big excitement

Lightning struck near our house on Friday afternoon. All is well now, except for a dead VCR, but it fried the phone and the internet connections. Thankfully the television feed on the same cable continued, allowing me to continue my World Cup watching bliss, although the colors got quite surreal as the TV processed the power surge.

We got phones back on Saturday afternoon. That transformer box had been blown well into the next door neighbors' yard and everything between the main line and the house had pretty much melted. Friday afternoon is apparently the time nature prefers to do stuff like this. It took a little while but the customer service from Verizon was ace. It also marks the first time in my life that I got through a voice automated customer service call without screaming into the phone at some point that I want to talk to a real person.

Figuring out the internet problem was more problematic. After five calls to both Dell and Time Warner we finally figured out by late Saturday afternoon that it was the modem port in the broadband converter box that had died. Unfortunately slack ass Time Warner didn't have any options to replace it until Monday morning. Which would have been more bearble if they hadn't lied to me several times about it, which included a useless trip by Pam to their offices where she found out that no they closed at 1pm, not 6pm as we were told. Government sanctioned monopolies blow chunks. I am now more determined than ever to leave the clutches of TWC the very moment we have competition for local cable service.

My Bombay connection at Dell is far more satisfying. I have had nothing but the most pleasant of customer service experiences with them, and have learned much about life in Bombay during those pauses while waiting for one computer or another to finish doing something. For example, it was amusing to hear they laugh openly about the politically correct attempt to rename their city "Mumbai."