Grand Theft Cable

Up until the end, this post was supposed to be titled "Unplugged" and it was supposed to be about how I spent at least 36 hours outside the Information Age. No TV, no cable, no Internet. It was supposed to be about how shockingly productive I was without being able to switch on and drop out. I might have even thrown in a life lesson or two, or said something pithy about how we need to disconnect every once in a while in order to reconnect with the world around us.

But that, as we say in my business, would be "burying the lede."

And the lede is this: I got my cable stolen.

Our story begins late Tuesday night, when I got home from work and turned the TV on, flipping channels while waiting for Poker After Dark to start. There's no picture. This, by itself, isn't particularly unusual - I just figured the cable had gone out for one reason or another, possibly weather-related. So I figured it wasn't anything more than that. But it went on (or didn't, as the case may be) for a little longer, and I just figured the cable was OUT out for whatever reason and went to bed.

I got up on Wednesday, still nothing. Or possibly nothing again; I'm not sure at the moment. My Internet wasn't working, either. And again, I didn't really think that much of it because I assumed it was being fixed. So I went out hunting for a new battery for my digital camera (which I'd found two days earlier after having it go missing for three months, but that story's not nearly as interesting) as well as my bi-weekly grocery shopping trip. No luck on the battery. There's a non-zero chance they don't make it any more.

I got home... still nothing. Now it's officially ridiculous. I called the cable company - it's about 8 by this point - and they told me they'd send somebody over the next day (today, now).

Now it's today. And we've all been there with the cable company. They tell you 10 to 12 and it's always closer to 12 than 10. In this case, it was after 12 when the guy finally called (I'd actually called them again just to make sure I didn't miss their call the first time) and he said he'd be over in 10 minutes or so.

When he showed up, he immediately told me to turn my TV on. I did. It came on.

What he said next was the last thing I expected I'd hear.

Apparently what happened was one of my neighbors had enterprisingly gotten into an outside cable connection and cut off a set of fittings, then illegally hooked up his own to that set. The set they cut off happened to be mine.

I was stunned. I actually said, "I didn't think this still happened in 2008."

By this point my modem had come back online too. I didn't think to ask how he knew what had happened, but he had obviously checked the box outside and cut off the illegal connection before he came in to see me. He did cut me some new connectors because my picture had gone fuzzy, so that was nice of him.

After he left, I plopped down in my chair and just started laughing. I got my cable stolen. In 2008. Think about that. It's absurd.

Semi-related tangent: The first story that came up on Yahoo after I started Firefox: the LifeLock guy getting nailed. Seriously, who didn't see that one coming.

Arch Rivals

We all have them.

For Superman, it's Lex Luthor. For Batman, the Joker. For Chris Webber, the game clock. For Roger Clemens, it may or may not be his penis.

It took me over 33 years, but I've finally discovered mine.

Tires.

I've had three tires go flat on me in the last two years on two different cars.

The latest was Saturday. I'm pulling out of my apartment complex to go to work, and I round a corner and bump something, but I don't think anything of it. A couple miles later, a dashboard light comes on and I feel the car starting to slow down. So I pull into the local repair shop - which, irony of ironies, happens to be closed and would have been open two hours earlier - and take a look.

The right front tire, which I thought I'd bumped, was fine. It was the right rear tire that I would later discover had a hole punched in the side. So I go to take the hubcap off so I can put the spare on, and I swear the lugnuts were fused to the wheels at the molecular level. I mean, I admit to not being the strongest guy out there, but this was ridiculous. So that took 30 minutes.

A couple days later, I go back to get it looked at and possibly replaced. I say "possibly" because they didn't have one in stock. I'm not sure how a tire place doesn't have the tire you need. It's a little like an Italian restaurant running out of mozzarella sticks. Which has also happened to me. So I had to drive around on the donut spare for an extra day.

Tires, man... tires. I need something to combat this evil in my life. Perhaps one of these:

Sign (or Tag) of the Times

We'll ignore the fact that I'm on a relative shoe shopping spree (Two pairs in two weeks for the first time in two years! I'm out of CONTROL!) to point out something both odd and disconcerting I saw tagged to my new pair of dress shoes:

"AIRPORT FRIENDLY
No steel shank"

And on the back:

"This shoe affords all the comfort and support of a normal steel shank, without the anticipated travel delays. So pick up a pair. And proceed directly to your gate at the airport."

Hmmm.