35 Days

Thanks to Comcast. I went 35 days without internet connection in my home.

Swede, gawds bless her, was a patient one throughout. We just couldn't handle their ineptitude any longer. She gave them both barrels when she gave them a piece of her mind. Starting with the customer service drones who just couldn't make up their minds on which lie to tell her. She ended up hearing from the corporate orifice after sending down a screed of an email blasting them for getting everyone but our half of the street back online.

Here's the long and short of it: We lost our cable and internet service when we lost power during Ike. DUH! Centerpoint Energy and AT&T went after the problem with gusto. We never lost phone service, but went 16 days without power. A minor irritation as one side of the street had power five days before we did. I can live with that. It really was kinda hard to tell a tree fell on a line in the only yard on my block where you need a machete and a native guide just to find the front door.

We just figured Comcast was running behind everyone getting things plugged in after the debris was clear and the power back on. Nope. Sitting on their laurels the whole time.

This week, we had enough. Going without service for a month is just too long. I needed interwebz for some of my work (A), and it gets real bothersome having to relive my youth with three channels and nothing on but the president (B). I kinda like me some Discovery Channel and Cartoon Network. Swede prefers reruns of Scrubs on TV Land. It was nice not having t.v. for a while, but like cigarettes, we were suffering the withdrawal symptoms of the information age.

Swede started calling this week to find out the problem. I could tell these jokers what went wrong. A line was down somewhere and they haven't fixed it yet. She was told that while 97% of Houston had power back, it was a matter of time until they isolated the problem in our area and brought our service back up. We had two service calls to our house cancel because the automated system they use to report outages cancelled our appointments. Finally, we had some supervisor tell us that a large line that feeds signals to Houston was damaged and needed repair. This didn't help us because it begged the obvious "If it provides service to all Houston, why aren't more homes without cable?" question. Another call revealed that an amplifier in our area was damaged and needed to be replaced. Nope. Didn't satisfy our needs to get internet and cable back. Finally, we went back to the line feed issue. This was a little closer to home, but the complaint department lady made it sound simpler and more truthful. She even promised to send a technician to our home to eliminate our house as the main problem.

Again, I could have told you that one, Sparky!

The tech showed up today. I took him to the back and he tested our line. It was dead from the main line to the house. I told him about our wondernut of a neighbor who called his lawn crew in three days post-Ike to remove a tree that fell on the power lines in his back yard. No one reported a damaged line from there. Neighbor was so fed up with not having cable he got AT&T UVerse installed yesterday. Should I tell him we got our cable back? Hell no. (That's another story for later) I told this guy that there were still branches on phone and cable lines that were overlooked by tree crews in the area. I pointed out that these may be culprits in the lack of signal. He passed it on to his boss and when I came back to the house a couple hours later, there was service. I also noted three Comcast bucket trucks with crews working both sides of the street.

Don't really think it was an issue with nodes or amplifiers or feeds into the city. I really think it was some lazy tech not wanting to go into a yard and use his Mark One, Mod Zero eyeball to get a handle on the situation.

For 35 days without cable, don't you think we're entitled to a couple of benefits? Swede and I are obviously not paying for the lost time. I do think they should comp us a couple of months of HBO or Skinimax. Just to keep a couple of happy customers.

I'll have pics and stories uploaded of Ike and the damage a bit later on.

A BIG BIG BIG THANK YOU TO AD FOR POSTING AND UPDATING THAT WE WERE SAFE AFTER THE STORM.

Another big thank you goes to my sister and her betrothed for putting up with me, Swede and baby Windage for the better part of two weeks.

I'll have more later.

Shooter out.