Cable Ready

February 11th, 2009 |

I have yet another confession to make.  I am a “channel surfer”.  I don’t watch an enormous amount of television, but when I do sit down in front of one, I tend to jump from channel to channel. Are you really surprised?  Who knows?  Maybe I have some disorder.  One of my favorite times and places to “surf” is in bed after I retire for the night.  The sleep experts say that is not a good idea, but what do they know?  It relaxes me, but a recent tragedy interrupted my routine.  The cable box in our bedroom went out.  I called the cable company and, of course, got a recording that asked me to punch a number so they could reset my box remotely.  That did not work.  I called again and jumped through the hoops that eventually allowed me to talk to a person.  She asked me some questions, put me on hold, checked on my status, and eventually returned to tell me my box was ba d and I should return it for a replacement.  I looked at all those wires and thought to myself, yeah, right.  I waited about 30 minutes and called again.  This time I got through the hoops a little quicker because I was learning the system.  I reached another tech who apologized for the trouble I was having and took me yet again through another series of plug and unplug, wait and plug in again, “don’t touch anything”, and “what does it say now?”  I complied and then was told that the code on my box indicated a dropped signal.  The problem should correct itself by morning.  When morning arrived, the code was the same, and no cable in the bedroom.  I called again, got a tech rather quickly, and received yet another apology.  I told her the problem and what the code read.  She immediately said you have a bad box.  (If you remember, that is what the first tech told me).  She said my options were to wait for someone to come and replace it or take it by one of their centers.  The latter was faster, so I labeled my wires, pulled the thing out, and headed for help.  Much to my delight (and relief) the box has been replaced and the picture looks better than ever.  The moral of this story is that often we are looking for easy or quick fixes that just aren’t there.  I kept calling back hoping that the first tech was wrong and that I would not have to replace the box.  However, replacing it was not just the only solution, it ended up being the very best one.