Blue Screen of Dearth

Last night I came home around 5 and flipped on the TV, as is my usual pattern.

A few moments of static came up, followed by the TV (detecting no signal) shifting over to a blue screen.

Hmmm.

Cycled the power on the TV, the cable box, etc. The cable box was feeding show descriptions, but not any shows.

Hmmm.

Called AT&T Broadband, our provider (at least until we start getting bills from Comcast). After stepping through the menus, a very friendly and apologetic lady got on and, after taking all my contact info, informed me there were no trouble tickets open in the area.

Then, after ten minutes on (silent) hold (thank heavens for speaker phones), she came back and apologized for the delay, that there was work going on in the area, a thousand apologies, we’ve been credited for today, apologies, everything should be fine later on. Oh, and sorry for the inconvenience.

They have that apologies thing down pat.

Okay, well, that happens. Hung up, and we lived the evening without live TV. Kitten watched a Dora the Explorer video, and we ended up talking about vacation plans and going to bed early.

This morning, I got a call from Margie. Cable was still out. I got her the customer service number.

A bit later, she calls me back, fuming. Nope, no work being done in our area. Nope, no other reports of problems. Must be our cable box. They’ll send a technician out. Oh, but it’s too late to schedule anyone today, and Margie’s working tomorrow, so nobody will be able to come out until Friday. If only we’d called them back after 6 o’clock last night — they’d have been able to schedule someone to come out today.

“Um, it would have been nice if the lady last night had mentioned that.”

“I said that. The person I was talking to apologized.”

They have that down pat, as I said.

“They did credit us through Friday,” Margie continued. “That hardly makes up for the stupidity, though.”

So. Fortunately, Katherine has a decent supply of Blue’s Clues, Dora and Wiggles (shudder) videos, and we have about 90% of the Disney animated film DVDs ever released. And maybe Margie and I can catch up on Firefly before I have to get the tape back to Doyce for Friday’s show.

Or, of course, we can just have the TV off.

But it would be nice if it were our choice, not the dim-bulb AT&T folks.

Feh.