--regolith

Just in case it wasn't clear to those of you not involved in the production of this comic...

-apon

I know it works for at least a couple seconds at a time, since the power went out recently, but it immediately started beeping like crazy during its 3-second ordeal... It's mean.

Called the cable company about the pay-per-view charges... they wondered if perhaps, someone else had access to my home, since they said it was ordered "with my remote". I told them, no, I've even been home during a few of the charged periods, and the poltergeists and I weren't watching TV. Gee, you think the poltergeists might be playing tricks on me? Those dead bastards! The customer service guy said some other department would call me back sometime, then I'd know if they were going to take the charges off my bill... Man, I really don't want to have to cancel this cable and get a phone line just for DSL. Also, I asked about getting an HD cable box, but it would have been $5/mo extra plus $40 to install and $17 for some other stupid thing. Jerks. Maybe if I call my cable guy, he'll be able to h00X0r me up for teh free... Maybe he'll have forgotten me by now.

--regolith

If they're going to take it off of your bill? If it were me, there wouldn't be any 'if' about it -- I'd bitch all the way up the management chain, and if that didn't work I'd go over their heads to whatever public commission oversees the local cable monopoly. Paying outrageous fees for pron you didn't even get to watch is just wrong.

As for the HD cable box, see if you can bluff your way into a free installation. I mean, you don't pay for regular installations, so I don't see why youn should have to pay for them to drop off a new box at the house. Call them up and tell them you saw the promotion for free install of HDTV and maybe you'll get lucky. (But seeing as how you don't have an HDTV and PC HDTV cards can only tune OTA broadcasts and not cable signals, I can't figure out why you'd want an HDTV STB. But that's just me being logical.)

-apon

--regolith