Nitwit Broadcasting Company

Dear NBC,

I wanted to say a most sarcastic thank you for your decision to not air Sunday's Canada vs. USA hockey game on the broadcast network; instead relegating it to the lesser, cable network, MSNBC.

But why were you not able to watch it, you ask? Because I am one of the minority 11% in this country that doesn't have cable. I have seen what is offered on cable, and I refuse to pay good money for pure crap in its highest form. And yes, I consider shows like Keith Olbermann, Mad Money with Jim Kramer, The Real Housewives of [insert county/city here] and the like, pure crap.

Apparently, your programming department is made up of 8-year old girls, because in place of showing the clash between two hockey giants, you decided to show ice dancing instead. Really NBC? Ice dancing? It hardly qualifies as a sport. More like a hobby. Or a reality TV show.

Let's also not forget that one of the pairs competing in the ice dancing competition are brother and sister. That's a little icky if you ask me. I'm just sayin'.

And yes, I've read your reasons for why the game did not air on NBC... blah, blah, blah. I still think you're a bunch of weenies.

Although I do owe you some thanks, I suppose. Apparently, my team forgot to show up and play, so by not airing the game on a channel I could watch, you spared me three hours of pain and suffering.

In closing, I would like to recommend you pull your heads out of your bums, and perhaps you need to send your programming department to their rooms.

Oh, and no dessert for one week.

Most sincerely,
Joanne

Hey Time Warner Cable? You suck!

Everyone says that there are two givens in life; death and taxes. I know of a third. Cable/satellite companies and their employees/contractors being mindless idiots.

When Fred and I committed to getting out of debt in 2001, the first thing to go was cable. It was a bit hard at first, but after I realized that real-life can be far more interesting than watching pretty people act it out on TV, I was okay. Plus I don't need to pay some idiot company money to rot my brain; I can do that all by myself for free.

But the only time I do miss it is during the Stanley Cup playoffs. Especially when my 'nucks are playing. Fred did some research and found that it wasn't too expensive to get cable for a month, so we went ahead and took the plunge. I felt dirty just thinking about it.

So yesterday was to be installation day. Time Warner gave us a relatively small window of 2 - 5 pm for the appointment time, so we sat home and waited. And waited. And well... you get the picture.

So at 5:00, with our afternoon wasted, Fred called Time Warner and they told us somebody had been by, but we didn't answer the door. This is quite impossible. If you've ever met Seven, our dog, you know that she starts barking the minute someone walks by our house and even looks at it. There was no way the guy got within 20 feet of our front door. To prove their point, the person gave a description of our house; "Yeah, it had a door, and like, some windows, a roof, and there might have been a chimney too." Okay, they didn't say that, but what does a description of our house prove, that you have Google Street View?

Methinks that Mr. Cable Guy drove by our house, saw that there were no cars in the driveway (because we keep them in the garage), didn't like the inclement weather, and kept driving.

So Fred gets on the phone with the idiot-contracted company, who gives him mega-attitude and argues that their guy WAS there, and WE were the ones who weren't home. Because apparently, we've been watching too much TV, and are too stupid to know whether or not we are in our house.

They finally arrange a guy to come back and do the job he was supposed to do in the first place. Of course he said that it wasn't him that was the one who "knocked on our door", it must have been someone else. Yeah. Right.

When the guy goes to set-up the box, Fred asks him where the HD cable is. They guys answers that Time Warner doesn't supply him with those, and we'd have to make do with an SD cable. Apparently, Time Warner is the "Home of free HD", without the HD cables. So we had to pay $25 of our own money to get "free" HD.

When Fred called Time Warner today to figure out the cable issue, the guy snotted at him, "we don't supply the cables or the TV." Niiiice... a wiseguy and an idiot! Fred also mentioned that the box didn't support HDMI, and the guy said that not all their boxes do and if we wanted one that did, they could send another cable guy with a new box, but they would charge us $40 for it, and there was no guarantee the new box would support HDMI either (so we'd be paying $40 to sit around and wait for another idiot cable guy to show up, and possibly the right box?). Or we could spend our valuable time driving to the nearest payment center and exchange boxes. We don't have time for that; we have cable now!

(by the way, I really don't understand a single thing I wrote in that last paragraph, but Fred assures me it's important)

So now we have cable. And it's just as crap-tastic as I remember it. 200+ channels, and nothing on.

Except when there's a hockey game, of course.