A new television season is quickly approaching.

ABC has dubbed next week “National Stay at Home Week,” despite the fact the Wednesday and Friday night lineups won’t be debuting. (Trust me, I cannot wait for Pushing Daisies and Eli Stone to return. They are fantastic shows, no matter what your neighbors and friends say).

@mmagnolia22 and I will be in North Carolina on vacation, and probably won’t want to watch our favorite shows while we’re gone. But that doesn’t mean we want to miss them altogether :-). So, I’ve assembled the show lists from the Big 4, plus HBO and Showtime; this way I can coordinate the DVR schedule a little more effectively than in the past.

The shows in red are what we’ll be recording, with a few more additions for @mmagnolia22 I suspect. We’re not recording the 60th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, because we do plan on watching that while at the Outer Banks. It just might involve flipping over to NBC for a while every now and then.

What are you planning to watch next week?

Here are the program guides I created, without my recording marks. Or you can download the Photoshop file (≈4MB) (right-click and select “Save as” or “Save target as”).

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

I must applaud Bright House’s efforts to get our service back up and running.

I vented online, on this blog. We called Bright House to schedule an appointment, the earliest they had available was Monday (this was Thursday). After @mmagnolia22 called, I received an e-mail from one of their representatives, the NEXT MORNING there was a technician at our house.

The techinician traced the problem back to the lockbox at the curb. Someone had apparently disconnected our service again.

No one can give us a straight answer as to why our service has been delibrerately deactived more than once, but hopefully this has been the last time.

Our cable went out. Again.

Apparently it is impossible for Bright House to have too much bad attention. They must just love seeing bloggers vent.

I haven’t been able to get in touch with anyone at Bright House, so I’m waiting to call in the morning. Here’s the letter I’ve drafted to their customer service e-mail, along with the translation of what I really mean.

To: customersupport.indiana@mybrighthouse.com
From: seth@sethkeever.com
Re: Service outage

TRANSLATION:
To: youjerks@thecablecompany
From: someonewhoistechsavvyenoughtohavetheirowndomainname
Re: Your crappy service 

To whom it may concern:

TRANSLATION:
I don’t care who you are, just read this and feel my pain

For the second time in a month, our service has been completely interrupted.

TRANSLATION:
Your crappy service really, really blows.

We are able to watch recorded shows on our DVR, but cannot view television programs on the cable box or through a TV hooked directly to cable. Our high-speed Internet service has also been interrupted.

TRANSLATION:
Your cable box may suck, but it’s not the root of this problem. Oh, and the only shows we have recorded are an old episode of The Daily Show, The G Word and Marie Antionette. Oh, and I can’t bitch about this on the Internet.

The last time this happened, one of your service technicians arrived at our apartment and discovered that the cable connection at the Bright House box on the side of the building had been unplugged. It took 7 days to get that technician to our residence.

TRANSLATION:
This is not the first time this has happened. Your service has failed us before. Last time I was apparently too nice on the phone and you did not understand the statement, “this is not acceptable.” Oh, and apparently the problem was with YOUR equipment. 

The agent on the phone offered to credit our account for the days our service was out. This is a nice gesture, but no amount of credits will keep our loyalty if our service continues to be inactive. Especially considering our jobs require Internet access.

TRANSLATION:
I don’t want $5 back on this month’s bill! I pay you to keep the service running. If you don’t figure out what in the hell is so wrong with your product, I will be forced to switch providers. And the “jobs” reference is supposed to make you look closer at the signature line of this e-mail which indicates I work at a TV station. 

We will call your customer service number in the morning to schedule an appointment.

TRANSLATION:
ARGH! 

–
Seth M. Keever

TRANSLATION:
My name isn’t the one on the bill. It’s @mmagnolia22’s.  

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.”

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.”

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?

I love my HDTV. There’s no question about that. I opt to watch all of the broadcasts stations on their digital channel, even if the program is provided in HD. The quality of the digital signal is far superior to the analog signal

So, I’m always looking for HD content to enjoy. Discovery, HD Theater, History Channel or even AMC- wait, we don’t get AMC HD? But we get HGTV HD? And TNT HD? Plus A&E HD? Even MTV HD?! What the hell? I wanted to watch Mad Men in HD; it must look FANTASTIC!

So, I decided to ask my cable company what the chances were of receiving AMC HD. Here was my question:

What are the chances of having AMC HD added to the Bright House channel lineup?

Here was the form letter I received back:

Thank you for taking the time to email XXXXX. Our goal at XXXXX is customer satisfaction and we are interested in our customer’s feedback. … We do not want to charge all our customers for “specialty” programming but still want to be able to provide High Definition programming and remain competitive. We look forward to offering more High Definition channels very soon.

Thank you for that boring and mind-numbing form letter. I would like to get back the time it took me to read that e-mail. Please send a check at your earliest convenience.

All I needed to know was, “the chances are about the same as President G. W. Bush’s library containing more than old copies of Boys Life magazine.

I’ve seen the commercials hundreds of times. I know I’ve never wanted one. It doesn’t matter what product, I might say “that’s cool” or “that’s interesting,” but really I’m thinking “what would I do with that crap?”

Except maybe the Shamwow. Though the host of their commercials freaks me out more than a little bit.

I mean, what am I going to do with the Hercules Hook? I don’t think I have 150 lbs. of stuff to hang from a hook. My fingers are still able to move enough that I don’t need the Clever Clasp. And I don’t have enough people to spy on to warrant buying the Listen Up.

Anyway, the point I was trying to make is how desperate the manufacturers of these products have gotten. I don’t remember what product was being peddled earlier this evening, but they had the best payment plan of all-time. I might consider buying it, just because of the “deal” I would receive.

2 easy payments of $9.99

It can’t get much better than that, I guess.