I rebooted the Cable Box before I called TWC, and I called the Automated help line and it was reset again. After that did not work, I spoke to Albert.

Honestly, It’s people like Albert that keep me with Time Warner Cable. He had me reset it again by unpluging it, which did not work. The earliest he a was able to get someone out here is on Friday, but he was able to Credit me for the down time.

He was professional, polite and very helpful and he’s the reason why I’m sticking with Time Warner Cable for now.

Music I’m listening to now:
Nothing at the moment.

Naturally, Time Warner Cable had other ideas.

There I am, having my coffee, watching the News, when the cable starts blinking in and out. Again. For close to 15 minutes.

Naturally, I call Time Warner Cable and the best they can do is send someone next Saturday.

I am so ditching Time Warner Cable ASAP.

Music I’m listening to now:
Nothing at the moment.

• Finished the Oil to Gas conversion. Our OLD oil burner was installed in 1952 and designed in the 1920′s. Needless to say, it was expensive to run, especially in winter. I’ll write up a post on that exclusively later on. We used John Sideris Plumbing to do the work and we’re very happy with the work and the results.
• Attempted 3 times to have Time Warner Cable come and fix our Cable issues. After blowing off TWO appointments and arriving nearly an hour LATE to the THIRD appointment, they “diagnosed” the issue and left within 10 minutes. My wife called me after they left and I called TWC and got them to go back. The Technician insists there is no problem and that the screen going blank is “normal” and happens “occasionally”. The problem is, the issue is intermittent and unpredictable. Explaining that to the technician was an complete waste of time and he frankly did not care or want to hear it. As soon as humanly possible, we are switching our Cable TV service to Verizon. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had issues with Verizon too, but after all the issues I’ve had the last few months with TWC, I’m willing to give it a chance.
• Work is fun. We had an outage on Friday night that took quite a while to resolve. I was not able to leave work till 9:00pm. That in itself was bad, but I had to be in Princeton New Jersey by 7:30am the next day. Since I was late last time I had to go to Princeton, I left my house at 5:00am and got to work at 6:30am (Better early than late). That actually worked well, as I was able to get a good breakfast, relax and just jump right into the work that needed to be done. Thanks to my co-workers, everything went great (I mostly had a support role), but I was not able to leave till 7:00pm for a 2 hour drive to get home. Now on Sunday, I’m very tired. I’m glad days like this are few and far between.
• We recorded the Olympic Opening ceremony on our DVR (Only one Blip in the Recording! “Normal” right???) for viewing later. After seeing it, my wife and I could not help but think: The Next City to host the Olympics can’t possibly top that. You can see some fantastic photos here at Boston.com and here at the Official web sight, en.beijing2008.cn.

Other than that, life is pretty good. Mostly, we are taking it easy, watching the Olympics. I was able to record “Shoot ‘em up” on the DVR this week. I’m looking forward to seeing it as both Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti are great.

Music I’m listening to now:
Nothing at the moment. I’m watching “Shoot ‘em Up“, With Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti and Monica Bellucci. It’s a great Action film and Lots of fun.

Since I’m stuck at home and I’ve also been having spotty performance on our Cable TV for at least 2 weeks, I scheduled an appointment with Time Warner Cable of NYC. They were supposed to come around between 12:00pm and 4:00pm and if they need to call me, call my home or my work number.

After they missed the appointment, I called TWC and asked what was going on. Basically, the Cable Repair technician called and apparently No one picked up at my home number, my work number or My cell.

All of these phone work fine, with voice mail on all of them and yet I didn’t get a call on a single one. No voice mail either. How Odd…

When I call a company for a problem, I try to be polite and professional. Getting mad does not help and the guy on the other end of the phone did NOT miss that appointment. He rescheduled for today (Hope they don’t miss that one too!) between the hours of 12:00pm and 4:00pmand with any luck, my cable will be fine.

Which leads me to the “Timing” part. My Door bell rings and it’s NOT TWC, but rather Verizon. They want to go to the backyard and wire FIOS to the telephone cable. Apparently, my neighborhood is the next one to get Fiber Optic FIOS.

In other words: If Time Warner Cable screws this up, I now have more options.

UPDATE 1: It’s 4:20pm do you know where your Time Warner Technician is?
Called Time Warner, they said the appointment is still open and to wait another half hour.

UPDATE 2: Now 5:10pm and no call. I called TWC again, got a fast Busy and redialed until I got thru. After listening to classical piano (Chopin?) music for a few minutes, my call was picked up by Yolanda and she offered to call the Technician and see what the delay was. Put on hold for over 5 minute with very good piano music.

UPDATE 3: Yolanda called the dispatcher who will be calling me back. Not thrilled at the occasional video issues, but everyone I’ve spoken to at TWC has been very friendly and professional. I await the dispatcher’s call.

Update 4: 6:30pm, No Call from the TWC dispatcher. Calling the number got a busy signal, but after 6 redials I got in and heard the nice piano music again. End Result: Dispatcher will call back.

Update 5: 7:00pm (sigh) Dispatcher called back: Today is canceled. TWC gets to try again on Wednesday.

Verizon is looking GREAT and I have NO idea what they offer.

Music I’m listening to now:
“Pocketful Of Sunshine“, by Natasha Bedingfield from the “Pocketful of Sunshine“ album. You can see the video here.