Thursday, August 09, 2007

I Guess I Could Live Like That...If You Call That Living

When I don't have Internet connectivity I tend not to spend much time at my computer, even though the majority of the time I spend at the computer isn't devoted to making use of the Internet.
However, no matter what I'm doing at the computer, there's always a good chance that I might need to make quick use of the Internet. Say, for example, I'm working on a picture and I decide to include, oh, a jungle background. Not having a reference on hand, I'll do a quick Google image search and (theoretically, at least), voila!
Knowing that I won't have the ability to do something along those lines should I need to in the course of whatever non-Internet tasks I'm engaging in makes me feel less inclined to engage in any task.
And because my dial up-enabled computer is Munin, which is in the kitchen, where I have to stand to use it, I really didn't spend much time at the computer during the week (until yesterday when I spent most of the day working on a picture that did not, of course, benefit from any additional elements found via a Google image search).
At this point, so far as I know, I still don't have an Internet connection at home.
After waiting 8 of the 10 hours at home (and turning down a lunch invitation from Kathleen and not meeting Scott at the comic shop) I called my shitty, shitty cable company and said, "Given that he hasn't shown up at all in the past 8 hours, what are the odds that the tech will show up in the next 2?'
I was assured that he would arrive by 6, skeptically said, "Okayyy..." and hung up.
By 6 I still had a blinking cable light and had not been visited by a tech.
At 7 I called and said that the tech was, at the latest, supposed to have arrived an hour earlier.
I was assured that even though the tech may have been too busy to make it by 6, he would not end his day until he had fulfilled all of his duties (evidently they have so many problems to fix that they can't all be addressed in a 10 hour window). I was told that dispatch would be contacted and would call me to give me the tech's ETA.
No such call ever came, and my cable light was still flashing this morning.
What's most frustrating about this is not that I don't have Internet - though that does infuriate me - it's that I have no real recourse. All I can do is keep calling and complaining and getting blown off.
I could cancel my service, I suppose, and if they're never going to get around to fixing it, it could be argued that I might as well do so, but while I could live for a month+ without Internet at home, I really don't want to.
And I shouldn't have to, dammit.

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