Comcast and I are done. DONE. I have to take in my equipment on Saturday and then I will be washing my hands of them.

Which of course means no cable or internet at home but honestly, that's okay. I've looked into Qwest but to get their deal you have to have Windows Live (at least, that seems to be the case if you don't also have a phone line, which I don't want). Having a Mac, and an older one that doesn't support Windows OS like the newer ones can, this doesn't seem like a viable option. And honestly, I'm sort of at the point that I don't really want to be spending money on this. I very much like the idea of taking the money that I was giving Comcast for their disservices and putting it towards paying off a new laptop.

Anyway, the last straw was the fact that they're charging me a $27 "service" fee on top of my regular bill. What service did they provide, you ask? Well, you may remember in October, I had my "signal leakage" problem. A problem that was determined to be caused by my television set and not any of their equipment. But because the technicians came out and had to "replace equipment" according to the service logs (which they did not) and I did not agree to pay their ridiculous "service protection plan" when I first signed up with Comcast, they can charge me a service fee. Yes. They're charging me almost $30 because their equipment wasn't broken. And despite the numerous and inventive ways I tried to get this across to the very patient woman on the phone, there was no budging, no attempts at working with the customer. When I finally said "Can you transfer me to someone so I can cancel my service" and she sent me to the "Loyalty Retention Department" the other very nice, patient lady there had absolutely no problems with me cancelling my service. I expected to have to fight tooth and nail, but I explained that I was unhappy at being charged a service fee when no service was given (because there wasn't any problem to fix) and that I no longer wanted to give them my money, she was like "Okay, here's the address for the office where you can turn in your equipment." So on top of the fee that they're still charging me, they made absolutely no attempt to negotiate or really understand where I was coming from, and so, we are finished.

edit: Oho, to add fuel to the fire, I just re-read the comment that the Comcast National Customer Service representative left on that first post I made about the service outage. It states that he would make sure my account was credited for the loss of service. According to my math, that did not happen either. But since I can't view my online bill, because the email account and/or the password they gave me for viewing my account online DON'T WORK, I can't double-check to see if I was actually credited for that loss of service due to nothing being wrong with the equipment.

It's been hours since I talked to them and I'm still mad. This just the worst customer service I've ever encountered. I should just let it go. Deep breaths. Knitting tonight. All is well.

And any time I feel sad that I can't watch TV or screw around on the internet immediately (because let's face it, there's no shortage of places offering free wi-fi, I just have to go to them) I will think of this or possibly one of these and be happy. I can also look forward to more reading time, more knitting time, more Netflix time, etc. If any of you ever come visit me, you'll just have to understand my new "bohemian" lifestyle. ;)

In other news, I had dreams of things catching on fire. Like, an electric pole getting struck by lightning, catching fire, and then setting fire to trees around it. Or a wall in my parents' house (which wasn't actually my parents' house, but it was in the dream) having an electrical fire. To my recollection, I've never had such dreams, so this is odd.

To end this on a good note, I finally published my first pattern, a scarf, and it's being quite well-received for a no-name, first-time designer (at least, in my opinion, the numbers I'm seeing make me very happy).

I was going to rant and rave about Comcrap and their massive fail that ended with me having no cable or internet at home for probably a couple of days (I went to knitting group Thursday night and didn't get back online until work Friday morning). Apparently they detected a signal leak coming from my apartment and because I am swamped at work with a deadline and enough work that I should probably be there this weekend but am not and therefore I forgot to call them right away to make an appointment that I couldn't have been scheduled until this weekend anyway, they turned off my service. Supposedly I'm going to be credited for a few days, but we'll see. The best part? THERE'S NO LEAK COMING FROM MY CABLE STUFF. Their meters were set off by my television. So no TV or internet FOR NO REASON.

But then I woke up to this:



Which made me all kinds of happy, so I'm a little less cranky.

I just downloaded Dollhouse from iTunes, and I'm downloading Stargate Universe, and part of me wants to send Comcast a bill for the $6.50 or so that it will cost, since their idiocy made me miss my shows. The funny thing is that I've lived near airports for the last ten years or so, and Brighthouse NEVER had a problem with signal leakage. Makes me curious as to what the hell is so wrong with Comcast's equipment that this is apparently a known problem.

I really want to go to Noodle Co and get some macaroni and cheese, but uh...



I still have no ice scraper (tried to buy one last night but Target was out).

So I knew that The Sounds were touring with No Doubt, and I chose to not go to their Tampa show because I didn't really want to pay $80 for tickets to see three bands that I've already seen at least once (Paramore was the other opener, and I've already seen the Sounds twice).

BUT WHAT I APPARENTLY DIDN'T KNOW IS THAT THEY ARE TOURING IN SUPPORT OF THEIR NEW ALBUM. *headdesk*

Hopefully they'll do another tour over here, where they're headlining instead of supporting. I'm listening to the album on MySpace, and it's really good. A little more "mature" than Dying to Say This To You was and with maybe some more staying power? It's out on vinyl, too, but I have no idea if there's any store over here that gets new vinyl (how sad). I may have to call Park Ave to see if they have it on vinyl and then drive over to Orlando to buy it. But I think I'll be stopping at Best Buy this evening to pick up the CD so that I can put it on my iPod (unless anyone feels like *cough* being generous?)

OH, I foresee this becoming the soundtrack to many a Living Room Dance Party.

ETA: Oh, Maja of the Endless Legs.

It seems that many people that I care about are having a really crap time with things right now. Family illnesses, employment troubles, etc. To everyone on my flist, whether you're struggling to stay afloat or not, give yourself a big hug from me.

In completely unrelated news, I do not have a dreamwidth account, nor do I have any immediate plans to get one, so I do hope that those of you heading that way will come back to visit little old me from time to time.

In news that is even more unrelated, I have somehow magically become a magnet for "winning" yarn. First, a gal was having a blogiversary comment contest, and so by leaving a comment to her blog and having the stars align in such a fashion as to favor myself (and a few others), I won yarn. And then another gal who dyes and spins her own yarn was having a Knit/Crochet/SpinAlong contest, in which you entered by knitting or crocheting with one of her yarns, or spinning a roving that she had dyed. I knit up a little scarflet and entered into the competition, and once again the stars aligned and my number was drawn. So now I will be getting more prize yarn. PEOPLE THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN TO ME. I don't win things. I had become content with that fact and now it's out the window. My entire world, it is upside down.

I am so looking forward to the weekend. I'm going to attempt to hie myself to the gym tomorrow after seeing Wolverine at the early bird (read: cheap) showing. And I'm going to clean. And watch the special features of The Life Aquatic. And work on Chrysta's shawl. And maybe work on spinning up some more yarn. And possibly, just possibly, ignore all of that in favor of staying in bed all weekend. All of those options sound good to me.