Nick Burns, IKEA (sucks), and Shredding Documents Like Oliver North
What a long and productive weekend. Where to begin…
My internet has been flaky this past week and the channels 2-6 on cable are full of static and snow. I can deal with the channels for the meantime (its still a couple months away from the new fall season), but you cannot mess with my internet. I called Comcast a couple of times complaining, but resolved to try and check the coax to see if I can fix it. On Saturday morning I got pretty frustrated and called Comcast again to complain. As luck would have it, they were able to send a repair person over later that morning. I thought that was pretty promising so I waited for him to arrive.
Enter Nick Burns, the Comcast (Company) Computer guy (this guy was so like the SNL guy). This guy comes in, sits down at my computer, and proceeds to click around ignoring most of what I am telling him. I’m trying to explain the internet issues and that my speed tests are showing craptacular connections periodically, but he only cares about checking his internal Comcast speed test which said I was getting 7mb downloads (thats a lot). In reality I’ve been fluctuating between 2mb and 300kb (yes, 300kb). Since the fluctuation was having an upswing, he decided the problem was on my computer and proceeded to condescendingly tell me how the product works (speeds not always guaranteed, etc).
At this point there was A LOT of tension between him and I, especially when he told me “No offense, but a lot of customers tend to be too anal about their connections when they don’t quite understand the product”.
&%^$$%#$@!!!!
Anyone who knows me knows my internet background and knows that I am much more knowledgeable than Joe Customer. I decided to go old school on him and talk geek (eerererrr, modem init string, eeererere). Well, I didn’t go quite that old school, but I did slap him around a bit. After he was still refusing to believe me on the internet, I then showed him my snowy cable channels. After poking around, checking the cables, and doing a throughput test, he decides that the picture problem is with my TV.
&%^$$%#$@!!!!
Before he can say anything else, I grab my spare 13inch TV (we all have them lying around, right?), and proceed to show him its not my TV. He then starts getting into a snit and has to track the problem to the outlet. He then determined that it might be at the building lock box and goes outside to check. At one point, he ended up getting into the building crawl space and having to crawl his way to the cable wire box down there. Once there, he found some nasty looking cabling and ended up replacing a chunk that had been fitted together and then taped with electrical tape. Needless to say, he had to replace all that which fixed the problem (btw, I had to come tell him that his fiddling was fixing the picture reception, which caused him to find the bad cable).
He finally finished and came back up. Lo and behold, my internet was much, much faster and all my TV channels were clear. Take that and in your face Nick Burns. Who’s your daddy now beyotch?!? To his credit, he was pretty humbled after coming back up and was talking to me as an equal and not condescendingly like he did when he first got there. Either way, its all fixed and I am happy.
Whew.
Later that day I visited IKEA for the first time ever. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I wanted to try and find an inexpensive dresser. I went up there and the place was a total madhouse. Although they did have some nice things, there was a whole lot of crap there. People were everywhere, grabbing this, staking out their claims to that, rushing in and out of aisles. All these little areas made up to look like rooms that you can reproduce at home if you are just willing to buy all their crap. It was surreal and a little scary. I’m sure that in reality IKEA is a nice store, but I was so turned off by it that I ended up leaving without buying anything. I did find a dresser that probably would have been fine, but I was too disgusted to give in and buy anything from there. Some people complain about stores like Wal-Mart being a scourge. Well, you can add IKEA to that list too. Its time is coming. If I never go back there it will be too soon.
Finally on Saturday night, I started the cleaning process by shredding a bunch of my old files (credit card statements, bank statements, etc). I shredded so much stuff that it died on me (I found out later it just overheated and shut itself off even though it looked on). I decided that it was time to get a new one since it was pretty old to begin with. After getting back, my old one magically started working again so I ended up using both shredders to chew through all the papers (there was a ton to go through). Shredding so much paperwork with two shredders made me feel naughtily euphoric. I bet thats how Oliver North felt too.
I ended up going out today (Sunday) and buying an inexpensive dresser from a department store. It really wasn’t hard to put together, but it took over an hour and half to complete. I then went through and washed 8 loads of laundry (I washed a lot of sheets, blankets, etc too). The only casualty was that I washed my green cloth place mats and the color ended up running. I now have greenish kitchen hand towels to match my wrinkled green place mats.
&%^$$%#$@!!!!
Live and learn I guess. At least I didn’t colorize any of my clothes.
Overall, the apartment is much, much cleaner. I did have some help cleaning this weekend and I managed to throw out several boxes and practically almost completely clean up the bedroom. The living room still has a lot of boxes in it, but I am much more encouraged tonight than I have been since I got here. We managed to get a lot done in 30 hours time, including all that laundry.
Whew.
I’m pretty tired tonight although I am still having issues getting myself to sleep. I’m going to head to bed in a few and will hopefully be asleep by 1am. I’m resisting taking more sleeping pills.
Later…
