I know I haven’t been around much lately, and I’m sorry.  I haven’t been responding to comments and I’ve hardly been leaving comments and I feel like that friend who never returns calls.

I’m just feeling a little…disconnected from the internet world right now.

I hope to be back soon with more scintillating adventures … or at least a new blog template.  Rest assured that things around here are ok.  We’re really enjoying the new house and I’m looking at options as far as employment.

Dude.  I got laid off.

Low and behold, we now have internet and phone.  It took Time Warner 3 days, 6,531 phone calls and a supervisor visit to figure it out.  And they were only able to get the wireless internet working because J went up there and figured it out for them.

And in other technically frustrating moments, this is an exerpt from the “Help” section of this new web-based email program I’m trying to configure:

• To reply to the sender of the message, click ‘Reply’.
• To reply to the sender of the message and to all other recipients of this message, click ‘Reply All’.
• To forward the message to another email address, click ‘Forward’.
• To add the sender to your address book, click ‘add to contacts’.

The entire help section consists of those kind of statements.  Truthfully, the person who actually finds that HELPFUL should probably not be operating email.

There is, naturally, nothing in the “help” section that moves beyond the level of “Ridiculously Intuitive.”  For instance, WHY does the “Check Mail” button disappear if there are no previously downloaded messages sitting in my Inbox?  Of course, nothing in the “help” section even comes close to dealing with that issue.

But GUESS WHAT??  There’s even an FAQ section, full of SIX questions that can be answered by LOOKING AT THE SCREEN.

Can I send HTML formatted email messages?
YES!  Check the box that says “Use HTML formatting editor!”

Can I add a signature to my email?
YES!  See the BIG BUTTON AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE THAT SAYS “ADD SIGNATURE?”

How do I add someone to my address book?
This one’s a little tricky, you might want to write this down:  You click ADDRESS BOOK.  And then?  You click “ADD SOMEONE.”

I have serious doubts that these questions are asked frequently for 2 reasons:

1. People who ask these questions are not people who can figure out how to submit a Contact Us form.
2. There is no Contact Us form and no way to communicate with anyone for assistance, and therefore no way for ANYONE to ask questions.

Thanks, guys.

J stayed home from work today* to wait for the Time Warner Technician, who was scheduled to arrive between 8am and 11am.

At 11:45 no one had shown up, so he called Time Warner’s Customer Service. He was told that the appointment had been rescheduled to this evening after 5pm.

J: “Rescheduled? Were you planning to tell us about this?”

CS: “We called you last night and left a message .”

J: “I didn’t get a message. My wife didn’t get a message. What number did you call and leave a message on?”

CS: (reads him the number)

J: (Blink. Blink.)

They left a message on the phone line that we’ve spent two days trying to get them to set up. The phone line that doesn’t work and apparently has voicemail that they haven’t given us access to.

I am speechless right now.  And for your sake, I’m trying to finish this blog entry before I find the words.

*Which may sound odd, since he typically works from home, but since we have neither phone nor working internet from home (even the plug-into-the-box internet doesn’t work on his machine), he has to go elsewhere these days to get any work done.

Ooh, the internet… I can finally get my fix. The withdrawal symptoms were killing me.

I hate Time Warner. There internal communication structure must be akin to sending messenger rats.  Because nobody is on the same page as anybody else, and nobody seems to know what’s going on, though they’ll all swear up and down that they know. Unfortunately (unlike the last city we lived in), we don’t have any other options.

Even though we technically have internet now, I can only use it if I’m sitting on the floor in the media room because my computer has to be directly plugged into the box.

The technician came out here today to install the wireless internet and - get this - didn’t have any wireless internet equipment. So he has to come back tomorrow to finish the job. WTH???

I HAVE BEEN WITHOUT PHONE OR INTERNET FOR A MONTH BUT APPARENTLY YOU NEED LONGER THAN THAT TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO PUT A BOX OF EQUIPMENT IN YOUR TRUCK????

Ahem. Sorry. Withdrawal symptoms coming out again.

He was also supposed to install our phone line while he was here and left without doing that either. According to him, he couldn’t get it done today because there was something Customer Service was supposed to do that hadn’t been done (he wouldn’t tell me what “it” was) so I had to call customer service because they needed to talk to me before they would do “it.”

Customer Service had no idea what I was talking about. But rather than wait for me to call them, Technition Guy just left - so he wasn’t there to explain it to them.

They finally determined that the problem was due to the fact that the line wasn’t scheduled to be activated until 2:04 pm, and once 2:04 pm got here everything would be fine.

So let me get this straight… They scheduled a technician to set up our phone line at 9am, but then scheduled the phone line activation for after 2pm, knowing that the line activation was necessary for the tech to finish his job. Again, WTH???

I tried to tell them that no, that couldn’t have been what the technician was talking about because he said there was something he was unable to do, so he would have to come back out here before the phone would work. But they assured me that wasn’t the case. I asked them to call Technician Guy to figure out what he meant, but they pretty much ignored that idea.

Well guess what. 2:04pm came and went and still no phone service.

On my second call to customer service (which was actually my 5th call, but we won’t go there) the Customer Service Rep determined that the technician was waiting for them to send a signal to the modem or something. Which they did in like half a second. I pleaded with her to just CALL THE TECHNICIAN to figure out if that was in fact all he was talking about. She said she knew he meant and left it at that.

Time Warner employees must grow warts if they actually make an effort to communicate with the technicians. That’s all I can figure with the way they avoid it.

Assuming Customer Service Rep #2 was correct, I’m incredulous that the technician decided to LEAVE without finishing the job, as opposed to wait for 5 seconds to have this done. So now we’re another day without a phone.

Did I mention that this is the only house I have ever been in where my cell phone doesn’t get a decent signal?

Figures.