Of good and evil

Above is Alyssa in her Harry Potter glow-in-the-dark glasses and homemade wand. She's actually not a Harry Potter fan yet -- her sister and mother are.

Jayne and Elspeth went up to the Holland Barnes & Noble Friday night for the book party and had lots of fun and saw lots of friends.

I've read the first book and that was enough for me, but I am aware that the story is about the struggle between good and evil. Let me tell you of another such struggle ... this one against the cable company (the company whose name must never be spoken).

Well, the epic battle started when the company whose name must never be spoken switched to high definition cable. Our TVs can't handle it so we had to get the box (talk about 1980s technology!).

We got the box and tried to hook it up. It didn't work because the physical cable connection had been damaged. Jayne called on a Friday the company whose name must not be spoken to come out. They said they'd come out the following Thursday between 9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. A long time without service!

They never showed. They never called. I tried to call them, and after hours on hold, got a live human who said the company would call when they could come that day. They never called and never showed.

The Thursday night, I waited on hold for an hour while Jayne got online and finally got ahold of an online representative. He was Alan5343 -- the number of the beast's online assistant!

Alan5343 insisted that the problem was us. I protested. He said try this and that and the other thing. It still didn't work. I told him to send a tech, as was originally set up.

Alan5343 said no and that if I didn't cooperate, he'd charge me for the online call as a service call.

Oh, I was hot.

Finally, after an eternity online, Alan5343 and his supervisor Kim666 (or something like that) determined that something wasn't right. They set me up a tech visit for Monday between 2 and 5 p.m.

Duh!

On Monday, I called the company whose name must not be spoken to confirm the Monday appointment. No, they said after 45 minutes on hold, I was scheduled for Tuesday.

I blew a fuse and demanded to speak with Darth Vader, Hitler, Stalin, Bush, whoever was running this Evil Empire. I got Bob in Dispatching.

Bob in Dispatching was very nice and listened to my foaming-at-the-mouth ramble about missing the Tour de France and being jerked around, so Bob in Dispatching squeezed me in for Monday.

Praise Bob in Dispatching!

CableGuy Chester showed up about 4 p.m., but he pulled in the wrong driveway. No matter. My neighbors grabbed him first because they were having similar problems with their cable and couldn't get the company whose name must not be spoken to respond.

Well, to make an epic tale longer, CableGuy Chester checked out everything in our house and determined what we knew from Day 1 -- the cable box was bad!

Hah! F--- you, Alan5343 and Kim666!

CableGuy Chester replaced the box -- the same thing the tech would have done last Thursday!

Geez!

My maniacal laughter scared CableGuy Chester who had me sign the work order as he ran from the house. He then went back to the neighbor's house, realized we all had a similar problem, climbed up the telephone pole and again fixed another (yes, another) glitch in our cable.

Thank you, CableGuy Chester! We neighbors are going to build a statue in your honor!

As a footnote: The company whose name must never be spoken did e-mail us an apology (which was nice) and we received $20 off our bill, which was also nice.

All I wanted was to watch the Tour when I got home from work.

Thought: Where's Lance Armstrong when you need him to vanquish the forces of evil?