Rhymes with Safari

Have you ever been in a situation where a customer service person tells you something you know to be wrong? (I know, cable company customer service complaints, how trite.) This frequently happens when speaking to customer service people on the phone, especially when the person whom you’re asking where to find something within a 15-mile radius of your house clearly is not even in the same country as you are.

In that scenario, the solution is of course, to hang up the phone and call the 800 (877, 866, whatever) number again because the odds certainly are against getting the same person twice.

But it happened to me yesterday in the Comcast store. To fully enjoy the benefits of my factory-renewed (aka last year’s model) HD TiVo, I need two CableCARD decoder things. There exists a multi-stream card that can be used in the newest model, which does the same thing as two single-stream cards. But I need two cards in my TiVo. It says so on the Internet.

The lady at the Comcast store told me the multi-stream card does the same thing as two single stream cards. I said, “But I have the TiVo Series 3,” and she said, “Yeah, yeah, that’s what this is for.” Hmm.

My options? Argue with her that no, it won’t work with my model, insist that she give me two cards; or take the card home, activate it, verify it doesn’t work like two cards, and then take it back telling her that I need two cards. Because maybe the Comcast lady knows more than the TiVo website. And certainly she knows more than me.

Because even when I take the card back, she insists that it should work the same as two cards. Never mind that the TiVo itself told me, after I installed the multi-stream card, “To record two programs at once, you need another card,” never mind that I called TiVo and the dude on the phone said my TiVo will read a multi-stream card like a single-stream card, so I need another card.

The lady asks if I’m sure I put it in the right slot. And tells me that I’m lucky they still have some single-stream cards lying around, because they were told they didn’t need them anymore. (Two multi-stream cards would work as well, but whatever.)

A few years ago, I guess it was really hard to get the CableCARD (why it is spelled that way, I do not know) activated, as evidenced by a myriad of message board exasperations. The activation process this morning, even though I didn’t have enough cards, was pretty seamless, so I’m optimistic that it will be similarly easy to install the two cards tonight.

That’s why when the Comcast lady had trouble removing the multi-stream card from my account and asked accusingly if I’d activated it (like, “why would you activate it if it was the wrong card?”), I didn’t scream, “Yes! Because you told me it would work, you idiot!”

So, uh, I spent a little too much time yesterday figuring out how to isolate 30 seconds of a song and copy it as an MP3 for use as a ringtone on the new phone. And then creating about 10 different ringtones.

I don’t even have a memory card for said phone, and can’t figure out how to download stuff without the card, so I don’t know yet if I’ll be able to use them or not.

However, you can’t tell me that was time spent “goofing off,” because I just used that skill at work to isolate and copy a 1-minute story out of a 6-minute podcast that had no time code or other means of jumping to a particular story 2 minutes 42 seconds in.

Besides, my coworker just got back from waiting in line to get his wife an iPhone.

Yesterday we got a 40-inch Sony Bravia. I agonized over the purchase of this thing, so afraid I would get the wrong one. Not about spending $1300 or so on a TV…but what if it broke or wasn’t as good as another one?

I was looking at a 32-inch Sharp Aquos at Stupid Prices for a very reasonable $469 (tax included). But when we got there Friday, it had a “Sold” sign on it. I’m glad, because when the TV was turned off, you could see a mark on the screen, which apparently didn’t show up when the TV was on. I can see myself buying it without noticing that…or getting far enough along in the buying process that I would be willing to accept such a defect rather than leave in defeat.

Later, my mother made a very good point. TV is a very important part of my life. It’s our primary form of entertainment. (Don’t judge. We also work out regularly in our garage and play with our dog, just not for as many consecutive hours as we watch TV.) Shopping around for a deal and winding up with a substandard machine could detract from our enjoyment of said activity. So I went for it.

By the way, that $40 used TiVo wound up being the best investment of my life. The previous owners had purchased lifetime service, which apparently stays with the machine even if the machine doesn’t stay with them. Translation: I have a TiVo for which I never have to pay a monthly service fee. Now in even less of a hurry to upgrade to an HDTV in the bedroom.

The new used TiVo looked quite unused, still wrapped in plastic and containing all the original packaging. It’s clearly been sitting around for a few years, since the “recently deleted” shows include events from the 2006 Olympics. Quite interestingly, the TiVo was activated along with its lifetime service on my 30th birthday.

It gets better. I was paying $6.95 on a 3-year contract on the broken machine. The nice lady at customer service canceled my other TiVo service, which was $12.95, but not on a contract, and switched the 3-year contract to that DVR. Where I once was paying $20 a month, I now pay $6.95 with a slight upgrade of one of my machines. So clearly I am saving enough money to merit the purchase of 40-inch TV.