Cable wins; I lose–a tech is coming out Tuesday for installation. I guess there truly is no such thing as Free Cable. I’m so bummed… I blame this on my love for baseball. Sports is the one television event that needs to be watched live. I can easily download “Community.” I can watch my old VHS recordings of “The OC.” But the only way I get to watch the Dodgers on a daily basis is with cable. And the sad part is I’m not even a Dodger fan! I feel like such a chump.
|
||||
|
This is part two of a story I set out to tell the other day. Hopefully this time I’ll stay awake long enough to finish. I recently moved into an apartment that put me in the ideal situation to steal cable. See, stealing cable is no easy task. You need to find the right conditions to make it work. By my rough (uneducated) statement, it can probably be done in most apartment buildings. Unfortunately, I haven’t lived in any of those apartment buildings until now. The important thing to remember about stealing cable is that you can’t be picky. You might not get 200 channels. You might not get HD. You might not even get a perfect picture. Luckily for me, I’m willing to settle for what I can get (look at my car, my job, my wife, my life). I don’t need the finer things in life. I don’t need BET, Bravo, or HGTV. Heck, I don’t even need 50 channels. As long as I get ESPN, ESPN2, and Fox Sports I’m a happy man. Anything else is cake because the only reason I want cable is to watch baseball (that and the sheer joy of stealing cable). Once . . . . .
One of my goals in life has been to steal cable (either I have low ambitions or I’m more morally ambiguous than I realized). Free Cable is like the Holy Grail to this cheapskate. I like the idea of having cable, but I can’t fiscally justify it. Cable bills run north of $60, and I simply can’t see getting $60 a month of entertainment out of television. If I had an extra $2 a day to spend on something, I would blow it on food. A supersize here. A soda there. Maybe even upgrade from London broil to rib eye. Mmmm….rib eye. I also take great joy in the idea of stealing cable. I hate the pay-TV services. Satellite, fiber optics, cable–they’re all the same. They toy with packages and plans–trying to outdo each other and market the lowest price. But the truth is, they’re all the same. Because $19.99 might seem like a great deal for television. But then you need to add a $10 box rental fee, another $10 for HD–oh, and that $19.99 price only includes local channels (ya know–the free stuff you get with an antenna). If you want TBS, ESPN, or USA that’s a different . . . . .
Sunday night around ten o’clock, I received a call from a guy who is interested in buying our used Ford. He wanted to come see it that night –an idea I wasn’t too enthusiastic about. I had class early the following morning and was hoping to be in bed before midnight. “I’ll be free to show it anytime tomorrow after two,” I told him. Despite my offer, he wanted to see the car immediately. Ten o’clock at night meant nothing to him because he worked nights and would much rather see the car now than in the daytime. I contemplated my options. The first rule in buying a used car is to never look at it at night–it’s a no-brainer in my book. When the sun’s down it’s a lot harder to see and you might miss something that would otherwise be obvious during the daytime. If this guy wanted to look at the car three hours after sunset, that’s his business. If anything, he would make life easier for me because I wouldn’t hafta wash it. “I can be there 20 minutes,” he assured me. Against my better judgment, I relented. I knew I shouldn’t be picky because . . . . .
The PayPal thing turned out about how I expected…which wasn’t good for me. The automated response I received did nothing to help my concerns and had little to do with the problem. I was “assured” that PayPal was safe and secure (because if you can’t trust the emailed words of a stranger, who can you trust). There was no mention to why my bank account was removed; no reason given to why my purchases are being denied. We’ll see how they respond to my next letter. If this fails, I guarantee the third email will contain far more profanity (and perhaps a few comments about the sexual liberation of their mothers). This is gold. A few months ago there was an officer-involved shooting in Anaheim–I remember the story when it happened. The police were called out to a neighborhood in the middle of the night because someone reported a robbery. Meanwhile, 20-year old Julian Alexander was sleeping in his house when he thought he heard someone outside. He went outside to confront the prowler; the police were looking for a suspect. It was dark and…well, the wrong place at the wrong time. I feel bad for the family; I feel . . . . .
Dear PayPal; I recently added a bank account to my PayPal account but I think doing so created some sort of major glitch in your system. The bank account was somehow removed from my PayPal profile. When I tried to add it again, the account was disallowed. An error message told me to fax over a recent bank statement and a cover letter provided to re-add the account. I did as told and received another email telling me that I now needed to fax over a copy of my driver’s license and a copy of my most recent bank statement on a paper with bank letterhead. Meanwhile, I’ve been having all sorts of problems making transactions. My most recent purchase was didn’t go through and was canceled by the vendor because PayPal didn’t transfer the funds. What’s going on? I receive paperless billing and don’t have access to my bank’s letterhead to print out a statement. Plus, I feel real uncomfortable spending copies of my driver’s license and bank statements to some foreign fax machine far away from me. What gives? Why am I having problems? PayPal is supposed to be easy. If I knew there would be these ridiculous . . . . .
Have I been exclamation point heavy lately? I certainly hope nope–I despise the exclamation point. It’s just too damn perky. I had yet another problem with my credit card. I know they’re trying to protect me, but isn’t almost getting me evicted good enough? Tonight, I tried to buy something online and my credit card was declined. I know I’ve got plenty of room on the card and this isn’t the first time something like this has happened to me–hell, it’s not the first time this happened to me this week (fine–eight days ago). With all the times my account has been frozen for security purposes, it’s a wonder I can ever purchase anything. Hell, it seems like my card is frozen more often than it’s active. I know identity theft is a problem, but I wonder if other folks have the problems I have. I’d say my card gets decline once every couple months for “security purposes.” It’s really starting to piss me off. And it’s not like I can talk to someone to make it stop: the damn computers are doing it. But what makes it even more annoying is when I call to get it unfrozen, I . . . . .
|
||||
|
Newsletter | RSS | Twitter | Employment | Contact Info |
||||