Excellence in progress

(Written on 1 May, but not posted until 4 May due to what can only be described as the "Big Cox Incident", which incidentally has not yet concluded)

For the most part I've never had a smoother move. And rightly so as I'm largely only moving-in, and not (yet) so much moving out. Having lived in my house for ten years, and thus since the age of 23 when I was newly married, poor, and otherwise without means, I possessed pretty much only non-matching hand-me-down furniture and dishes and, well, just about everything. But being a guy, I figured, all this time, so what. I've never been known for my sense of style (because there isn't one), so who cares, right?

Well, the new place is practically a mecca of style, and so while there's no way that I can have a style-transplant performed overnight, I can and must make some sort of effort to not stand out. Notice I didn't say fit in. That would be asking too much. But I figure if I can simply remain unnoticed (with regard to fashionable home decor), then I'll at least get by unridiculed.

So the point is that instead of moving the "old crap" into the new place, I mainly only moved clothing, toiletries, electronics, and the like, and had new furniture delivered. I'm giving myself the month to get situated in the new place, and then the summer to get things thrown away or stored at the old place so that I'll then have six or more months to get out from underneath the house.

The new furniture delivery went pretty smoothly as well, as did the delivery of my refurbed (read: cheap) LCD TV. I've never owned a TV larger than 25 inches my entire life, so don't get on my case about "splurging" on this thing (definitely the most I've spent on any one thing [furniture set not withstanding] during the moving process). I've otherwise made a pretty economical go at this, though things are starting to add up. As such, I'll be without some things for a bit while I get situation. Still need to pick up a desk in my bedroom, a second dresser for the girls' room, some counterstools, maybe some small tables of various sizes. Needless to say it will be some time before this effort has concluded.

I know I've only noted the peachy side of the move thus far, but make no mistake, there were... challenges. The unsmooth list includes, of course, the rain. The fact that moving any amount of stuff up eight floors via a tiny freight elevator (which is ironic in itself) is tedious at the very best. And let's not forget about being stepped-on by the corporate monster (we'll call them "Big Cox" or BC for short) that could care less about it's customers.

Weeks ago I made an online order for digital cable, high speed internet, and a wireless router. I selected the self-install option, and sent a message to customer service noting my order number and advising them that this was a transfer of service. They understood my message and updated the record. I presumed I was done. However, twenty-four hours later, my order was canceled. Since the new place was without cable service previously, the self-install option was not available. A tech HAD to pay me a visit. Fine. So I CALLED BC (something I dislike very much), explained the situation, had them reference the canceled order, and reiterated all of the services I wished to have at the new location. They set an appointment (between 8 and 10 on the 1st of May). Done again.

Today the tech arrived at a timely 8:15, the best performance in that regard I've had to date from a cable guy. He got started right away, and a short time later, I had digital cable and high-speed internet. But... not a wireless gateway.

That, I said to the tech, does not look like a wireless router. He looked at his keyboard. Nope, it's just a cable modem, which is what it says here on my work order. Nothing about a wireless router. Hmmm, curious. He called "the office of Big Cox" only confirm that, sure enough, there was no router anywhere to be found on my order. Even though I had ordered it twice to this point, and had it repeated back to me more than once. Sigh. At this point, had BC cared at all about its customers, they would have reacted as such: Don't worry sir, our mistake... We'll have another tech run by a wireless router later today and you'll be good to go. Since you've had two orders go bad, we'll do our best to make sure we leave you today with a smile on your face.

Instead, I was given an ultimatum. We cannot do partial orders. So either take what we give you, or we take it all back. Ugh. Well, perhaps I should have said fine and then gone and gotten my own wireless cable gateway, or just hooked up the access point and router I already have. But I was peeved at that point, and just wanted my order to be implemented correctly. So I said, perhaps in error, take it all back and do it right. And he did. Bye-bye digital cable and internet. We made ANOTHER appointment for Thursday (after much arguing and yelling), and so here I sit internet free (quite different than "free internet"). While the apartment building does have free wifi in the lobby, most of the time today I've working on something or other upstairs that needed my attention almost continuously, so I've literally had no time to go downstairs to surf, check mail, shop for more furniture, blog, etc. I did try once to use the free wifi, but they couldn't find the WEP password. Bleh. Gotta love that Big Cox.



Anyway, back to the matter at hand... Many have asked throughout the day, "how's the new place?" Well, let me put it like this... it's "excellence in progress". Clearly it's not perfect yet, and there have been issues to be sure. But the more I restore order to this place, the more things come into focus, and the more evident it is that when the effort is finally concluded, it will be quite excellent indeed.