Household Updates

A few days ago, maybe a day or two before Thanksgiving, I got involved in a long talk with a telemarketer from Embarq, the local telephone-and-more company. The conversation was about putting together a package of home media stuff--telephone, wireless Internet, and Dish Network television--to save us a few dollars a month. Comcast cable stinks, so I was ready to try something new. I also liked the idea of being able to hook up my laptop and work out on the Internet with it from any place in the house. Heck, when the weather's warmer I can probably even go outside on the patio! Anyway, the deal was struck, and today was set for the installation.

Two guys came--one from Dish Network and one from the data branch of Embarq. Both arrived at about the same time, a little after 10:00 this morning. The data guy did a bit of running between the house and the pole across the street before he discovered that the live telephone wire was at the other end of the house, a little makeshift box there instead of the bigger one (where it was supposed to be). He finally got the DSL going--actually without too much trouble once he got the lines right. He couldn't really tell me anything about my wireless except that the green light was steady, which meant that it was working. "I'm a data man," he said, "not a PC man. I been at this for thirty-two years now. There's five of us. The other four went through the PC training, but I'm too old to bother with it." Despite his lack of PC schooling (personal computer and, perhaps, political correctness), the stuff's working. I'm actually writing this on my laptop while kicked back in my favorite chair in the living room. The switchover is going to require the hassle of changing email addresses, but that's just one of those things you have to deal with these days.

The Dish Network guy has had a much rougher time of it. He was here till about 1:00, when his drill burned out its clutch trying to go through a brick wall. So he left, and after several hours--picking up his paycheck, cashing it, getting a new drill--he was back at around 5:00. Now it's 6:15, and he's still here. The dish is on the roof (sort of), and the line is run into the house (finally). He had a lot of difficulty getting the line through the wall. He first drilled one rather gaping little hole that bogged down in the middle of the outside brick. He called it a slip, but it was a definite screw-up. He says he'll come back tomorrow with a patch kit. He doesn't have one of those with him, just like he doesn't have a tape measure or a pair of pruning shears. Anyway, he's now working on getting holes drilled in the floor so that he can connect the boy's television to the system. (Shades of Dan Akroyd!--and blue-collar comedy!--he's kneeling down on the floor across the room from me and showing a little rear cleavage.) We're getting something like 200 channels and a free DVR to replace our squeaky old VCR.

I never considered a job like the the ones the two fellows in my house today have. They have skills that I'm sure I'd like to have in order to be more useful around the house, but whether somewhere with my guitar in my arms or with my nose in a book, I never seriously thought that I might be something other than what I was at that moment. To be honest, I don't even know how a person comes into such work.

I'm glad that these guys have their jobs. I'm glad that I can sit in my favorite chair and peck at my keyboard. I'm glad that I'm going to have about 189 channels that I'll never watch. I'm glad that when I'm out of the house on Wednesday nights, I can record Criminal Minds and watch it without having the characters' voices competing with the squeaking VCR. Most of all, tonight, I'm glad that I have the job that I have, which hasn't--so far at least--required that I stand at the top of a 20-foot ladder in gusting wind or reveal the crack of my ass to strangers.