I took off work early yesterday to try and catch up on some much-needed rest. Around 4:30 my cable tv and internet went out. It was raining at the time so I assumed the usual and called Cox to report an outage. Sometime later when it was sun-shiny again I called back to ask when it was going to be back on. I was informed that service had been restored and Cox offered to set up an appointment for a tech to come to my apartment and figure out the problem.
So I said fine I'll take another half day tomorrow, watched a DVD, and went to bed without my nightly "fix" of talking on Yahoo Messenger with my sweetie.
When I woke up this morning and got a cup of coffee in me, I suddenly got this funny feeling that I should go look at the cable connections on the back of the apartment house. What I found was that my line had been unhooked from the splitter and left hanging so that one of the other residents could hook their cable up. A call to Cox to report it brought a technician VERY quickly. He called his dispatcher and found out that I am the only resident in this apartment house who is paying for cable. Yep, we've got not one but TWO cable thieves in this house!
So he took care of things. He removed the splitter completely and cut the ends off the lines for the other two apartments.
I also called the police and reported it, even though Cox declined to take action. And that's suprising considering that they're constantly running these commercials threatening criminal penalties for stealing cable.
Now I'm kind of worried about things getting ugly. I'm pretty sure I know which neighbor did the deed and he had to know he was disconnecting my cable in order to steal his service. So when he gets home tonight and turns on his tv to find his free cable is gone, I'm expecting a knock at my door. Well sorry buddy, but you could have spent a few bucks at Radio Shack and done it in a way that didn't disconnect my LEGITIMATE AND PAID FOR service.
So like I said, I'm afraid things might get ugly. I've already had numerous problems with my car being broken into. Now I'm starting to wonder if maybe it could be one of my neighbors.
If I had the money right now, I'd be moving. My 1-year lease expired this month so now I don't have to renew, I can just pay by the month and live here as long as I want. I love living in the downtown historic district, but some of the neighbors are really making those beautiful 100 and 150 year old homes look pretty unattractive.
Mike.