This morning, at the crack of 8:42 a.m., the scribe and the goodly wife lay in bed in their new castle and were only barely awake when the scribe's cell phone rang. He answered it and the voice he heard upon saying hello asked for him by name. "This is him," the scribe said. And then, after seven long of ass weeks of waiting, the voice on the other end introduced himself as a a supervisor from the Link of Sudden. The scribe nearly dropped the phone in shock, for an actual call from the Link of Sudden was completely unexpected, especially since it had been well over a week since the last Link of Sudden employee he talked to had told him that she was supposed to tell him he would be called. In no way did the scribe actually expect a call, though.
Nope, in the interim time, the scribe had written the Link of Sudden off as a probability. Oh, sure, if at some point months down the line someone from the Link of Sudden were to contact him and say he could at last have cable internet, he probably would take it. But he had since made different plans.
After a bit of research, the scribe had learned that not only was his cell service with the Zon of Veri grandfathered in for unlimited data (a plan they no longer offer), but if he were to upgrade to a new phone with them he would not only be able to continue getting unlimited data but could also, for a reasonable fee, use said phone as both a tethered 3G internet connection and a wifi hotspot. The cost of this feature on both his and the goodly wife's phones was less than he would pay for service through the Link of Sudden and FAR FAR less than he was paying with his AT-AT mifi card. So he and the goodly wife had upgraded their phones, taken the AT-AT card back and were enjoying all the streaming Netflix that they wanted. Furthermore, his new phone was the latest version of the Razr, which has a screen that's so big it's practically a pad device unto itself. As far as he was concerned, the Link of Sudden could go soak their head (in a bag of dicks) because he no longer needed them. Sure, it would be nice to have high speed internet once again of the type that would allow him to play Little Big Planet with his godchild in Mississippi, but cheap flat-rate internet was once again within his grasp.
The Link of Sudden employee on the phone explained that he was a supervisor with Link of Sudden and had received the scribe's case as an escalation. (The previous LOS lackey had been made a liar after all! Way to go, lackey!) The supervisor was calling to find out what exactly the situation was to see what he could do about it.
"Well," the scribe began. Then he paused. His instinct was to punish the supervisor by making him sit through a point by point verbal recreation of the entire seven week saga, complete with reenactments of each of the times he had pointed out to the Link of Sudden that no one had called him. Then, he decided against it. Why hurt the guy who claimed to be trying to help? Instead, the scribe said the paraphrased equivalent of "We bought this house, it used to have Link of Sudden cable, it can't get internet cause it's too far from the tie in, my neighbors 70 feet down the hill have a box for it in their yard, it only has two connections in it and both are full, the surveyor who came out said we might be able to tie into it but the equipment needs to be upgraded, I've been trying to get someone to call me weeks to find out if it can be."
The supervisor then said a very VERY telling sentence. "Now, this is for 120 Arsenic Blvd in BORDERLAND, right?"
There was a pause as the scribe realized that despite the FACT that he'd explained, reexplained and REreexplained (which apparently you have to do because these people are more than a little RE-RE), each time he had called the LOS, over the course of seven weeks, the FACT that they had relocated from Borderland to Tri-Metro and that the house they had been trying to get service for was, in point of FACT, the one in Tri-Metro, the LOS still hadn't grasped that FACT and were trying to get him internet service for THE ONE HOUSE OUT OF THE TWO THAT ALREADY HAD EFFING SERVICE!!!!!!!!!!
"No. No it is not," the scribe said. "No, this is for 342 Snazzy View Drive in Tri-Metro."
"Tri-Metro?"
"Yes. Tri-Metro."
"Huh. Well I work for the Borderland office. It got escalated to us," the guy said. "Tell ya what. I'm gonna forward this on to Tri-Metro's office. The guy there is named Leon. He will definitely call you back. Are you going to be around at this number for the next little bit?"
"Sure," the scribe said.
"Cause he'll definitely call you back."
"That would be great," the scribe said.
That, of course, was over 14 hours ago. Can you guess how many times the scribe's cell number has rung since? He'll give you a hint. It's less than one.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Once Upon a Time (Part 4.9)
This morning, at the crack of 8 a.m., the scribe received a second automated call from Link of Sudden telling him an appointment would likely occur today between 8:15 a.m. and 9:40 a.m. and would take 20 minutes. This did not seem like enough time to bury and install a cable from the box down the hill, so the scribe took it to mean someone was coming out to deliver bad news that he could not have access to the web of the whole wide world. They would deliver that news in the first minute, allowing the scribe 19 minutes to scream at them in his golden voice.
At 12:30 p.m., with no sign of the Link of Sudden, the scribe phoned them up. The phone lackey did not immediately know what the appointment was for, so she had the scribe tell her the whole sad tale and of the many promised and reneged upon phone calls while she looked through the extensive notes in the file. The scribe couldn’t even work up any anger about it all, but just answered her questions with resignation.
The phone lackey eventually discovered that the calls were for the disconnection of services to his former castle in Borderland and not an appointment for Tri-Metro at all. She asked again why he was disconnecting his service if he only wanted to transfer it, which nearly set the scribe into a hair-pulling fit. He then pointed out that he had been trying to do exactly that for six weeks, but had now been told that once the matter was in the hands of the construction department only written communication would occur, at some indefinite point in the no doubt distant future. The phone lackey said this was odd, because she’d never heard of that rule and the account had no notes to that effect. The only thing it said was “customer is disconnecting service because survey is taking too long” which was not at all accurate of the situation. The survey has ALREADY occurred; it’s the results of the cost/benefit analysis and potential Plan B cable connection to the cable hub in his neighbor’s yard that is taking too long.
The phone rep was sympathetic to the cause, however, and said she would put in another escalation form, this time going to a supervisor and not the department the previous reps had routed such escalation forms to. She said that it was company protocol to tell me that someone would call me within two days, but she didn’t want to be a liar so she would just tell the scribe that that’s what she was supposed to say. The scribe had a good and hearty laugh at this and congratulated her on a job well done.
And since she was so helpful and honest, he asked her if, perhaps, disconnecting his service entirely was the wisest move. After all, if he was no longer a customer, would he even appear on the radar of the Link of Sudden in terms of incentive to even attempt to answer his questions or, dare he even dream, hook him up with service? The phone lackey said that she completely understood why he would want to disconnect, but if it were here she would give the disconnect a couple more days in order to give the form she had just sent up the pipe at least a chance to work. That said, the scribe asked to reschedule the disconnect for the following week.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Once Upon a Time (Part 4.5)
And then, not even two hours after he posted the previous part regarding the infuriating nature of the Link of Sudden, its lackeys and dick-filled bag-eating nature, who should phone the scribe at his castle but the Link of Sudden itself. Actually, it was an automated message alerting the scribe to an impending and heretofore unexpected service appointment at his castle, scheduled, it said, for tomorrow morning between 8 and noon.
Curious timing, to be sure. But the scribe suspects this may just be coincidence, as the link of sudden does not know him by his scribe name on this blog. Or maybe they just did the "cranky guy in West Virginia who keeps calling and pointing out how we don't call him back and whose complaint seems remarkably similar to this blogger's" math.
Nahh. I can't be the only one.
Until tomorrow, then...
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Curious timing, to be sure. But the scribe suspects this may just be coincidence, as the link of sudden does not know him by his scribe name on this blog. Or maybe they just did the "cranky guy in West Virginia who keeps calling and pointing out how we don't call him back and whose complaint seems remarkably similar to this blogger's" math.
Nahh. I can't be the only one.
Until tomorrow, then...
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Once Upon a Time... (Part 4)
The following day, with NO EFFING CALLS RECEIVED FROM ANYONE, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden back and nicely asked to speak to the specific supervisor who had promised to call the day before. The underling said she was not in the office. Furthermore, the underling said that the reason the supervisor had not called was because the local tech supervisor had promised to phone the scribe to explain exactly why he couldn’t have the web of the whole wide world in his castle. The scribe asked to speak to a different supervisor, because mounting evidence suggested that he would never receive any such phone call. The underling told him none were available. The scribe told the underling that he felt as though he were being given the runaround, but would wait to hear what the technical supervisor had to say in his much anticipated phone call.
The scribe got dressed and prepared himself for a morning of using the web of the whole wide world at the place where they hide the books. But before he could even leave the house, he saw through the castle’s kitchen window a large Link of Sudden truck parked in his driveway. He went out and this was when he met the technical supervisor who had promised to phone. The man was very nice and gently broke the news that while all of the scribe’s neighbors seemed to have internet service, the scribe’s castle could not. At least, not without a great deal of work and expense on the part of the Link of Sudden. The most direct route would be to install a series of cable poles and rewire the whole valley from their line at the nearest major road. That would be woefully expensive, though the Link of Sudden might eventually undertake it should they feel like they would get enough customers along the route of the lines. The other option would be to somehow tie in to the connection shared by the scribe’s two nearest neighbors. Currently, that receptacle only had two connectors in it which were used by his two neighbors. It would be expensive to upgrade that box as well as to bury cable up the hill to connect to the scribe’s castle, plus there was the hassle of asking the neighbors if this was okay with them. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, but he wasn’t holding out a lot of hope on it. In fact, he noted, the scribe should probably look into other internet options because there was no guarantee the cost/benefit analysis for either of the aforementioned options would come out in his favor. But, the man said, he would turn in his survey findings to his boss, his boss would run the c/b/a and would call me back, probably some time early the following week.
The scribe, upon hearing this news, decided that the likelihood of him gaining the web of the whole wide world from the Link of Sudden was pretty low. He didn’t feel like the technical supervisor was jerking him around, but was on the level. He would explore other avenues. But he also wasn’t willing to give up entirely on Suddenlink, especially when the supervisor had said there was still a chance.
In order to get some web of the whole wide world into the house, he put in a call to a telephony guild called Frontier. He’d actually called them a week previous and had been told that they could give him service, though the speeds they offered were pale by comparison to those he had received with the Link of Sudden in Borderland. Still, they would at least get him SOME service. The new lackey on Frontier’s line, however, could find no record of his previous call, nor an address for his castle at all. The lackey suggested that if the scribe were to visit one of his neighbors and inquire of them their telephone number, he could locate the castle more readily. So the scribe, quite grumpy, walked down the hill to one of the two nearest castles and knocked on the door of that owned by the neighbor he had not yet met. Its resident, Martha, was a nice older lady who not only gave the scribe her phone number and address, but regaled him with tales of how fast her connection was to the web of the whole wide world. Couldn’t talk enough about its blazing fast speeds and how she had been told her house was the last one on the line from Link of Sudden’s local node and that she was pretty sure she’d been told that the scribe’s house could not have it.
Once the scribe returned to his castle and phoned the next Frontier lackey, they were able to pinpoint his location. Again, he was told he could have 4 megabytes per second in his speed on the web of the whole wide world, a far cry less than the blazing 15 mps promised by the Link of Sudden. However, when the Frontier installation lackey came out two days afterward, he could barely summon half an mps let alone a full megabyte and that was directly at the phone connection to the castle. The phone jacks within the castle would not even register. Turns out, the castle is at the very tip end of a line running from Tri-Metro Town B and is at 2200 feet from that access point, wherein Frontier recommends no more than 1800. Not only could the scribe not have 15,000 mps, not only could he not have 4 mps, he could not even have 1 mps and in order to get the half an mps within his home all other phone jacks in the place would have to be disconnected. The scribe told the Frontier lackey to begone, and to relay to his vile masters exactly how many bags of dicks they were invited to consume—which is to say one bag of dicks. But the lackey did suggest the scribe look into wifi hotspot devices for possible service. He did warn, however, that no one was giving away data for free these days.
Meanwhile, the promised days upon which the scribe was to have received a call regarding the cost/benefit analysis came and went with, of course, nary a call. At the end of that week, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden and inquired as to the result. They again said they did not know, but would put in a request that the scribe be given a call. The scribe pointed out, for probably the sixth time, that he had been given repeated promises of a call in the previous weeks and had never actually been received one outside for the calls for directions made by the first two failed installation guys. The Link of Sudden said they were very sorry.
Not willing to give up on what had become a quest, the scribe researched other options via the web of the whole wide world down at the place where they hide the books. Turned out, the Zon of Veri, the Great and Powerful Atat, and Sprint offered wireless hotspot cards that could potentially connect devices in his castle to the web of the whole wide world at speeds approaching high ones. However, they all wanted to charge a fair assload for the privilege, not to mention required a two year contract. And of the services, only Sprint offered unlimited data with their MIFI card. The other two charged around $10 per gigabyte. After speaking to Sprint, the scribe learned that their service, while unlimited in its data plan, did not have a reliable signal in the area of his castle. Plus, they would require the two year contract. They did, however, note that a sister organization, Virgin America, offered a pre-paid mifi card for $50 per month with unlimited data and no contract. Unfortunately, when the scribe researched the validity of this, he learned that it was a massive pile of horse shit. Virgin America DID offer a $50 per month mifi card that claimed it came with unlimited data. However, while the data itself was unlimited, your access to it in high speed form was limited to 2 gigs per month, at which point they cinched off the pipe to dialup speeds for the rest of the month, or until you paid them another $50. And for that Richard Branson may consume two bags of dicks.
The Great and Powerful Atat, which allegedly has some of the best connectivity in the Tri-Metro area, also offered a MIFI card for $50 per month, but they at least gave you 5 gigs for that money and for each additional gig you went beyond the initial 5 you would be charged $10. The scribe reasoned that if he had to pay for such service, at least this was metered and would not be cinched off. He popped by the Atat store and signed up. And it worked! It was pretty much blazing fast and for most things he did not notice much difference between the Link of Sudden and the Atat. However, streaming Flix of Net movies chewed through the data at an alarming rate. It was almost to the point that he was better off paying movie theater prices to watch movies through his PS3. And when it came to using the PS3 network to game online with his god son, forget it. While it would let him play games online, something about the Atat connection would not allow a direct connection with his godson. The scribe decided he would take the rest of the month to try out the service before making any further drastic decisions.
Meanwhile, life went on. Boxes continued to be unpacked and put away and their former castle in Borderland was finally placed on the market. The goodly wife began her commute to Asscrackton for her work while the scribe began to take on freelance scribing jobs once again. He also was able to resume his casting of pod for the "Tales of the Place Where They Hide The Books CAST." It hurt him deeply to know that uploading it was costing him moolah, but at least he wouldn't have to upload it exclusively at the Place Where They Hide the Books.
Over the following two weeks, calls were repeatedly placed to the Link of Sudden asking about the cost/benefit analysis results. They didn’t have them, but promised someone would phone. No one ever did. Finally, nearly three weeks after being promised he would receive a call regarding the cost/benefit analysis, the scribe called the Link of Sudden back to ask again and was told a new request for information would be put in to the local crew. The scribe again stressed that he would believe no promises of phone calls to come until one actually did, because he’d had ten of them already and none had EVER come to pass. Furthermore, he was quite put out at having paid for an entire month of service on an empty house with no one in it. He would like to disconnect his service. The phone lackey begged him not to, saying that he was grandfathered into a good pricing deal and should not allow it to lapse until he heard word officially on his connection. The scribe countered that he was getting a great deal on service he was not and could not receive, so what sense did it make to continue with it? The lackey begged again, and the scribe relented. And to help alleviate the scribe’s concerns about no future callbacks, the phone lackey gave the scribe an escalation number which he was to give to the next Link of Sudden lackey after he didn’t receive a call for a few days more. At least they were planning ahead, the scribe thought.
One week later, and still no calls, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden and gave them the number. The new phone lacked explained that his connectivity issue had been escalated to the construction phase. This did not mean, as she pointed out, that he would be receiving any service from them, but that the results of the survey were being considered and the cost/benefit analysis calculated. Furthermore, it was no surprise that he had received no call about any of it because once the issue had been escalated all further communication would be in writing. He should expect a letter at some point in the future.
“But how long do I have to wait?” he asked.
Oh, the letter could come today. Or it could come in weeks, or even months. You couldn’t tell with these things. Yes, once it was in construction’s hands, there was just no way to estimate when they would get around to it.
“But I was promised a call within four days of the survey,” the scribe said. “That was three weeks ago.”
Yes, we know. These things take time.
“But… but all of my neighbors have high speed internet through you. If they would just upgrade the equipment down the hill, I could have it, too. Maybe. I just want someone to call me and tell me whether or not that will even work. I’m willing to pay for burying the cable up the hill if you guys will just upgrade the box to fit another plug!”
Yes, we know. You’ll receive a letter. These things take time.
Every fiber in the scribe's being wanted to tell the lackey the exact number of bags of dicks that he required the link of sudden to consume--which is to say ALL of the bags of dicks. But, instead, the scribe again noted that he was still currently paying for service on an empty house and was unwilling to continue do so while waiting indefinitely for a letter to arrive from them. He had no more faith in their ability to write letters than he did in their ability to make a phone call. In fact, he wanted reimbursed for all of his time the Link of Sudden had wasted in this matter, which had been stretching on a full 40 days previous. He was through listening to lackeys beg him to keep his service. He wanted disconnected. The phone lackey reluctantly agreed, saying that a Link of Sudden rep could come by to pick up their equipment, but would only pick it up from the castle it had been assigned to.
"That will not be possible," the scribe said, noting that he now lived in a completely different town. The lackey suggested he could drop it off at one of their local guilds, but only listed the guilds in Borderland and Asscrackton as possibilities. No, the scribe said, he was only willing to mail it to them.
And that, dear and patient readers, was how the matter was left.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Once Upon a Time... (Part 3)
After recovering from having his own jaw slam into his junk from the shock of having heard there was no job waiting for his wife in the town in which they’d just agreed to purchase a castle, the scribe could barely come up with words to express his shock and anger. Most of the words he was able to summon were variations and expansions upon the word “fuck”. Some of these he was able to keep locked in his brain for a time, but very quickly, as the gravity of the situation began to set in, they began to spew forth in such phrases as, “But we just bought a EFFing castle there!!!” What was not immediately apparent on that day in early February (nor has it become a whole lot more apparent to this day) was just what would cause Tuesday the Middle Manager to give the goodly wife the green light on purchasing a castle when there was no job for her to take at the Tri-Metro Immediate Healing Clinic. But in that moment, all the scribe could do was share and magnify the anger the goodly wife was feeling. Eventually, she suggested she should hang up and allow him time to calm down because she was at work and could not join him in ranting and screaming “fuck” at the top of her lungs no matter how much she might like to. So this she did.
Gradually, the details emerged of what the true plan had been from the standpoint of the Grand King. According to him, the first he had EVER heard about any move to Tri-Metro by Dr. Goodly Wife was during her phone call to him that morning. Beyond that, she learned that there HAD been an opening in Tri-Metro some months before, but that this position had been filled by another healer who was being moved down from a more northerly Immediate Healing Clinic to fill that void. The king would have been fine with Dr. Goodly Wife transferring to Tri-Metro, but he said no one had told him and so he and his staff filled the position from elsewhere. The king had no idea why Tuesday the Middle Manager would have thought anything otherwise, because Tuesday had been involved in the hiring of the healer to fill the position in Tri-Metro in the first place. (She would later claim she thought the healer was being hired for Asscrackton and that she was largely in the dark on most of those kinds of decisions, which conceivably might be true.) Whether she was high, stupid or just being a big bouncy “C” was not then nor today clear. What was clear, as the goodly wife pointed out to the Grand King, was that she was now in a very unfortunate situation of very nearly being the owner of two castles neither of which were in towns she would be employed in for much longer. While the king did not owe her a job in Tri-Metro, she had operated in good faith on information given to her by his middle managers and had proceeded with plans to move there. Surely there was something he could do to try and make the unfortunate situation less unfortunate.
The Grand King’s suggestion was to offer her an immediate position in Asscrackton. This was not something she wished to hear, for while Asscrackton was closer to Tri-Metro than Borderland, it was still a hefty commute and it was still a job in Asscrackton. No one wanted to work in Asscrackton. It was hellishly busy and full of surly employees, if rumors were to be trusted. But the Grand King said it would be no problem to set her up there, which would be closer to Tri-Metro, and she could have all the extra days at the Tri-Metro Immediate Healing Clinic that weren’t already spoken for. She could even have a nice raise which would combat the extra fuel expenses in getting there and maybe make the time spent in doing so worth it. And, if a position opened in Tri-Metro, it was hers and she could keep the raise. He would even put it in writing to her specifications. This sounded tolerable and even generous to the goodly wife. She later explained it to the scribe and while he was still fuming and aching in his junk, he did the math on the raise and agreed that it was in fact quite a tempting offer.
It took a few drafts to get the wording of the contract right, but eventually all parties agreed upon a set of terms and the deal was put into place. The goodly wife would start work in Asscrackton in mid-March. And, meanwhile, the closing date on the new castle had also been set for leap year day. That in mind, the scribe set about packing as much of their crap into boxes and hauling loads of it over to a storage facility in Tri-Metro in preparation for getting their old castle ready to be seen by potential buyers and to get as much of it in their new/old town. They even began speaking with the same moving company that had transported their possessions to borderland about hauling quite a bit of it back. The scribe and wife would pack and move their clothes and sundry books and crap, but the furniture and the kitchen could be moved by professionals.
At last leap day came, the papers were signed and the new castle was officially theirs. And to celebrate, and because it was the last day of the month and they didn’t want to pay another month’s storage, the two of them celebrated by hauling their crap from the storage unit to the new castle in the pouring rain.
The new castle was pretty great, albeit with a few things that needed updating in a big way. The pinstripe wallpaper in the guest bathroom, for instance, had to go, as did some of the window treatments that prevented the back door from opening properly and which infuriated the scribe, for if there’s one thing he hates its design at the expense of utility. But beyond those minor issues and some painting, the place was absolutely great. The two set about remedying the perceived flaws over the course of the following days.
In preparation for the move, the scribe had already contacted essential utilities to make certain that he and the goodly wife would be without them for as little time as possible. Not electricity and water, mind you, but the Network of Dish and the Link of Sudden for all their televisual and web of the whole wide world needs. The two companies even scheduled time to come out and do the installation on the same day.
The Network of Dish was the easiest of these installations, and happened in the afternoon. It was the Link of Sudden installation that had problems in the morning. The Link installation guy inspected the castle to find where its cable was located. Some more inspection then commenced as well as telephone device calls to Link of Sudden HQ and walks around the property. Eventually, the installation tech returned to the scribe’s presence and announced that despite the fact that the castle was wired for the Link of Sudden and had had service through them with the previous owners, the castle was now “unserviceable” for anything beyond basic cable. Apparently while the previous owners had used Link of Sudden for their television, they had not had high speed web of the whole wide world and consequently the connection from the castle into their system was over 300 feet away, which would not support web. The next nearest such node was in the yard of the scribe’s nearest neighbor, a mere 60 feet down the hill, but that particular box only contained two connection ports into which his two nearest neighbors were connected. The installation man said he was inexperienced and could not do such an installation, but perhaps someone with more knowledge than he could. He told the scribe that he would soon be called by such a tech to discuss what to do next.
After no such call was received within 24 hours, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden to inquire as to when he could expect it. The underling on the line told the scribe that no call should be expected for the castle had been declared “unserviceable” by the first tech who’d been out.
“No,” the scribe pointed out, “the castle was unserviceable by that guy. He said he was new and that the castle might be serviceable by someone more experienced. He said they would call me.”
The underling said she understood and that she would note this in the account and request that the local dispatcher give me a call, but as far as she could tell the castle truly was unserviceable and the scribe should probably give up. The scribe reiterated to her that he really REALLY wanted this connection to happen. The purchase of the castle was made partially BECAUSE it had the Link of Sudden. He was willing to pay fees if it meant someone who knew what they were doing could come out and have a look at the place. The underling again said she would note it and that the scribe would be given a call.
After no call was received within 24 hours, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden again to inquire. The new underling also said the castle was unserviceable which led the scribe to explain again the nature of this potentially incorrect claim and the lack of call backs. A little digging on the underling’s part and a note from the local dispatcher was discovered stating that the house actually was serviceable and that an installation could take place at my request. Nice of them to alert the scribe, no? The next available installation date, of course, was a week away and no argument would be brooked otherwise.
Because the scribe has his intelligent personal telephony device that is equipped with the web of the whole wide world and unlimited data, he is able to check his Mail of E. In order to get some of his bigger projects accomplished faster, though, he had to take his lap of top down to his former workplace at the place where they hide the books and use their wireless connection to the web of the whole wide world. He was therefore also able to hang out with his former coworkers and shoot the shit. The only former Rogue Patron he was able to see, though, was Mr. W. Perfect.
A week later, the next installation tech arrived, took one look at the wiring from road level and again announced it was unserviceable. The scribe was hardly surprised and said as much to the installer. The installer said that from what he could see there was no way to make the castle compliant with the needs of the Link of Sudden with its current setup. What was needed was to have the Link of Sudden send out a surveyor to assess the situation and make recommendations for how best to proceed. Perhaps, he supposed, the necessary cables could be connected to the power and phone pole directly behind the new castle, since they couldn’t be run from the street far beyond.
“Could you please tell me HOW I can convince them to do this?” the scribe asked. He explained that he had been phoning and phoning and begging for this very thing to happen but all anyone would say is that the house was unserviceable. Clearly, since every neighbor in spitting distance had the service, it was technologically possible to install. The intaller said it would be best to speak to someone in the Link of Sudden’s engineering department, preferably in Texas, as they could actually make things happen there. He said it wasn’t wise to call and yell as that tended to shut the underlings down and make them less cooperative.
So after the installer left, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden and nicely asked them to speak to the engineering department, preferably in Texas. The underling on the phone did not seem to want to comply and began asking the scribe questions, which raised his blood pressure. And, after the scribe had described the issue, again and nicely, the underling said that her screen noted that the castle was unserviceable, but she could “put in a form” for the local tech supervisor to give him a call. The call could take up to 48 hours to be made, however. The scribe told her that this was unacceptable. He had been promised calls twice previously, but none had ever come. All communication with the company had been made due to his efforts alone. He did not trust that any promise of another call would be any more fruitful, so he asked to speak to a supervisor. When the supervisor came on the line, the scribe explained the whole situation again and mentioned the lack of calls and the seeming confusion on the part of their installers as to what could or needed to be done to make things work. The supervisor apologized that the scribe had not been called and assured him that she would personally put in a call to the local tech supervisor and make certain that he called. And if he couldn’t call then she, the phone supervisor, would call herself and explain the situation. The scribe, she said, could expect a call from someone before 5 p.m.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Gradually, the details emerged of what the true plan had been from the standpoint of the Grand King. According to him, the first he had EVER heard about any move to Tri-Metro by Dr. Goodly Wife was during her phone call to him that morning. Beyond that, she learned that there HAD been an opening in Tri-Metro some months before, but that this position had been filled by another healer who was being moved down from a more northerly Immediate Healing Clinic to fill that void. The king would have been fine with Dr. Goodly Wife transferring to Tri-Metro, but he said no one had told him and so he and his staff filled the position from elsewhere. The king had no idea why Tuesday the Middle Manager would have thought anything otherwise, because Tuesday had been involved in the hiring of the healer to fill the position in Tri-Metro in the first place. (She would later claim she thought the healer was being hired for Asscrackton and that she was largely in the dark on most of those kinds of decisions, which conceivably might be true.) Whether she was high, stupid or just being a big bouncy “C” was not then nor today clear. What was clear, as the goodly wife pointed out to the Grand King, was that she was now in a very unfortunate situation of very nearly being the owner of two castles neither of which were in towns she would be employed in for much longer. While the king did not owe her a job in Tri-Metro, she had operated in good faith on information given to her by his middle managers and had proceeded with plans to move there. Surely there was something he could do to try and make the unfortunate situation less unfortunate.
The Grand King’s suggestion was to offer her an immediate position in Asscrackton. This was not something she wished to hear, for while Asscrackton was closer to Tri-Metro than Borderland, it was still a hefty commute and it was still a job in Asscrackton. No one wanted to work in Asscrackton. It was hellishly busy and full of surly employees, if rumors were to be trusted. But the Grand King said it would be no problem to set her up there, which would be closer to Tri-Metro, and she could have all the extra days at the Tri-Metro Immediate Healing Clinic that weren’t already spoken for. She could even have a nice raise which would combat the extra fuel expenses in getting there and maybe make the time spent in doing so worth it. And, if a position opened in Tri-Metro, it was hers and she could keep the raise. He would even put it in writing to her specifications. This sounded tolerable and even generous to the goodly wife. She later explained it to the scribe and while he was still fuming and aching in his junk, he did the math on the raise and agreed that it was in fact quite a tempting offer.
It took a few drafts to get the wording of the contract right, but eventually all parties agreed upon a set of terms and the deal was put into place. The goodly wife would start work in Asscrackton in mid-March. And, meanwhile, the closing date on the new castle had also been set for leap year day. That in mind, the scribe set about packing as much of their crap into boxes and hauling loads of it over to a storage facility in Tri-Metro in preparation for getting their old castle ready to be seen by potential buyers and to get as much of it in their new/old town. They even began speaking with the same moving company that had transported their possessions to borderland about hauling quite a bit of it back. The scribe and wife would pack and move their clothes and sundry books and crap, but the furniture and the kitchen could be moved by professionals.
At last leap day came, the papers were signed and the new castle was officially theirs. And to celebrate, and because it was the last day of the month and they didn’t want to pay another month’s storage, the two of them celebrated by hauling their crap from the storage unit to the new castle in the pouring rain.
The new castle was pretty great, albeit with a few things that needed updating in a big way. The pinstripe wallpaper in the guest bathroom, for instance, had to go, as did some of the window treatments that prevented the back door from opening properly and which infuriated the scribe, for if there’s one thing he hates its design at the expense of utility. But beyond those minor issues and some painting, the place was absolutely great. The two set about remedying the perceived flaws over the course of the following days.
In preparation for the move, the scribe had already contacted essential utilities to make certain that he and the goodly wife would be without them for as little time as possible. Not electricity and water, mind you, but the Network of Dish and the Link of Sudden for all their televisual and web of the whole wide world needs. The two companies even scheduled time to come out and do the installation on the same day.
The Network of Dish was the easiest of these installations, and happened in the afternoon. It was the Link of Sudden installation that had problems in the morning. The Link installation guy inspected the castle to find where its cable was located. Some more inspection then commenced as well as telephone device calls to Link of Sudden HQ and walks around the property. Eventually, the installation tech returned to the scribe’s presence and announced that despite the fact that the castle was wired for the Link of Sudden and had had service through them with the previous owners, the castle was now “unserviceable” for anything beyond basic cable. Apparently while the previous owners had used Link of Sudden for their television, they had not had high speed web of the whole wide world and consequently the connection from the castle into their system was over 300 feet away, which would not support web. The next nearest such node was in the yard of the scribe’s nearest neighbor, a mere 60 feet down the hill, but that particular box only contained two connection ports into which his two nearest neighbors were connected. The installation man said he was inexperienced and could not do such an installation, but perhaps someone with more knowledge than he could. He told the scribe that he would soon be called by such a tech to discuss what to do next.
After no such call was received within 24 hours, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden to inquire as to when he could expect it. The underling on the line told the scribe that no call should be expected for the castle had been declared “unserviceable” by the first tech who’d been out.
“No,” the scribe pointed out, “the castle was unserviceable by that guy. He said he was new and that the castle might be serviceable by someone more experienced. He said they would call me.”
The underling said she understood and that she would note this in the account and request that the local dispatcher give me a call, but as far as she could tell the castle truly was unserviceable and the scribe should probably give up. The scribe reiterated to her that he really REALLY wanted this connection to happen. The purchase of the castle was made partially BECAUSE it had the Link of Sudden. He was willing to pay fees if it meant someone who knew what they were doing could come out and have a look at the place. The underling again said she would note it and that the scribe would be given a call.
After no call was received within 24 hours, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden again to inquire. The new underling also said the castle was unserviceable which led the scribe to explain again the nature of this potentially incorrect claim and the lack of call backs. A little digging on the underling’s part and a note from the local dispatcher was discovered stating that the house actually was serviceable and that an installation could take place at my request. Nice of them to alert the scribe, no? The next available installation date, of course, was a week away and no argument would be brooked otherwise.
Because the scribe has his intelligent personal telephony device that is equipped with the web of the whole wide world and unlimited data, he is able to check his Mail of E. In order to get some of his bigger projects accomplished faster, though, he had to take his lap of top down to his former workplace at the place where they hide the books and use their wireless connection to the web of the whole wide world. He was therefore also able to hang out with his former coworkers and shoot the shit. The only former Rogue Patron he was able to see, though, was Mr. W. Perfect.
A week later, the next installation tech arrived, took one look at the wiring from road level and again announced it was unserviceable. The scribe was hardly surprised and said as much to the installer. The installer said that from what he could see there was no way to make the castle compliant with the needs of the Link of Sudden with its current setup. What was needed was to have the Link of Sudden send out a surveyor to assess the situation and make recommendations for how best to proceed. Perhaps, he supposed, the necessary cables could be connected to the power and phone pole directly behind the new castle, since they couldn’t be run from the street far beyond.
“Could you please tell me HOW I can convince them to do this?” the scribe asked. He explained that he had been phoning and phoning and begging for this very thing to happen but all anyone would say is that the house was unserviceable. Clearly, since every neighbor in spitting distance had the service, it was technologically possible to install. The intaller said it would be best to speak to someone in the Link of Sudden’s engineering department, preferably in Texas, as they could actually make things happen there. He said it wasn’t wise to call and yell as that tended to shut the underlings down and make them less cooperative.
So after the installer left, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden and nicely asked them to speak to the engineering department, preferably in Texas. The underling on the phone did not seem to want to comply and began asking the scribe questions, which raised his blood pressure. And, after the scribe had described the issue, again and nicely, the underling said that her screen noted that the castle was unserviceable, but she could “put in a form” for the local tech supervisor to give him a call. The call could take up to 48 hours to be made, however. The scribe told her that this was unacceptable. He had been promised calls twice previously, but none had ever come. All communication with the company had been made due to his efforts alone. He did not trust that any promise of another call would be any more fruitful, so he asked to speak to a supervisor. When the supervisor came on the line, the scribe explained the whole situation again and mentioned the lack of calls and the seeming confusion on the part of their installers as to what could or needed to be done to make things work. The supervisor apologized that the scribe had not been called and assured him that she would personally put in a call to the local tech supervisor and make certain that he called. And if he couldn’t call then she, the phone supervisor, would call herself and explain the situation. The scribe, she said, could expect a call from someone before 5 p.m.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
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