For those that may not have picked up on it, I have a mild case of Obsessive Compulsion Disorder. Basically if my daily routine is change even slightly it totally ruins my whole day. My afternoon routine goes as followed:
4:30 - Tape Jim Rome Is Burning
5:00 - Watch Hardball with Chris Matthews while start cooking dinner
5:30 - Watch Pardon the Interruption while eating dinner
6:00 - Watch Jim Rome Is Burning until the big finish of PTI is back on Sportscenter then walk the dogs
So Monday I get a call from my cousin who had some extra tickets to that night’s baseball game so I fire up my Time Warner Cable box and notice instead of the yellow TV Guide, it is now blue with a completely new interface and it takes two second between when I press the remote and when the screen actually moves. Yeah. For those that do not have the same thing I do let me explain how easy it is to record something. You go to the show you want to record, press the select button on the remote, it asks you if you want to record this show, then press select again. Viola, that’s it. Simple right? All you have to remember is to leave the VCR on.
So I set PTI, Sportscenter, How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory to record, but instead of asking me if I wanted to record these shows when I selected them, it asked if I wanted to set a reminder which I figure was the same thing. Well I get home from the game to check up on the days biggest sports stories and the funniest show on television only to hit the rewind button to find that there was nothing to rewind because nothing taped. Being the rational person that I am, after yelling a few obscenities at the screen, I decided to sleep on it and see what is up with this new screen the next day.
Then on Tuesday I manually taped Jim Rome, hitting the record button at 4:30, before going back to what I was doing previously. Later I figured Jim Rome didn’t tape because this new screen wiped out my scheduled tapping, I have the show set to record weekdays, so I check out the new options menu, including the two seconds it tapes for the screen to move from when I hit the remote, only to find you can no longer do this anymore. While going through the menu there was a commercial taking about their website for the new screen, mytwcnavigator.com. When I get there and finally find the how to record part of the guide, it tells me go to the show, select it, scroll to Record Series. The only problem is that there is not a Record Series option when I do this on my television. Apparently I am not the only one that is not having this problem because this FAQ page ranks a 1.4 out of 5.
Then on Wednesday I did what I was dreading to do since Monday, call customer service. I tell all of the above to the first English as a second language guy I talk to and he says that everything looks right on his end and he will have to talk to his supervisor. When he come back he tells me that I do not have a DVR (like I didn’t know that) and asks me if I would like him to transfer me ordering guy to sign up for a DVR. I asked if it cost anything, to which he responded five dollars a month. I followed that up with why would I pay that for something my VCR does for free, let me talk to this supervisor of yours.
Onto my second English as a second language guy who apparently wants me go through my whole story again leading me to believe he is not the previous guy supervisor, just another tech guy poising as a tech guy. His conclusion, you need to call your VCR manufacturer to see why it is not working. To which I respond that is does work, it records when I hit the record button, it just doesn’t record when I set the program guide.
This “call the VCR manufacturer/it isn’t the VCR” argument goes about five rounds before I calmly shout obscenities and now dude suggests that I change my box, something he actually had to do because his VCR wasn’t compatible with the old box and new software (which begs the question why did we waste five minutes on calling the VCR manufacturer when he had the same problem). I know there is a Time Warner Cable store in town but I ask for the address so I don’t have to look it up myself. Apparently the closest store with this box is twenty miles away. I say great, you want to reimburse the gas it will take me to drive the forty miles I am going to have to drive to get a box? Surprisingly he said no, in fact I am not getting credited for any of my inconvenience.
Sometime during my conversation I mentioned that everything I needed the box to did it on Sunday, why don’t you just upload the old software. Well apparently the brain trust at Time Warner Cable deleted the old software before working out all the kinks in the new software. And in all of this, my cable box has a new light on it, which is labeled bypass, which has never been on in the years I have had these cable boxes. Dude tells me that shouldn’t be on, and shouldn’t a picture, yet I do.
So instead of driving way out of my way to get a box that may or may not work, we decide to have someone come out to my house to hook up a new box. Next Thursday. So if I am overtly cranky, even more so than usually, you have Time Warner Cable to that because they will be messing up my daily routine for the next week.
That is unless I decide to switch to DirecTV so I do not have to deal with TWC ever again. And get to watch Friday Night Lights
in the fall instead of having to wait until winter.
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