Cattywampus!

I was needing a change. I was getting that unsettled, shifting feeling. Call it an itch. Call it a longing. We had a good thing going for a while, but the magic had worn off. Things had gotten stale at home, and I needed something new, something fresh and exciting to sweep me off my feet.

That’s right. Comcast had to go.

And yesterday, in what must be the longest installation in recorded history, Comcast got booted out and Verizon FIOS took its place. I wasn’t home to witness it (Teresa had the honor), but I can report that Keith, the installation guy, arrived at 9:00 in the morning, and by 5:30 when I got home…. Well, he was still there. In fact, he didn’t leave till 7:30, which means it took this moron TEN AND A HALF HOURS to install the same basic thing that Comcast did in less than half the time three years ago (when I got bored with Dish Network, and needed something new and exciting to sweep me off my… oh, you get the idea). Funny thing is, he didn’t even do everything right, and some stuff he didn’t do at all.

First of all, he couldn’t get our wireless network to, well, WORK. After much hand-wringing and perplexed facial gestures (in my imagination, anyway), Teresa stepped in and fixed the problem. That’s right, the CUSTOMER is smarter than the INSTALLER. Aaaaaawesome. He then had trouble connecting the new DVR to the TV in the master bedroom, even though the appropriate cables were RIGHT THERE (my own cables, incidentally, since apparently Verizon doesn’t provide its customers with cabling; interestingly, Comcast actually gave us extra sets!). So, when I got home from work, I had to hook it up myself.

Around 6:15 he ventured downstairs to do his “final programming,” which would only take “about fifteen minutes” and then he’d be “done.” Forty-five minutes later, he was most certainly not done. He finally came upstairs and subjected us to the weirdest half hour of our lives (at least my life; I can’t really speak for Teresa, but she does come from Southern Oregon, so she may have seen weirder things). Keith attempted to show us the various onscreen menus of our new service, how to use the remote (really?), and how to operate the multi-room DVR. He talked to us as if we were children for much of the time as he fumbled his way through his presentation, and you know what? That guy DIDN’T HAVE A FUCKING CLUE what he was talking about. For example:

“See, Comcast doesn’t have as much high definition juice, so they dumb it down during the day and bump it up at night, when more people are watching. But Verizon bumps it up 24/7!”

*Sigh* I could easily list a dozen other moronic things that came out of his mouth, but my favorite occurred when, in Sierra’s room, the remote was (at cross purposes) turning the cable box on and turning the TV off simultaneously.

“It’s cattywampus!” he exclaimed. My blank stare must have betrayed my complete and utter confusion, because he followed it up with, “You know, like when things are backwards, so they bump heads and don’t work. It’s cattywampus!”

Ladies and gentlemen, I think a new word has been introduced into our family vocabulary. As appalled as I was by Keith’s rampant incompetence, I can’t thank him enough for this wonderful word. I can’t believe I’ve lived almost 39 years without it.

About an hour after he left (and much jolly ridiculing behind his back), we came to the sobering realization that he never bothered to set up our email for us. Well, shit. That, my friends, is just plain cattywampus.