Shouzer

It was a long weekend, that is for sure. We began moving things to Carterville Friday evening, but the bulk of the work was done Saturday. There isn’t much to say about moving furniture, clothes, and things from one location to another, except that it makes one tired.

I put myself in charge of all Mediacom dealings, which was as much a curse as it was a blessing. So let me count the cable jacks for you in this house. (3) Living Room, (1) Formal Living Room, (1) Dining Room, (1) Master Bedroom, (1) Bedroom #2, (1) Bedroom #3. That makes 8. That’s entirely too many, but I figure, hey, if the guy who built the house thought that was necessary, so be it. The people we bought the house from (they were the second owners of the house) used a satellite dish and had no cable. But I never considered the possibility that the house was never equipped for cable, considering the 8 jacks throughout the house. That was the case, though. So when the Mediacom guy gets here, he has to run a new line from the closest box in the neighborhood (luckily, it was situated between our house and the neighbors in the backyard). So now I’ve got this bright orange eyesore running all the way across my lawn because Mediacom subcontracts a company to bury the cable, and I’m informed that might take 2-3 months. Go figure. Now, you would think that after connecting the orange eyesore main line to the line running into my house that the myriad of cable jacks would all be hot (ie. working). Again, that would be too easy. Three of them worked stupendously; five were nonresponsive. I’m going to leave out the next part of the story, because I don’t want to make this post into a novella, but if I did tell you this story, it would include two trips to the attic, 1 cable split into 4 cables, those 4 cables split into 8, a hole in the sheetrock, and a hidden compartment in my garage.

After about 3 hours, though, we did have working Mediacom cable TV and internet. The internet has been touchy, though. It seems (after talking with 2 different tech support guys) that the computer that processes change orders (when we changed addresses, they changed our account number) was failing to complete the order. So sometimes the internet was here just isn’t working because the modem doesn’t understand what account to work for. At least I think that’s the problem. Anyways, I think it is working for good now.

Also, since moving to Carterville would require a new phone number, I decided to check out Mediacom’s cable phone service. Turns out, that they are running a special on their VIP package. We only pay $0.01 on phone service per month through December, and then it’s $30. Plus, no installation fee. And that $30 is still cheaper than the $50 we payed for phone in Herrin with Verizon. Even better, the VIP package bumps internet speeds from max 8mbps to 15mbps. Very nice.

The only problem left right now is that I’m getting good speeds when I’m directly connected to my router (~6.5mbps), but on wireless it diminishes greatly, even though I’m connected at 54mpbs (and the router is in my room). Surely, I’ll figure it out soon, though.