Thor’s Trials & Tribulations

Posted on by

!@#$%^ Comcast!

I use the “ecofriendly” auto pay to pay my (basic) cable bill + bundled Internet. I don’t get a paper statement. I don’t mail a check. Then !@#$%^ Comcast grabs whatever they want out of my checking account.

Mistake.

Big mistake.

An hour after I logged into my online cable account, I discovered a line item for $50 for “other services” like PPV or dirty movies. I don’t buy PPV or dirty movies; I can stream them free over the Internoodle.

We had a “service difficulty” around Christmas. Internet was slow, stupid, and balky for a couple of weeks. The !@#$%^ Comcast DNS server kept crashing. Life was lousy in South Puffin.

I called !@#$%^ Comcast and a week or so plus 3 hours later, a technician showed up. Nice guy. Name was Richard. He was pleasant, efficient, and pretty much had nothing to do since the problem was upstream.

!@#$%^&^ COMCAST BILLED ME FOR THE SERVICE CALL.

Good thing I noticed the charge was $50 higher than usual when I logged into my bank account this morning or I never would have known.

It took another hour this morning to load the “customer account page” and then wade through all the auto attends to get a live rep to get a credit. I really really really think they bill for these things and figure at least some percentage of their customers never protest.

Weeee! Free money. The credit will appear on next month’s bill, so they have yet another chance to use my money.

@#$%^ers.

Bad Timing

Posted on by

Have you ever noticed?

Here in South Puffin I would generally watch “Local 10 News at 6” except Local 10 News at 6 doesn’t start at 6. The little flag in the corner of the screen includes a clock that tells us it is 5:59 or even 5:58 when anchor Laurie Jennings says, “The 6 o’clock news starts now!”


news at 6

WPLG in South Florida, home of Local 10, isn’t the only offender. Have you ever noticed that CBS even named its flagship news magazine for a stopwatch but every time Andy Rooney wasn’t available to fill his time slot, 60 Minutes would run about 52. Now that Mr. Rooney kvetches on an entirely different channel, 60 Minutes consistently stops at 52 and fills the remaining 8 with commercials plus 7 seconds of Scott Pelley reminding us to join him next week for all 60.

And we’ve all experienced the spate of prime time shows that started a minute early or ended a couple of minutes after the hour, just to mess with programmers on the other networks.

It messes with our recorders, too.

I don’t like missing the first minute or two of meteorologist Trent Aric’s tropical forecast when it leads the local newscast. I hate missing that last minute of House or Harry’s Law when Fox or NBC inches the clock ahead.

There is nothing more important in broadcast than the clock on the wall. Nothing. Not the Costa Concordia lawsuit. Not Lindsay Lohan’s probation status. Not even the anchor’s hairdo.

My friend Dave Kimel taught me that at WWSR when we talked about public service advertising. “Emerson [Lynn, publisher of the St. Albans Messenger] can always add another page to the newspaper,” Mr. Kimel said. “But we can never, ever add another minute in the day.”

I know that Mr. Kimel and I can tell time. I wonder why ABC et al can’t?

Thor’s Trials & Tribulations

Posted on by

Google Latitude showed my friend Liz Arden near the Howland and Baker Islands, off Papua New Guinea the other day.

Cool.


Latitude

Except she was in California, about three blocks from the Googleplex itself at the time.

I tried to enter my own address. Google puts me in Elfrin, FL. Or in Marathon. Or, after I put in the exact street address, city, and Zip three times, down the block at 150 Abblesnaffy Road, South Puffin Beach, FL, 33040. Their map and satellite imagery are right for that location but not for 920 Abblesnaffy Street, South Puffin Beach, FL, 33099.

And when it shows my location, it won’t show Liz Arden’s which strikes me as pretty useless. After all, I know where I am.

Latitudes and attitudes.