Duh, Time Warner Cable = Regional Monopoly

I had another splendid experience with Time Warner customer service the other day. Unlike my previous experiences with them, however, this call was cleverly camouflaged in competency!

They do seem to have added a new group of CSRs. That, or they’ve stepped up the training regimen at one of their call centers. Ugh, Steve Ross is rolling in his grave. How tarnished the Warner name has become!

So, the cable television package I subscribe to gives me one free premium channel. With HBO’s mid-season premier tonight, I wanted to change my free premium channel from Showtime to HBO. I conveyed this to the CSR. He replied that it would be, “no problem.” I then informed that I was moving next week and I wanted to set that up. He proceeded to take down my new address and we set up a time where I would get to take the whole day off from work to wait for a technician to show up and authorize the cable box (the box is a whole other issue I will have to post about separately).

After we were done with the relocation transaction, he asked me if there was anything else he could do. I asked him about the Showtime to HBO switch and he replied, “Oh, yeah.”

Wait, wait, wait. Typing. Holding. BRB.

“Okay, so I can’t do it right now, but I assure you that within a few hours you’ll be able to watch HBO.”

“Really? Okay, great.”

“On a scale of 1 – 10 how would you rate my service?”

“Based on my previous phone calls to Time Warner? I’d give you a 10.” Big mistake.

So the next morning I check and wouldn’t you know it, Showtime is disconnected. Know what other channel I can’t tune it? You guessed it. I call back and explain everything to the CSR.

“Oh, man. I’m sorry – when we put in a location transfer request it locks out changes to the rate plan. We can’t modify the channels until after the move date.”

After I’m settled in I’m switching to Dish Networks. I’m way beyond being tired of this crap.

Time and Eric Awesome Show Live

Last night I got to go to Tim and Eric Awesome Show Live 2009 and I was not disappointed. I was a little uneasy with the idea of the comedic duo performing live, but I should’ve known better. With Bob Odenkirk lending his experience and support, the show had all the polish and lustre I could have hoped for.

It was my first time to Club Nokia (or to LA Live for that matter) and we got slightly disoriented finding the venue. Parking was relatively inexpensive ($10, compared to the $25 I’d normally pay to park near Staples on the night of a Lakers game) and plentiful, just a short walk from the center of the complex.

We had to dodge a large crowd queued up for the Conga Room, and got to peek inside the Lucky Strike Lounge.

I really enjoyed the performance. I won’t ruin the ending, but let me just say I’m seriously considering buying a hot tub.

Some PERY History

I just found this neat little piece of info.

For a while now I’d been aware that the big bus depot down in Venice was originally built as a train depot for the old trolley lines. You can still see the railroad tracks on Rose between Main and Pacific, as well as in a few other spots. I’ve been reading that there was also a spot in south Santa Monica where another train depot had been located. There’s no obvious evidence of it now. The Pacific / Neilson thoroughfare had originally been reserved for the Pacific Electric trolley (hence the name Pacific Avenue).

I found this on the MTA website:

There was another facility beside the Ocean Park Car House with a yard on Ashland Street, north of Kinney Avenue, between the Trolleyway (now Neilson Way) and Main Street. It was used to store Pacific Electric buses (probably the Brentwood line) and the Los Angeles Motor Coach Co. line to Santa Monica. There was a building at 174 Kinney Ave, Ocean Park, just inside the Santa Monica city limits that still existed in 2001. The other end of the building was on Pier Ave, which might have been the Ocean Park station for Pacific Electric service. The original Kinney Avenue street name is for Abbot Kinney, the visionary who founded Venice as a resort. Just south in Venice there is an Abbot Kinney Blvd (formerly Washington Blvd.). The Venice Short Line buses operated out of this facility from 1950 to 1951.

Updated: I think this might be a photo of that railyard.

Obama’s Legacy: Cleaning Up After 43

I just read this article over at Salon.

I’m a little bummed. I guess, somewhat, because, after the re-election in 2004, I knew this would be the best possible scenario. That after trashing a budget surplus and a supersizing a downsized defense budget, the 43rd POTUS was going to leave my country in such a mess that even if a really great guy got elected, he wasn’t going to be able to do much good. We probably wouldn’t get to address universal healthcare or greenhouse gas emissions. We’d be too busy fixing everything that got messed up over the last eight years.

No, the legacy of Obama is probably going to be cleaning up the mess left by the administration of the 43rd President. With a little luck, we might get things back to 1999 levels just in time for another neo-con administration to steal its way into the White House.

Don’t get me wrong, I think 41 did a heckuva job in his four years in the Oval Office. He seems like a nice enough guy, even if he is an elitist member of the ruling class. I don’t think I’d shun my legacy if I’d be born to a US Senator from Connecticut. Even Nixon, the former arch-nemesis of the left, seems like, if anything, a victim of a system that had grown so out of control that it needed to chew up a commander in chief. The war crime atrocities of which it’s purported that he’s responsible, don’t seem as nasty compared to the invasion of Iraq, Abu Ghraib and the Extraordinary Rendition program.

And that’s just on the foreign policy side. I’m not even going to get into the domestic stuff.

I’ll start stress-eating again.