Everything's falling to shit, but I've got a Wii....

It seems like, in the last few days, that everything I own is breaking or otherwise screwed up.

-The Interweb - Back on Monday, I did something stupid. I called Comcast to make a change to my service. When I moved into Casa De Mad, I signed up for Comcast's Triple Play package, which gave me VOIP phone service, digital cable, and high speed internet for $130. I figured it wasn't much more than I would pay just for the tv and cable modem, even though I didn't really need a land line. Since the promo was about to expire, I figured I would drop the phone service. So I call them up to cancel, and the guy offers me another year at the promo price. Fine. Sold. He also offers me a second digital cable box free of charge, which I turned down - my second TV is a 4 year old $100 20" Apex that sits in my basement in front of the treadmill. I'm lucky if I use it for 5 hours a month. It doesn't need digital.

So I go home Monday night, and after eating some dinner and watching some TV, I try to get online. And can't. I get a "welcome to comcast" page, and that's it. I figure I probably fucked something up, so I try a bunch of stuff - reboot the router, reboot the cable modem (unplug it and pull out the battery, since it's got a built-in UPS so you can use the VOIP phone even if the power is out), ect. Try to run the installation software, and it bombs. And when I look at the stuff I had downloading in eMule, it all stopped downloading around the time I called Comcast. Although I know it's not, I hope maybe it's a service interruption and will work in the morning. Still doesn't work the next day, so I call from work to determine if I still have cable service. Guy says I does, transfers me to tech support. Since I'm at work and can't do shit, I hang up.

Come home last night, still no interweb. Decide to try unplugging the router, plugging the modem directly into the PC. Get farther, but get an error message about service management unable to get service. Call Comcast, talk to a high speed person. She says that everything looks OK but that the phone people need to activate the modem, which is odd since the phone service works (I'm talking to her on it) but the internet doesn't. She appologizes a bunch of times, but doesn't fix the issue. Transfers me to phone. I explain the situation to the guy, who was pretty cool. He tries some stuff, doesn't work. At one point he gets an error message and goes "oh Shit!". I like this guy. He then figures out that, evidently when I called in, the guy changed what tap the phone and internet were on - they should have been on the same one, but were on different ones. So he has me run the installer again, which this time goes futher - to the point where it asks me to sign in, and then gives a generic error message and tells me to call tech support. Tech support dude keeps asking me if it says anything else. It doesn't. He's going to have to call some people in the back, and get back to me.

He does, and gets it fixed, but I did waste about 2 hours on the phone with Comcast, not to mention being without internet for two days. All because I called them about dropping a service - and didn't.

The Phone - When I came back from Jersey on Sunday, I plugged in my cell phone - a year and a half LG VX8100 -and noticed it wasn't charging. Tried a couple outlets, nothing. Brought it to work, still nothing. In one of my few bright moves, I asked a phone-savy coworker for advice before buying the phone, and he recommended it because he had the same one. So I borrow his charger, and it works. Well, that actually worked out OK - I ordered a new charger off the eBay for like $8 shipped, and he's letting me borrow his charger until it comes in.

Ants Casa De Mad is being invaded by a small army. They are small in size but many in number, and they march in order accross my kitchen floor to my trash can. It's pretty gross. I've seen ants here and there in the kitchen, but not in this number. I had set up ant-bait traps and hoped that they were working. I'm guessing they aren't. So I will need, in the next few days, to scrub the ant-trails off my kitchen floor and buy more traps. And maybe an airtight trash can. I've also found ants in my dishwasher, which is disturbing in a number of ways. I'm not even sure how the ants are getting in, since the kitchen, since I live in a center unit townhouse with the kitchen plop in the middle. I blame my drunk next-door neighbors.

Wiiiii! - on the plus side, I finally got a wii. I spent a bunch of time the last couple days while I was going back and forth from NJ looking - I tried 4 targets, 4 wal-marts, 2 gamestops, a toys r us, a circuit city, and a best buy with no success. Finally, I found this handy Wii tracking tool for gamestop and eb games on the Wii thread on Fatwallet. The first store I tried that showed inventory at the time (on Charles St) didn't have any, but the second store I tried (Mondowmin Mall) did.

I went at lunchtime, and brought a student worker with me. Our conversation went like this:

MA: Want to go Wii Hunting with me? I think there might be one at Mondawmin Mall.

Coworker: And you need a black guy to go with you?

MA: yup.

Coworker: OK.

Mondawmin Mall is an interesting experience. It's the answer to the question "what would happen if a mall had sex with a city street in a questionable neighborhood" - it's different. It has some of the stores you would expect to find in a mall - Gamestop, Radio Shack, FYE - and a bunch of things you wouldn't expect to find - a carryout offering a thigh and drumstick for $1.43, a Popeye's Chicken, and the Baltimore City Department of Social Services.

But the Gamestop had a pile of Wii boxes with a "now in stock!" starburst. I asked if they had it, the guy said yes. The student who was with me asked how many they had in stock, but guy wouldn't answer. Said that if he wanted to buy one now he could sell him one, but that they don't give out inventory information and that they talk about people who ask after they leave. Since he was the only guy working, I don't know who he talked to, but eff it, I got my Wii.

So after getting the internet working, I got it hooked up. It rocks. I'm not usually a big gamer, but I'm getting decent at Wii Bowling and Wii Tennis.

Of course, I better like it, because I'm pretty much broke, so it's going to be the last thing I buy for a while.