Cable Girl

So, yesterday (or the day before, or one day this week) I decided to hook the Mickey Mouse television (literally, not figuratively) in the Disney bedroom up to cable. By this I mean that it was already hooked up to cable, but since Phil Farsworth must have built this TV himself, it would no longer function on the regular cable connection. In other words, it needed a little black box in order to get the basic channels. At least that's what Comcast told me a while back when I went to pick up the boxes. Since you get two free and you have to pay monthly for others, I got 3 - don't even get me started on how many televisions and various type of DVR/DVD/XYZ boxes and televisions we have total in this house.

Anyhow, the one TV that did not receive the precious little black box was the aforementioned Mickey TV. Fast forward several months, and since Maribeth has moved her stuff out, I had an extra box and decided to hook Mickey up.

I am no stranger to hooking up cable. Mind you, I started out in life with a black and white television that only got two channels - CBS, and NBC on a clear night. We lived out in the country and had an antenna on the roof. To get a certain channel, you had to point the antenna in the direction of that station (the nearest was 30 miles away). We were advanced, though. We had a dial box on top of the TV that connected to a motor on the antenna that would turn the antenna for us. Of course it was a fairly complicated procedure, as you had to turn it little by little until the picture became clear. Basically, it turned the antenna this fast: one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. Eventually we upgraded to a color television, and cable finally was run out to our farm after I left home.

When we were first married, Steve and I lived in student housing. We had cable TV, but this was the beginning of HBO - which came on at 5 pm everyday. To get connected to HBO (without paying), you had to get some antenna wire, hook it up to you TV, and cut it by 1/2 inch lengths until HBO came on. Oh, and once you got that picture, you were to NEVER MOVE THE CABLE WIRE - or you would have to go buy more cable wire and start over.

Throughout our family life, we have had cable and I have learned all about splitters and cable wire. So, I thought that hooking up this little cable box would be no problem. I thought wrong.

Upon getting it hooked up, instead of getting a picture, I got a message that said, "Your cable has been interrupted but will be resolved soon." So I waited. And waited. And waited. Still no cable. I unhooked and unplugged but got the same message. I decided to call Comcast and after 6000 rings, decided they were not answering the phone. So, I decided to try the online help thingy.

I got online and was soon e-chatting with SH88904##4 (or something like that). But she said I could call her Sher. We went through bunch of mundane "get to know you and your account" preliminaries (once of which required me to go find my account number, which I thought she could find easier than I could). She would ask me questions and I would answer. At one point a message indicated that she had left the room, which caused me concern because she had not mentioned leaving - was it a medical emergency or her lunch hour or did she just have the runs? Anyhow, eventually she came back and asked if I were still on the line, which of course, I was. Anyhow, more messaging went back and forth and no solutions were to be found. Her final recommendation was for me to take the box back and get a new one, even though she supposedly sent a message to the box and the box assured her he was fine. Whatever.

I had decided that perhaps the wire to the Disney room was unhooked, since I had used that line several times to move to the other side of the room and to connect to a TV in the sun room. However, to test this theory would require me going under the house in the crawl space - ickness. But I knew I was going to have to go there - or pay a Comcast dude (or maybe Sher) to come and do it for me. Being cheap, I opted for unpaid labor - me.

So, this afternoon, I pulled the cover off the hole to the crawl space (even though the opening is in the sun room, we had a platform to cover it since it's basically a big hole - the platform is more like a small stage, so taking it off is no small feat). I got down in the hole (which ain't that big for a person like me) and opened the door. Our crawl space is covered in plastic, so it's not so bad, but it's not a ride at Disney World, either. Armed with my flashlight, I located the offending cable wire and my suspicions were correct - it was not hooked up.

Of course, both ends of the wires that needed to be connected did not have connectors on them, but the splitter had connectors on it, so here I was, on my knees in the crawl space, flashlight under my chin, trying to screw the bend connectors onto the wires so I could screw them into the splitter so cable TV could be achieved. And it was.

I just wish Sher could have been there to share in the joy.

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Today's blessings: Clean cars for Molly and me; living room and sun room straightened up; check-in from Maribeth in Cuba; Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes for dinner