February 10, 2004

Forced Laziness.

My one New Years resolution I made this year was that I was going to write in my blog more. I’m trying to be more positive, upbeat and just generally gosh-golly-go-lucky (my previous blog entries reek of sheer happiness, right?), but looking back on my entries, it would appear that I have not been living up to my resolution. Honestly, it would appear that I’m lazy.

It’s a lie, I tell you, a lie.

This blog laziness has been forced upon me. By a lovely high speed internet cable provider named Adelphia. Would you like me to say it again? Certainly. Ad-hell-phia.

Now, I do not wish to admonish one about the evils of Adelphia, because they’re cable television is not bad, especially if you have a nifty little scanner and color printer to print piles and piles of money. It’s only appropriate that Adelphia refers to their cable television packages as “Metallic Packages” (i.e., we have the ‘Gold’ package, which includes fifteen versions of MTV, the pampered pet channel, the fully phat aerobics channel and the ‘normal’ channels full of snow to celebrate winter), since it takes a hefty chunk of change to pay for their services.

It’s their high speed internet service that truly sucks.

Earl and I have been in our new home since December 1st. We have had high speed internet since December 4th. Our internet connection has been down 26 out of 60 days. A stellar record. Maybe Adelphia should be in charge of the Bush Lite’s search for Weapons of Mass Destruction. They’ve certainly brought me to the brink of going ballistic. I’ve had more conversations with the “friendly, knowledgeable technical staff” at Adelphia than I’ve had with my mother. I know all the field technicians well enough to feel that I could get intimate with them (just kidding).

I don’t really expect a lot. As the IT administrator for four computer networks separated by roughly 100 miles, I can understand the difficulties that can arise with these sort of things. But I’m paid a fair share of money to keep these things running. Time is money. Adelphia is paid obscene amounts of money to do the same. But they have this “Let them eat cake while I fan myself with my money” attitude that drives me crazy. Cable TV and internet access is as close as one can legally(?) get to a monopoly. As I was recently told by Ice Queen Katherine at Adelphia tech support during one of my latest tirades, “we’re the only game in town”.

That’s where you’re wrong sweetie.

Today a package arrived from Verizon. A brand new Verizon DSL modem complete with installation kit. My installation “ready date” is Wednesday. The DSL modem is sitting next to my computer, ready to purr it’s little bits and bytes in my direction. Thankfully, the stars, moon and sun have aligned in the seventh house and the high speed cable internet access is working fairly well today, with only one or two hiccups an hour. At least I had the opportunity to share my reason for blog laziness with you.

God willing, we’ll see what I can do tomorrow! 🙂