Comcast truck over at the barn and some guy measuring. Go see what he's up to and get a contact name and phone number!"

I ran out of the house, paper and pen in hand, trucked my way across the field, only to see the cable guy go across the street, looking up at poles and wires and such, so naturally I followed him.

"Are you going to give us cable?" I asked in my most hopeful voice.

"I'm measuring for a business line for the barn, your neighbor called us for a business line." said my new friend Tony, looking like a deer in headlights.

"You mean my father-in-law?" wondering why he hadn't informed me of the wonderful news.

We figured out who called who and what was what and to make a long story short I ended up standing in the hay field talking to the lady I needed to talk to on Tony's cell phone. She informed me that she was starting the process and they'd be putting in a residential line to our house and in 60-90 days we'd be up and running.

Over out 10 years here I can't tell you how many junk mail solicitations we've gotten from the cable company and we've called them many times in response. Men (plural here) have been out to measure, only for us to be told we can't get it. Nothing, nada, zippo, zilch, I-know-you-want-it-and-we-have-it-but-we're-not-gonna-give-it-to-you, sorry sucker, is always the response. Clearly it's a case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing.

I suppose this is just one byproduct of the downturn in the economy and the virulent spread of Verizon Fios in the area, that the cable company is hurting enough to be willing to come bury more cable out here for the country folk. I for one will not complain.