"Here comes the action…"-Doves

Knock Knock.

Who's there.

Knock knock.

I said who's there!

Knock Knock

Sigh…you suck at this game!

I cheated. I already knew anyway. What? Didn't you know you could cheat at knock knock? Sure. If you know all the answers before the "Knock Knock" It's either telepathy or cheating. I'm too enthralled with what's going on in my head to be telepathic. I don't have time for the voices in other people's heads.

What was going on in my head during this knock knock? Oh that's easy.

Why are you here?

Maybe I should back up.

You saw the early morning post yesterday, right? The short one about cable down blah blah blah? Well, it went down just after midnight. That's a bad time for me. At midnight, I've got an hour to finish up the bulk of my work, while babysitting the other sites until 2am. Think newspaper editor moments before deadline. I can't babysit online when there is no online. So, when refreshing every router, firewall, modem, and electronic device in the house served no purpose other than draining city power and flickering my neighbors lights, I called the cable company. My teeth grind on reflex. Remember a month or so ago I talked about asking for help? Same family.

Actually I hate calling the cable company because most of the idiots I talk to know less than I do about what's going on. You've cyber-met me. You know I'm about as together as a bride on acid. I think they could troll an asylum and find fifteen people more qualified than I am. So how is it that the voice of reason for these phone calls is played by yours truly?

Now granted, expectations are high. I expect more from people than they can possibly deliver. Right now MyUnwife is hopping up and down with one finger on her nose, while the other hand is pointing at my head, shouting "Yeah! Yeah!" She's probably shouting other things, but this is a deteriorating family blog. I won't repeat them; I expected more from her.

How high are my expectations? Let's try this. Visualize yourself as a little kid looking for something sweet. The cookie jar is my vat of expectations.

No, no. Put away the stepstool. Didn't you hear me? I said the jar represented my expectations. You're gonna need daddy's ladder because it's sitting up there on the garage eave. That's ok, you can't even see where I put my expectations for myself. Here, use my binoculars. See the jet? Ok look a hair to the left. See it? The pie in the sky floating over the stratosphere? There ya go.

So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the helpdesk operator wasn't as helpful as I wanted. Even worse, he couldn't talk. No, not foreign "couldn't talk." "American in dire need of remedial English" couldn't talk. He kept pausing between words.

"Ok"

Pause

"now unplug"

Pause

"your"

Pause

"modem from"

Pause

"The power source."

Hi, I'm Rob in rush mode. I'm already judgmental, and this English-a-phobe wants to test my patience too? Sigh. We're fifteen minutes into the phone call, and he's only asked five questions. By the last one, I'm pounding my head against my desk to the rhythm of the pause. Somewhere in my mind it's his forehead recoiling off the surface. I'm thinking if I hit it hard enough, I might really believe. I need to believe.

"I'll"

Pause

Slam Slam

"Have a"

Pause

Slam slam

"Tech out to"

Pause

Slam slam

"Your house."

Pause

Slam slam

"Tomorrow."

Notice, I can fit 2 slams into one of his pauses. I could have fit more, but this was an aggressive beat. It was our dance. He steps, I double-dip. The pounding in my head has long since stopped shouting "Stop it!" It's now mumbling something about this not being my problem, it's probably an outage. I'm agreeing with the voice, but "the expert" assures me that there isn't an outage anywhere. It's only me. I find that highly suspect, but I can't afford another half hour for an argument. I agree to the tech.

After I've called everybody on my call list to let them know my line is down, my work will be late, and somebody else will need to man our helpdesk, I send the email from my cell phone letting you, my beloved reader, know my blog may be later than usual.

That done, I settle in to do what work is already downloaded onto my computer. That's when the cable came back up.

I finished work, then called the cable company to cancel my appointment. They gave me an automated voice. Apparently, you can set an appointment in the wee hours, you just can't cancel one. For that you have to wait for the knock knock.

Yeah. I know the punchline. It's pretty freakin funny.