The story begins on a rainy day (like any other rainy day in Olympia, Washington), when I’m told by my soon-to-be-former roommate that, in order to retain ownership of the Comcast high-speed cable connection for my apartment, I need to go down to the Comcast offices in Olympia and present photo ID at their counters.

First reaction: bullshit. That’s so completely counterintuitive that it’s just not funny. After several hours worth of volleying e-mails back and forth trying to get online access to the Comcast account — “humor me and let me try online” (since my roommate has the passwords) — I give up and decide to go in today. “But I reserve the right to yell at someone,” I tell Amanda, “this is incredibly stupid.”

So I go to an appointment with a Writing Center tutor this morning, then help Amanda bring stuff back to the apartment. After that, we decide to catch friendly Intercity Transit’s route 47, going through Capital Medical Center and presumably right past Comcast’s customer service offices on Yauger Way SW. We get off a stop earlier than we had to and walk down the road to the Comcast offices, then walk in and wait for a couple minutes for a counter to clear up.

“Hi, I was told by a Comcast support representative that I needed to come down here and present photo I.D. in order to transfer ownership of a Comcast account.”

“What’s your phone number?” I give it to the woman at the counter. “We don’t have a record of that phone number.” Well, of course you don’t, my roommate opened the account. “Do you know that phone number?” No, he recently changed that phone number. “Do you have the address?” Yeah. Here you go. “Where’s your roommate?”

Well, at this point, I felt like perhaps I should be shoved into a back room with one light over a table and have Comcast support techs screaming questions in my face, just like a real interrogation.

“He’s not here.”

“Well, we can’t do that without the roommate here. We can call him.”

“We don’t know that phone number.”

A couple minutes pass with conversation going roughly in the same direction.

“Well, we can’t transfer your account because you have Comcast high-speed internet and we can’t transfer those.”

WHY COULDN’T YOU SAY THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?

“Well, we can start you with a new Comcast account, but you’ll have to pay fees. Oh, and you’ll have to return the modem.”

“Why do we have to return the modem?”

“It’s leased.” Oh. “If you promise to bring back the modem, we’ll give you a new install kit and a new modem right now.”

Well, it’s not my problem to return the old modem, so.. “Yeah, okay.”

After about another five minutes of exchanging information and waiting for the woman to give us the modem and wish us a happy holidays, we catch the bus back.

Part II: Installing the Freaking Modem

We get home and I try to check my e-mail, only to find that, in order to start my account, they shut the current one down immediately. Okay, no problem, I was going to have to unplug the modem after I checked my e-mail anyway, so that just made me skip a step. With Amanda’s help, we install a cable splicer, plug in the modem, reboot my laptop into Windows XP Professional, and put in the Comcast install CD. After a few false starts, everything starts alright and goes through the setup, right up until we need to select a user name.

“System Error . . .”

Apparently, the service for initializing user names was unavailable. Okay, no problem. We restart the install, go through the process again, and get right back to that error.

Argh.

Now I restart the install again, and, lo and behold, I can’t even start the install anymore — the install CD can’t contact Comcast’s registration servers.

Now I’m getting a little annoyed, Amanda picks up the phone and calls Comcast, and after being passed around a bit, we get a technician who knows something about our situation.

“Plug in these proxy settings into Internet Explorer. Now, go to this internet address and try to register that way.” We do, and we get to the same user name screen and the same error we had on the CD. “Hold on,” I can imagine the tech saying as she puts Amanda on hold. Some conversation ensues, and a few minutes later the tech picks up again.

“Does this user name ring a bell?”

“Why, yes, yes it does.” Apparently, our original user name request went through, but the install system didn’t want to tell us about it. After a couple more minutes, a modem restart, a system restart, and another internet test, it works fine and we hang up with Comcast.

But now I had to deal with the router. I switch cables around, turn on my wireless connection, clone the MAC address with the router, and retry the internet. Whoops, I cloned the wrong address. I go back, type in the correct MAC address, then restart the modem again.

And that’s how I’m now paying setup fees and monthly fees for Comcast.

That says it all.

I just happened to notice a TV ad for Ray, an autobiographical drama about Ray Charles. This strikes me as a little disrespectful so soon after his death in June, mostly because it seems to me that he has to die in order to get a film made about him. Why do the greats have to die before they are recognized by the entertainment industry and their story is told?

To me, it just seems as if Ray Charles’ work and legacy deserve more than token shows of appreciation after his death.

You heard it here before anyone on the naturalaxis Announcements list: naturalaxis has a new web site.

After fooling around with Movable Type a little and suffering through what had to be at least five or six blog site rebuilds, plus an unknown number of little template tweaks and individual template rebuilds — sorry, pair Networks — I am pleased to announce that there have been a few changes — first, archives are now available by category on the main archive index and on the left-hand side of your screen under “Archived Entries”. In addition, I’ve spruced up the main archive index to add a little more information on how many posts per month I’m doing,

Or, at least, I was as pleased to announce this as you can be after cursing at your blog’s management software trying to get it to do what you want it to.

Enjoy. Don’t take any wooden nickels.

Interestingly, there’s an article on Common Dreams about whether John Kerry will really return the troops home. Apparently, I’m not the only skeptical one.

For those interested in monitoring Mount St. Helens for eruptions during daylight hours, the USGS has a VolcanoCam for your viewing enjoyment.

chmod 0 mt-comments.cgi

Comments are now permanently off on this blog due to comment spam. Thanks to Sean for the hint.

How ironic. Now that I’m with a cable internet connection, I haven’t bothered to post. Figures.

The big news: Oh, my God, Betty, he can assemble furniture! Okay, this isn’t the big news, but yeah — I can, in fact, assemble furniture. I assembled my new stepping bookcase when it arrived on Friday — took an hour or two, but it was fun. Listened to Clint Black in the process (“Eww”, I can hear some of you say, “Clint Black…” Yes. Get over it) — it hasn’t fallen apart yet.

In other news, I spent all of Thursday and Friday on campus doing web site work for the Writing Center. Somehow, I also served as a moving man, helping one of my supervisors move a bookshelf from the depths of the library’s storage cages (which I’ve never been to before) into his office. It’s cavernous down there. We weren’t actually in the tunnel system that connects most of upper campus together, but the connection into the tunnel system was probably nearby. Nevertheless, cool experience.

Spent all of Saturday helping Amanda move in, and got my cable internet and lunch in return. Amanda was nice enough to bring her desktop over so that I could run the Comcast install, which didn’t take long — after that, just cloning her ethernet card’s hardware address onto my router ensured my connection. I did a lot of running back and forth on Saturday, bringing her ethernet cables and stuff. We went out to dinner at Apollo’s Pizza and Pasta down the road, since we didn’t want to brave the annoyingly long lines at the Greenery (the campus cafeteria).

Sunday was mostly just reading and fiddling around until Amanda showed up around 2:00. We went over to Target, shop-ified, and came back here, then back to her dorm at around 6:30. I spent the night over there (though I admit to wondering if her roommate really approved of it), then came back with her this afternoon. My roommate’s here (finally), so it’s a bit of an adjustment. Amanda left after a while, since she had Orientation Week stuff she wanted to attend tomorrow. I’ll see her again at the Writing Center retreat on Wednesday.

Not much else to say — I’ve been working on a draft article regarding the Enrollment Growth DTF for the Cooper Point Journal, which I’ll be presenting to the DTF Wednesday afternoon. We’ll see if they like it. Other than that, it’s mostly just attempting to relax and not go batty with the possibility of an insanely hectic schedule.

Yet another year is nearly upon us.

Well, I’ve been without a cable internet connection since like, Saturday when the modem was actually installed. I’m waiting for Nathan (my roommate this year) so that I can hook it up (or Amanda, depending on who gets here first). Yeah, I could call Comcast and activate it manually, but if I can’t tolerate my own technical advice, why the hell would I want to listen to someone else’s?

So, therefore, you probably won’t see many other entries on here until, like, Sunday. Consider yourself warned.

Yes, this is a humorous entry. Really.