Moved!

We moved to the new house. Finally. It was time. It's great. So much work to do. I see myself the next few months painting, cabling, redoing whatever I can come up with. And maybe, eventually, even start working in the train room.

What's on my mind these days? Changing my address all over the place. The DSL move from SpeakEasy to Sonic.net was surprisingly uneventful. I canceled the SpeakEasy contract on Monday, transferred the phone line on Thursday to the new address, Friday a tech came out because the line didn't work. When he was done he said there is a short in the internal wiring, and he disconnected that branch for now (fine by me). Turns out he was right. A stripped cable in one of the bedrooms at two wires touch each other. Easy fix. He also mentioned that DSL should already be active. I didn't get around to check this out until Sunday and indeed, the line was active, IPs and everything set up. Sold as 3-6MBit/s down, 768kBit/s up, I get 4.2/626 actual throughput. That's pretty darn good.

Moving cable service from my old place to the new one proved to be REALLY hard. Actually, it's still not moved. The first time I tried to schedule it 10 days ago. Comcast's Web site didn't work at the time. The next time I tried it last Tuesday, the Web site worked, I got through the order to a chat session where a "customer service representative" is supposed to confirm my order. Instead of a confirmation I got, "My systems don't work right now. Try again later. Goodbye." and he left the chat. Wow.
Friday I tried again (with the excellent help of "linksys" wireless access that a helpful neighbor installed and left wide open...). Got through the Web site, set up an installation date (3 days into the future for disconnection, 5 days into the future for connection at the new place. What? are you guys nuts? The frigging phone company can move a line in 3 hours...). Then I got to the chat session, chatted with a rep, he confirmed my order (yay!), but then, "for security purposes what are the last 4 digits of your Social Security Number?" (Say what? *sigh* ok, gave them) ... "that doesn't match what's in my database here" (well, thinking more about this, of course not, when Patricia ordered the cable setup she didn't know my number, and why does the cable company need my Social in order to deliver _TV_ programming to my house?) ok, just try 9999 I bet my Social is not in your database. "I'm sorry, you have to come to a local office" (WHAT???) Never mind, I'll call the 800 number. "They will say the same thing".
WHAT THE HELL??? I have to go to a local Comcast office to prove that I am who I am, so they can move TV programming from my old house to my new house? That is insane. And we are paying $50/month for this nonsense. Suddenly, DirecTV sounds like a good alternative.

The only reason why I want to stick with Comcast is for analog basic cable, so I can exercise the dual-tuner capability of my PVR500 tuner card.

I'm very, very annoyed about the incompentence of this company and its utter unwillingness to take customer service seriously. Bah. If only this idiots didn't had a monopoly on the market.