I’m getting really sick of cable news (and local news), claiming every story is breaking.

If you’ve had enough time to put together multiple packages on the subject, and have “team coverage” in the field, it’s probably no longer breaking. The one exception to this rule is weather. A hurricane just coming on shore is breaking news, and most networks will have people there on the scene, ready to lay their lives on the line for “journalism” (no where are you taught journalism is standing on a rain-soaked pier as a hurricane prepares to rip you limb from limb).

This brings me to my problem.

ABC News (and I’m sure other networks) broke in at 10:30 am to announce McCain’s Vice Presidential pick.

At 12:30 pm it was made official by McCain himself.

But at 4:01pm?! Is it really still breaking news when Wolf Blizter comes on for The Situation Room? Especially when this story is all his network has been talking about for 4 hours?

And we wonder why people don’t listen to the media. And why the media isn’t living up to its title as the “Fourth Estate.”

Well, not really “we,” but rather “me.”

College football is literally just hours away. And that means, work is ramping up and I’m getting ready to hit the road.

For the launch of the 2008 season, ESPN Regional Television has me heading to Huntington, WV where the Thundering Herd from Marshall will take on Illinois State.

It’s a nice little drive to get me in the mood for the rest of the season. It may start at Marshall, but it will take me to LSU, Buffalo, Virginia Union and Arkansas State.

So, it’s a quick post. I’m waiting to finish some stuff at regular work then hitting the road. Look for some funny stuff here this season.

You’re never going to believe what happened on Wednesday.

Yes, I know it’s Friday. And I know it means I’m late posting this.

@mmagnolia22 was getting ready for work when the doorbell rang. She ran downstairs and found a Bright House installer waiting at our gate. Weird. They weren’t supposed to come until Thursday.

The gentleman on the other side of the fence asked where the Bright House box was for this block. She told him she didn’t know, but that our cable had been out for a week. He asked if we had an appointment for someone to come out, she told him that someone was supposed to be dropping by the next day.

That’s it. He leaves.

15 minutes later, @mmagnolia22 calls me and is recounting what has happened. That’s when the doorbell rings again. He’s back. He wants to take a look at our cable box. Why?

BECAUSE ALL OF THE CABLES AT THE BRIGHT HOUSE BOX WERE UNPLUGGED

What.

The.

Hell?

Cable works. Internet works. How and why would someone have unlocked that box and unplugged the cables?

Then Bright House calls @mmagnolia22. “One of our workers needs into your apartment.”

“I just let them in.”

“No, that was your neighbor’s apartment. We need in to your apartment.”

[At this point I think @mmagnolia22's head exploded]

“He was just in my apartment.”

“Well, he says he needs in to Apt. C, isn’t that your unit?”

“No. We’re Apt. B. We’ve tried to have you change our address.”

“Oh. Well, we still need in to Apt. C. Do you have a key?”

“NO! And the person who lives there is already at work. And she doesn’t even have cable. She uses Dish.”

“Oh. Well, thank you for your time.”

They need to check their map

Last time I looked, Google Maps has that distance as 147 miles. But 10 miles is a decent estimate, I guess.

So I thought that our problems with Bright House had been solved.

To bring you up to speed, @mmagnolia22 and I recently moved up the street and had to have our Bright House service moved with us. They sent an installer to our new address 7 days after we moved. Completely acceptable, if I didn’t work in television and didn’t need the Internet to do my job.

The installer showed up, with an HD cable box in hand. He hooked everything up; I thought we had success. No picture. No signal. Nothing.

After another hour of him looking at splitters in the wall and talking to Bright House dispatchers, he told us he would have to have another installer come out when we could get access to the basement apartment. Great, now we have to disturb one of our new neighbors we don’t even know.

I schedule another appointment with Bright House.

It’s going to take 9 more days to get someone out to our apartment.

I complain.

My complaints on Twitter don’t go unheard, as I receive an e-mail from someone at Bright House. They offer to move up our install time. At this point I had already made it through the weekend without television. So, what were 5 more days when I would be at work?

Bright House sends out another installer. He finds that the line from the curb runs under all four units and in to the basement unit beneath us. The splitter is located in that apartment, and it wasn’t even hooked up. He puts the lines together. Tada!.

But wait. What about the Internet?

The tech didn’t realize we needed Internet as well, even though I showed him where the cable modem was when he arrived. So, he tried to the modem working. Nothing. He can’t get it to “lock down” with the rest of the system. Bright House dispatch sends him out to the curb and has him run a cable from the corner the whole way around the building up to our unit. Look at that, Internet works. Apparently, the signal isn’t strong enough for TWO TELEVISIONS AND A CABLE MODEM. He hooks up two two-way splitters to the cable running in to our unit. The first splitter goes to the cable modem and the second splitter, the second splitter then runs to both televisions.

Great, everything finally works. I can watch television and surf the Internet, no problem.

A week later, @mmagnolia22 says, “Have you been able to get our On-Demand channels to work? I keep getting ‘Error: 106.’”

Damn.

She calls Bright House, they have no idea what an “Error: 106″ is, but they’ll send a technician out. She also lets them know that they’ve had our address wrong since we moved here. They have it listed as Apt. C instead of Apt. B. Bright House says to change that address, they’ll have to cancel and disconnect our service and send another technician out to reconnect the service. I guess we’ll stay as Apt. C.

@mmagnolia22 takes care of everything this time, because it was a day I had to go to work early.

When I get home, she tells me that the installer they sent out that day said, “I don’t even see how you can get signal. You’re going to have to rerun every cable in the unit. I’ll schedule another installer to come out.”

What… the… hell?!

The technician sounded just like Keith David.

So, another installer came out this past Tuesday. The same installer from the second Bright House visit (we’re up to four now). He says the other technician was feeding us a line of bull, and there is no reason to rerun all of the cables.

Bright House still has no idea what “Error: 106″ means and this installer has no clue either, because he doesn’t have a cable box at home. [On a side note, I don't have an edit bay at home, but I know how it works because I use it every day at WORK.]

So, Bright House has him run another line from the curb to our unit, and amazingly the On-Demand channels work.

He runs a line from the basement unit, up to our unit, and On-Demand still works!

In our neighbor’s apartment, he then proceeds to disconnect the other three lines coming off the splitter, leaving ours the only one in tact.

On-Demand still works! Internet works! Regular cable channels work! It’s amazing.

Until Friday.

@mmagnolia22 watched television at 6:00am, everything worked fine.

I got up and went to watch television at 11:00am, and nothing worked. No television. No Internet. Nothing.

I called Bright House this morning. “We can have a technician out to you Wednesday afternoon.” What?! I inform the voice on the other end that we both work, and need a morning appointment (because without a job, we can’t pay for their awful service). “Well, then the earliest would be Thursday morning.” Fine. Whatever.

No idea where the problem came from. No idea about what the problem even is.

All I know, is that this will be five visits from a technician in two months, and I don’t think I want that many problems in the future.

Oh, satellite? What can you offer me?