~ given eyes to see : : personal journal, blog, photography (winter 2006)

Thursday's Child Has Far To Go
We're creeping ever closer to the end of the week. I'm once again at the temp job this morning and tomorrow is my last day. It's been nice being back, but it's also frustrating being reminded so clearly about how fickle my health is. I desperately wanted to come in for the afternoon today but I did that yesterday and felt bad. Didn't want to do it two days in a row. I'm tired this morning; got to bed later than I had wanted and Love was tossing much of the night. He slept worse than I did. I managed to get in only about 10 minutes later then planned. And I took a shower too. So that's good. (I normally end up taking a shower the night before when I work because I don't have time in the morning, but I didn't get to it last night and I really didn't want to wait until this evening.)

Cable Woes
Our cable is screwed up right now. We've had this reoccurring problem with the lower channels where they're full of noisy snow. Looks like you're watching it on an antenna. It's awful. So, basically our broadcast channels are pretty much unwatchable. (CW, NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox) The snow disappears almost completely the higher up you go. It was like this last week for several days, though not as bad. I kept meaning to call them but kept forgetting. Last Friday, when Rand came to pick me up for the temp job, there were Bright House trucks outside my building, in between mine and the one next to me. He joked that maybe they were there to fix the cable. Not two minutes after he says that, sure enough, *pop* the channels are suddenly clean. (I had turned on channel 4 to show him what I meant by the bad picture quality.) I was happy and it was fixed.

That is until last night. I get home and I turn on the tv. It's so bad, it's not watchable. So I call Bright House. (Which, in case you don't know, is what Time Warner decided to rename itself in certain markets including most of Central Florida.) Anyway, after sitting on hold for about ten minutes ("Please stay on the line; your call is important to us!" - yeah if that were true, you'd actually answer!) I explain the situation to the tech support rep. She has me reboot my cable box. A process that takes a good 5-7 minutes because it takes forever for it to get past it's load screen. Of course it doesn't work. I told her that it wasn't my box but they made me do it anyway. (Considering that it's even worse on the tv in the bedroom that doesn't have a cable box, you think she might have saved me the step of reboot.) So she says she'll need to schedule an appointment for me. I tell her that the last time they fixed it, they didn't come into my building. "It's something outside of my specific apartment," I tell her. And in the most condescending tone imaginable she replies, "That's certainly a possibility."

She types for a few seconds and tells me that the first available appointment is Friday. From 8am - 8pm.

Let that sink in for a moment. Eight in the morning until eight at night.

What is this a sitcom? I didn't think they actually still gave appointments like that. I mean, are you kidding me? Can anyone in the world really keep an appointment that spans a window of twelve hours? Just sit there and wait for them to decide to show up, at some point? You might as well give an appointment time of "February" for as useful as that is. This is, of course, despite the fact that I know they don't need to involve me in the fix at all. They can just come out and kick the cable again like they did last week and make it better. (Can't they look up where techs have been sent and see that someone came out to do repair for the building and you know, maybe try again? Apparently not.) I tell her there's no way I can do that because I have to work. So she says they can do 11am - 2pm Saturday. "Fine," I say. She asks if there's anything else she can help me with and I really want to tell her she hasn't helped me at all so far, but I opt to be civil and end the call instead.

Oh, and the other absurd moment of the call? She asks for the phone number for the account. I give her the number. Keep in mind, this is the number that they gave us when we signed up for the Digital Phone service they offer. They gave us the number and they are our phone service provider. They didn't have the number associated on the account. They couldn't find my account through the number. Whaaaa...?

She says to change the number on the account, I'd have to call back and speak with customer service. Oh jeez, never mind.

Sometimes the level of absurdity is baffling. Truly mind blowing.

Anyway, Love and I tried to watch American Idol last night. "Try" being the operative word. The picture was so bad, I kept changing the channel every commercial break to give my eyes a breather. And if the snow wasn't bad enough, it also kept "zzzpting" like there was a loose cable and it was being bumped around. You know that loud buzz combined with the picture spazzing for a half second thing? Yeah, that. And on the channels that weren't fuzzy, they kept having weird rainbows of distortion in the color. I tell you, it's highly frustrating. My cable is basically useless - and will remain that way until Saturday when they get around to coming out to see me. Why exactly do I pay this much for the service again...? Bah.

Weather
So it's a blah, kinda dreary day out. The weather's certainly cooler (finally) though not cold. Downside is that it's also a grey, overcast, generally icky day. It's also foggy/misty out. Still, I'll take the current high of around 65F (18C) over the recent 80F (27C) and up days. At least it's a change in weather. And the forecast looks like it'll stay in the low 70's the next week so that's good. Not a true cold front, but better than nothing. The weather has been stubbornly warm here all Winter. Even when the rest of the country is dealing with snows, blizzards, ice and the like.

Bits and Bobs
I finally got around to reclaiming the rest of my living room last night. The ornaments came off the tree over a week ago, but the lights were still on it and my cards were still taking over the entire kitchen counter/bar area. (I got so many. It was awesome. I took a photo and I'll post it as soon as I get a new camera cable or card reader.) So, to keep from watching the bad picture quality, I finally took the lights down and packed away the rest of the stuff. We put the tree out on the balcony for the time being. We'll cut it down into manageable pieces and give it to Rand for recycling pickup. (They don't do any recycling at our apartment. And I much rather it be mulched then put in a landfill.) Of course, the living room looks huuuuuuge now. It's amazing how much space a tree takes up that you don't realize until it's gone. Heh.

And....I think that sums it up. More than most likely. But you know how it goes. You get typing and next thing you know, there's a massive, babbling entry that most likely no one will bother reading because it's too long. Oh well. I enjoy the process of writing the entries and it has the added bonus of killing time at the temp job, so I guess it still counts for something.

Ta for now.

~ snow falls on :: miss m :: at 1/18/2007 11:20:00 AM ~ ~