That Comcast commercial is completely true. FiOS really does do a lot of destruction when installing their crappy service. I blogged about this when I got FiOS installed.
A bunch of friends and I were up for a movie the other weekend but FiOS OnDemand was down. This was at like 11:00 PM on a Saturday night. Like prime time for watching a movie. We called them up and they said they were doing maintenance… on a Saturday night. FAIL.
Our HD box has also been finiky. It’s pretty slow. You have to be very delicate when choosing menu options. For instance, I can’t go down to Recently Viewed stuff or else it will freeze. If I want to see something I stopped earlier, I have to navigate back to where I found it. FAIL.
Anyway, the main reason I’m blogging is because FiOS totally screws up the streets. I saw their van a few months ago installing their crappy service on Broadwood Drive in Rockville (a street that I commute on). They had to navigate traffic around their crappy little cones in order to drill the street to lay their crappy wiring. I should have called then but I thought they’d actually clean up their mess.
When I take my scooter on this road, there are bumps everywhere and uneven pavement. There’s even a place really bad where I have to completely slow down. It’s like a reverse speed bump. The scooter doesn’t like it. Neither does the Camaro.
So I finally thought about calling them the other day. I thought they were going to hang up on me but surprisingly, they created a ticket for it. I had to give them all my Verizon account information. Not sure why they needed that but whatever.
They called me back the next day and basically said it wasn’t their problem. The city of Rockville had to fix it even though they were the ones who installed it! My tax dollars going to another greedy corporation for stuff that THEY’RE responsible for fixing. It’s like the oil rig explosion in the golf… except this is 2,398,438 times worse… just kidding.
Bill Maher said something last week that was 100% true. Too long for twitter…
“You ever watch House or Gray’s Anatomy? It’s like ten or twelve doctors for just you. All they do is treat you and then they go home and fuck each other and think about you. That’s the fantasy.”
Makes a strong case for watching Nurse Jackie instead of House.
Bill Maher was on the Jay Leno Show last night and said a pretty funny thing. It’s too long for Twitter or else I’d tweet it.
“If you’ve voted for a guy who wouldn’t give you health care, as opposed to one who would, you should have your head examined… Except you can’t afford to have your head examined because you don’t have health care.”
Just thought I’d share it.
As some of you may have watched, Rush Limbaugh was on the Jay Leno show last night, talking nothing but trash. Leno got in there a few times to correct Rush on a few of his “misunderstandings”. Most of what he said, of course, were lies. I debunked a few as he was saying them on my twitter.
The one lie I loved the best was him claiming that there are no successful government run programs. I desperately wanted to tweet but, come on, my list would be well over the 140 character limit Twitter has.
I decided just to blog about it quickly here and list a few successful government programs. Some of these everyone uses in their day to day lives, without even realizing it:
Federal Highway Administration
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Environmental Protection Agency
Tennessee Valley Authority
National Park Service
Medicaid
Medicare
National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA)
Social Security
Family & Medical Leave Act
National Weather Service
Consumer Product Safety Commission
Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
Government Grants
Food & Drug Administration
Americans with Disabilities Act
Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (GI bill)
Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act (another GI bill)
Peace Corps
European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan)
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS or cash for clunkers)
Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act
Public Broadcasting
Public Schools & Universities
Public Transportation (it has a lot of faults but a lot of people need it to get around)
Public Libraries
Fire Department
Workers’ Compensation (ex Sate Compensation Insurance Fund of California)
Rural Utilities Service
Federal Aviation Administration
Community Development Block Grant
Housing & Urban Development (HUD)
It turns out there are a lot of successful government run programs, making this list rather incomplete.
So football is back, as you know. I’m already in. The problem is now that shows are starting to come back. My week is like packed.
Sunday’s
10:00AM – 11:30AM I try to catch The Chris Matthews Show and Meet The Press. It usually doesn’t turn out that way, though.
12:00PM – 11:00PM I watch all the football games I could possibly watch.
9:00PM – 10:00PM is Dexter… I’m going to have to watch it on demand or try to catch it another time. I can’t sacrifice football… I might miss something.
10:00PM – 11:00PM is the rerun of Realtime. I usually miss the live show on Friday cause Friday night I’m always doing something.
Monday’s
8:00PM – 11:00PM MNF. No way around it (unless the Suckles play).
9:00PM – 10:00PM House. Going to have to miss it to watch MNF.
Tuesday’s
Nothing
Wednesday’s
9:00PM – 10:00PM Law & Order SVU.
Thursday’s
9:00PM – 10:00PM Fringe.
Friday’s
Always hang out with buddies.
Saturday’s
Usually at Dad’s working… but it could be soon I won’t have to!
Monday – Friday
5:00PM – 6:00PM is Hardball… This show is the only show I watch religiously because it’s so nice. Just get home and put it on.
8:00PM – 9:00PM is Countdown.
9:00PM – 10:00PM is Rachel.
10:00PM – whenever is Leno.
Lots of quality programming available. I guess I’ll have to squeeze stuff in somehow. Or do what I usually do and watch KO and Rachel at work on msnbc.com . I can catch Dexter and Realtime on demand. I always rearrange stuff to hang out with peeps anyway… TV isn’t that important. I just wanted to list out all my TV stuff I would like to watch.
So Bri and I recently moved to an area that is FiOS ready. To those who haven’t heard of FiOS, it’s supposed to be the bomb as far as internet, phone, and TV go.
Bri and I wanted to keep the same number we had at the apartment. That required us to wait two weeks before Verizon installing it, so they can port the number. Also, it required us to keep our Comcast account active (even though we couldn’t watch TV, Internet, etc). We made an appointment with Verizon and they were scheduled to come out on a Friday. Brian took the day off to get it installed, along with Brinks.
Verizon never showed up. Nor did they call to tell us they weren’t showing up. Supposedly, there was an error in their system saying we couldn’t get FiOS. Come to find out, they also could not port over our number, which they claimed they could do. Hours on the phone later, we set up a new appointment. And, no, they couldn’t pull some strings and get dispatch out there early for us, nor could they install it on the weekend or on Monday.
We now had an appointment for Wednesday between the hours of 8 and 5. I didn’t want to take the day off because leave is very important, and I have to save it for Dad stuff. I bribed one of my friends to come up and spend the day waiting for Verizon.
They showed up, I guess, around 1PM and proceeded to install FiOS. I get a text saying it would cost $55 per TV to run wire so we can have cable. The house CAME wired with Coax. According to the techs who were installing it, it wasn’t Coax, but a thicker wire. Whatever, Bri and I weren’t home so we couldn’t tell.
When I got home, I let them do their thing, thinking they are professionals and wouldn’t mess anything up. Was I wrong. When the guys left, Bri and I walked around the house to see what they had done. They had CUT our wire to our current Coax system. Not only that, they INSTALLED Coax! The very thing we had wired throughout the house!
Brian called Verizon (yet again). They are supposed to call him back sometime today. We are NOT paying for the Coax installation which we already had. It’s been ridiculous. If they say we still have to pay, we’re probably going to take them to small claims court or something. We can also, hopefully, get the dudes in trouble who installed the stuff. They did a horrible job anyway. They even left their twisty ties on the floor so my cats can choke on them. Nice, right?
Needless to say, I laugh every time I get off the phone with these assholes and they say “recommend us to family and friends”… Yeah, right.
My opinion so far, I watched around 3 hours of TV. Picture is fine. HD is fine. More HD channels than Comcast. Internet is very fast. Honestly, it’s the same as Comcast. I see no real difference. It is NOT the bomb like it’s made out to be.
Bottom line, don’t get Verizon. They’re jerks. I’ll update later about how it all turns out.
How cool is this?
On the House season finale, I saw this. Vote For Change!
