Classic Rant #1,137 (February 4, 2014): "The Pain ... The Pain"

Remember the TV show "Lost in Space?" Wasn't that something Dr. Smith used to say to the robot?

Well, I am saying that to you now.

I thought that the end of January would be the end of my and my family's personal pain, but February has started off where January left off.

My wife worked this entire weekend--which is a pain in itself--so I figured I would be in for an extremely dull weekend, a do-nothing weekend after a real rough week.

Well, that did not happen.

After doing the food shopping in the morning, I was putting away the groceries and my son came into me and said that he had no Internet.

This has happened before, so I figured I would finish putting away the groceries and take a look at the matter.

I did, he did, in fact, have no Internet, and then I checked the very computer that I am typing this Rant on, our lone desktop computer.

Well, it did not have Internet either.

I called our provider, and as I was attempting to call, I noticed that we did not have a dial tone on the phone.

Since we have a "triple play" with our provider, I checked the TV, and lo and behold, we had no TV either.

I used my cell phone, called the provider, and for the first time, I got someone on the other line that I suspect was from India.

I have no problems with those from India, but he had such a heavy accent that I wished my provider wouldn't contract out such services (that is another story for another time).

He had me do a couple of things to try to restore what we had, but to no avail.

And yes, a few times, I had to stop him and tell him that I could not understand him because of his accent.

Anyway, he said that they would have to send a repairman over on Monday. I told him that that was not good enough, I wanted someone sent over today, which was Saturday. I hemmed and hawed, told him that it was Super Bowl weekend and that I wanted to watch the game (hah!), and yes, they did schedule someone to come over.

A few hours later, the technician came to the house, checked a couple of things, and put in a new battery, which he said was the culprit.

Everything worked fine, until the end of the Knicks game that I watched that evening. They lost, and as the game was winding down against the Miami Heat, we lost, too, this time everything again.

I immediately called our provider, and they said that since it was so late at night--after 11 p.m.--they could not guarantee that they could get someone over on Sunday.

I used the old Super Bowl ruse again, but it did not work this time.

They told me to call back on Sunday, and they would see what they could do.

I did just that, used the Super Bowl ruse again, and a technician was scheduled to come to my house to look at the problem on Sunday.

And he did just that.

He said that not only did the battery have to be replaced, but our entire box had to be replaced, the one that the battery sits inside of. He replaced it, bid us farewell, and since then, we have been fine with everything.

Why the first technician did not see this is anyone's guess.

So it was a completely wasted weekend.

My wife came home from work on Sunday, we watched a movie--sorry about the Super Bowl ruse--and we went to sleep.

We woke up the next day, and we had our latest blizzard outside.

The problem was that as I said last week, I had to take the day off to attend to some business yesterday, and we had to go out east to mid-Suffolk County to do so, a good 40 mile trip.

We took my wife's Jeep and somehow made it through without incident. Everything was taken care of, and when we returned, we waited awhile, and then shoveled up everything.

Now the reports are that our latest blizzard is supposed to come tomorrow, followed by another one on the weekend.

Thank goodness February is a short month, but it has not started out very well.

I still don't have a handle to my car door, and who knows when the car place will have that and when they will be able to fix my car. They gave me no assurances on that one, either.

What will happen next? I simply don't know, but I am asking the heavens, please, I have suffered enough, how about some smooth sailing for at least a little while?

I know that is a lot to ask, but really, I have had enough.

Back to work today, back to school for my son, let's start everything over like the other stuff never happened.

It might be a dream, but it is a dream that I can really get into now.