My response to a monopolistic utility that provides sub-par service. Note the lack of a working modem in the graphic.

As I write these words the lights on my cable modem are blinking on and off… again.

These are not the good lights like “activity” that are blinking, but rather the bad lights like “send” and “receive” and “online” that continually blink on and off. I am a Comcast cable internet customer, and I’m getting kind of tired of wondering if my internet connection will be working.

This problem first began about six months ago. Nearly every Sunday my connection would go down for five or six hours. I’d call Comcast and the very sweet Canadian (”So your internet’s not working, eh? I wonder what that’s all aboot?”) help desk person would guide me through all the exact same steps as the Sunday before. We’d chit chat while the person pulled up my information and bounced through various screens, finally instructing me to turn my modem off, wait two uncomfortable minutes while we spoke about the weather and lapse into a strange silence that is only brought on when two people have to work together on the phone but will never meet or even speak to each other again. Then we’d turn the modem back on and get exactly the same problem: the bad lights are blinking and I have no connection.

And every week we’d schedule a technician to come out to my house. Sometimes I could get the guy to come the next weekend, sometimes it would take over a week. Sometimes they’d send someone out later that day. It was a completely random interval.

Each time, for about four different visits, a different nice Comcast technician would test the line and frown and shake his head and blame some part of the wiring from the pole to my house or my house to the wall jack or the wall jack to my modem. Each time the nice technician would replace the wiring he thought was the problem. Each time things worked for about a day or so after the technician left and then the internet would drop for a day all over again. We replaced modems, cables, jacks and even Ethernet cords to no avail.

Finally, I gave up calling Comcast. I was a beaten man.

Through trial and error I’ve learned how to fix my own internet connection. Here’s how I do it:

1. Pull the power jack out of the modem.
2. Unscrew the cable from the back of the modem.
3. Blow into the cable. (Okay, I really don’t have to do this but its kind of a habit from my days of trying to get old Atari 2600 and Nintendo game cartridges to work.)
4. Push the power jack back into the modem.
5. Screw the cable back into the modem.

Done. I don’t have to wait for two minutes or have some Comcast Canuck try to run some special piece of mystical cable modem detecting and resetting software. I can do this in under 20 seconds now and I’ve actually moved the modem so that I can easily get to the cable and power jack immediately.

I pay over $50 a month for internet access and I have no other options for high speed service. I don’t consider DSL to be high speed internet any more than I consider a Hyundai Sonata to be a luxury sedan.

I shouldn’t have to do this. My cable went down two more times as I wrote this article. As a consumer I’m basically screwed. Thank you, Comcast. I am now forced to do the only thing I can do:

Do you see this? This is me shaking my fist at you!

There. That felt good.

I would shake both fists at you, but I need this other hand to drop off your monthly bill in the mailbox. Please don’t cut me off…

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My Son’s Birthday Loot: Approximate Value $147.00.

My Son’s Current Favorite Toys: Approximate Value $.04.

My son celebrated his first birthday recently and like most children his age he was totally fascinated with the wrapping paper, any ribbon he could shove into his mouth and all the balloons we had at the party but showed just about zero interest in the new toys he had opened, any of the people who attended the party or even the cake we presented for him to eat with his fingers.

As a fat person, I was the most offended by his refusal to even try the cake at first. I quickly surmised that the child wasn’t mine and started berating my wife for sleeping with someone else, until my son’s icing-covered hands accidentally slammed into his mouth. From that point forward my son began licking his fingers and rubbing the icing all over his face and hair, which seems much more like something I would do at lunch if, you know, I didn’t have any meetings in the afternoon.

Back to the toys. Most of his new toys were hermetically sealed in bubble wrap or boxes which were then reinforced with enough packing tape, wire twist ties and cardboard glue to keep a grenade in one piece after pulling the pin. If any of you parents out there have opened a single new toy in the last ten years, you know exactly the kind of packaging I’m talking about. After unpacking most of his new toys my son did show some interest in them and did play with them for a little while, but I noticed he kept going back to play with things that are not really toys.

This has continued up to the present and my wife and I are now seriously wondering if our child has some sort of psychic link to some starving Third World kid whose only source of entertainment is a stone and a pile of dirt. Our son received all sorts of music toys, puzzle toys, colorful toys and some downright cool toys to play with for his birthday, but none of those hold his interest very long. My wife, in a fit of political incorrectness that will bar her from ever serving on the Supreme Court, has started calling his favorite toys his “Ghetto Toys.” At the moment his top five favorite ghetto toys are:

1. Four empty Pedialite bottles and a plastic holder left over from a trip to the Emergency Room: Ahh, good times. Our son caught a stomach virus and lost his lunch… and breakfast… dinner from the night before… in my car. We rushed him to the hospital after he couldn’t keep down some water and we spent the next 24 hours letting his tummy rest and getting him back into the groove of things with Pedialite, the baby’s version of Gatorade. These containers can snap out of their holder and their lids come off. They’re basically the ghetto version of Megablocks, and my son loves them for some reason. I like to think he’s training to be an architect, but the way he throws those bottles around I have to wonder if someone let him watch the Tom Cruise masterpiece Cocktail.

2. An empty plastic box that used to hold moistened baby wipes: There is something irresistible about this empty box. He’ll play with this for hours, carrying it around and moving things in and out of it. We’ve started putting snacks in the box at night, which surely encourages the notion of the box being magical. Years from now my son will probably fail some sort of college entrance exam because he still believes deep down in his heart that Cheerios regularly materialize from thin air and appear in mysterious places.

3. A Newcastle Brown Ale Refrigerator Magnet: We bought my son several packages of magnetic letters and numbers for the refrigerator which he mostly ignores, but he’s completely fascinated with this giant refrigerator magnet which resemble a beer bottle cap. I think I got it years ago in exchange for trying a Newcastle Brown Ale at my local Mexican food joint. I don’t remember much of the evening, but I do remember the next morning when I realized that Newcastle Brown Ale and Mexican food should never, ever mix.

4. A paper plate left over from his first birthday party: Our son loves to walk around with this and simply place put it down, toddle around for a while, and then come back and move it again. I like to think he’s training to be a famous Food TV chef, but he’s more likely preparing to be out of work actor who needs to make ends meet by waiting tables.

5. A red plastic Dixie cup: He loves running around the room with this red plastic cup like a college frat boy running from apartment to apartment on campus. The refrigerator magnet, the plastic bottles and the plastic cup pretty much cinch it. I can deny it all I want, but I think it’s pretty clear that my son is going to be a raging alcoholic.

I’m going to simply let him keep playing with these ghetto-fabulous toys for the moment and hope he eventually migrates over to the toys that our friends and family actually spent money on. He’s a happy kid and these toys are mostly harmless, so I see no reason to take them away. As parents we’re simply trying to encourage him to explore his world and learn and play as much as he can.

In the meantime I’ve got my eye on a nice empty two liter plastic soda bottle and my wife wants to get him his very own Amazon.com cardboard box he can carry around. I can’t wait for Christmas!

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