After deciding a 3G tethered internet connection wasn’t enough (though honestly it kind of was, I just miss Amazon videos), I signed up for Comcast xfinity cable internet service. (Sidenote: I like the name xfinity. It’s a little cool, not trying too hard, suggests the future is now. That kind of thing.) I bought my own modem (uBee 3513) to avoid the bonus rental charge. Waited for my self install kit to arrive. Open it up to discover it’s... 3 feet of coax cable. Thanks. I could have gotten the ball rolling days ago if I knew that’s all you were shipping me.

Connect all the parts, no signal. Call up customer service tech support. Ah, my MAC address isn’t in the system. Makes sense. But it takes three hours to update? Whatever. I leave, count to 10800, come back, still no signal. Call again. First guy didn’t do it right, or something, so we try again, only now it only takes a minute to update the system. But still no luck. They’ll call to schedule an appointment in the morning.

Saturday morning I get a call. “I’m five minutes away”. I guess my appointment is for pronto. At least this guy was competent. The jacks in my apartment aren’t actually connected to anything. Instead, there’s a separate lead by the front door. I feel we could have worked this out over the phone, but at least I didn’t wait long. Was sleeping most of the time anyway. And it turns out my MAC still wasn’t in the system, because the tech had to call it in and wait a couple minutes. Best part about the visit was thirty minutes after the tech leaves, I get a phone call from HQ to schedule a visit.

Ordeal over, I have internet. It’s kind of fast I think. The 20ms ping vs 400ms ping times really make a difference. But apparently Comcast has decided in the last few days to offer double the speed for the same price I signed up for. I wonder what I really signed up for, so I try to login to my account. Register for a username. Oh, I already have a username, that’s convenient (not!). No idea what the password is. Try to reset that and get a message that I have multiple logins (oh really?) and I have to select it from the list below. A list of exactly one username. Pick, next. “There is a problem with the information in your account and we need to talk to you in order to reset your password.” Sigh. Don’t lie, there’s nothing wrong with my information, there is a problem with you.

Two days later, UPS emails me to say Comcast has shipped me another package. Wonder what this could be. Arrives, open it, and discover it’s another self install kit. Yay, now I’m swimming in coax cables.