I'm All Moved BUT.....

As I mentioned in my blog entry of September 23rd I stated that I was moving. Well, that day has come and gone, but it has been ANYTHING but uneventful and FULL of hitches (none of which are to sneeze at either!). :-(

First, I bust the case of my VCR (and probably in all likelihood the VCR itself) as I was moving the TV from the old apartment to the new one in preparation for the cable installer. What's even worse is that the VCR was also doing double duty as the cable box as well (I only have Expanded Basic cable service and Comcast, oiur local cable company, is tossing out the old analog cable boxes in lieu of the ones for Digital Cable. :-( ).

Next, the cable installer shows up, but NEVER CALLED ME IN ADVANCE!!! So, as I'm playing "traffic cop" as I direct the mover helpers where to put each piece of furniture, I'm also on my cell phone talking to a service rep from Comcast, our beloved local cable company .

They tell me they "don't do call-backs" and that I would have to re-schedule. I explained to them in an earlier conversation that I wanted them to call me in advance so A). I could let them into the building when they arrived and B). I could move the power cords for the PC and cable modem down to the new apartment (I had been sitting up in the old apartment as that's where the furniture was at the time and was beat).

Luckily though after about 10 minutes, they call me back telling me that the installer would be here in 10 minutes. By this time, I was just finishing with the move of the furniture (with MANY thanks to my helpers :-)) and had told them as much. Apparently this got to the installer, who basically dragged her feet by doing the neccessary work on the outside of the building before coming in to hook everything up.

With a busted VCR, I directed the cable installer to route the connection via the CD/DVD Player instead. She did. She also hooked up my cable modem and made sure that was working (which it is, but there's a catch to this, which I'll go into later). After she hooked up the cable modem and made sure it was working, she gave me some numbers I needed to know and then left.

Minutes later, I went to turn on the TV to catch The Fox Report With Shepherd Smith as that's my favorite network news program, only to find that my TV can't even receive channels like Fox News because I'm not using a conventional analog cable box or a VCR (remember, the VCR got busted the night before. Try to keep up with me on this if that's even possible).

So I called the local cable company AGAIN and told the rep. what my situation was. He suggested that I power cycle my TV by unplugging it for about a half hour. Figuring he knew what to do, I followed this suggestion even though I had never had to power cycle my TV for any reason whatsoever in its entire 20 year life.

Anyhow, as luck would have it, it would be an hour before I could try again (I still had some more stuff to move). I tried again and got the same result. So I called the local cable company - YET AGAIN!!!! It was then that I actually got someone who knew what the fuckin' hell they were doing!!! As brutal and as bitchy as she was (her communications skills could easily be likened to a mother talking to her child in a parental manner), she told me the only way I could remedy the situation was to A). Go down to the cable company's local payment center and see if they had any analog cable boxes left, B). Get a new VCR or C). Get a more modern cable ready TV (the set I have now already is cable ready, even though it's 20 years old).

I opted to call Mom & dad to see if they had a spare VCR I could have. Luckily, they have one and Mom told me I could have it. :-) I told her I'd be down (hopefully!) this weekend when I return a backpack carrier she loaned to me earlier this week (even though I didn't need it when I went to borrow some food from them).

On to the Internet - Where OH WHERE do I begin to explain this........

TO BE CONTINUED....