Joan Crawford With Tom Bosley's Eyes

See previous entry for my negotiating adventure. Remember, you'll only get what you want in a deal if you're willing to walk away, and you're willing to take a REAL LONG TIME doing it.

So the next day I swung by the local TWC store to pick up my digital converter. Of course I was planning to install it myself. In fact, that was one of the chief reasons I signed up. I love getting new gadgets and installing them. If I'd only invest in a Lego set, my life might be a whole lost less complicated. It was pretty much what I expected - a box about the size of a Roku box (much like the one I already have!), a power supply, several cables and a little instruction booklet.

It was pleasantly complicated. I unhooked my modem, put the cable feed into a splitter, then ran one cable to the box and the other to the modem again, then ran an HDMI cable into the remaining HDMI port on my TV, which is pretty close to my computer. God only knows how I would have managed otherwise. Then, since I was squeezing this into my lunch hour, I ran back to work.

This is a fun detail about this whole story - I was crazy to attempt this last week. It was what they call Tech Week for The Importance of Being Earnest, which meant that I only had an hour a night between the end of work and the start of rehearsals. So when I got back I remotely activated the cable box online, blind, hoping there weren't error messages. After work I got home and while I was microwaving dinner I turned on the TV, and the box, and changed channels a few times. It worked! I had cable!

And then I got the hell outta there and didn't look at it again until Saturday, the first free time I had.

It's this crazy schedule that prompted me to come up with the stupid title up there. If you don't get it, look up the Night Gallery TV movie, the segment directed by Steven Spielberg. Not his best work but WAY better than you'd have done under the circumstances.

So, finally, basic cable. Is it worth it? Eh, I'll tell you next time.