Memorial Day Update

Well Memorial Day 2015 has come and past and summer is practically here. I see I'm way overdue for an update. We've been busy as usual.

Chay's last day of Kindergarten is on Thursday. Its hard to believe that he'll be a first grader soon. The twins will be attending pre-school at the same time.

I thought I would write about the trials and tribulations of being in a new housing development. There have been a few. We've lived in our house for 2.5 months now. We were the first ones in the neighborhood and we now have two other families living there. We've had to break new ground, literally and figuratively.

Since we were the first ones there, we had to train the city's garbage department. This one turned out to be the easiest thing to resolve. Prior to moving in, I called the city and signed up for sewar/water/garbage. The day we moved in, the city dropped off a garbage can so that we can wheel the the trash the curb on collection day. A week later, I did just that. It was a bit of a pain because we didn't have a driveway so the big, rather full trash can had to be transported over gravel and through ruts to the curb. It's wheels weren't made for off-road activities. When I went home for lunch, I noticed that the garbage was still in the can. I found the number for the city and called them. I explained to the guy that I knew that they had all day to pick up the trash, but I figured since they weren't there by noon that I'd give him a call. He asked me..."are you in that blue house south of Microsoft?" It seems he already knew the house I was talking about. I affirmed his question and he told me that he was unaware the neighborhood was now "active". He dispatched a truck to our street and we've had regular pickups ever since. That was the easy one.

The next one came sorting out mail delivery. It does take almost 2 weeks for mail to start getting forwarded. So when we didn't get mail in the beginning, it wasn't surprising. After awhile, I made a trip to the post office. They said I should be getting it soon and to make sure that I had a temporary mail box available, which I did. Another week and another trip to the post office. The guy I talked to pulled up the transfer of service record and didn't know why we weren't getting mail. He said that he would pass on this information to Nancy who is the route supervisor. He said she would be calling me in the next day or two. She did not call. I did get a call from the gas company. They informed me that my bill had been returned because of an "invalid address". I wasn't late with the payment. They just wanted me to know. So multiple trips to the post office couldn't sort it out. What could I do? I spent quite a bit of time on the USPS web site until somehow I found a place where I could log a report that my mail wasn't getting delivered. That afternoon, I got a call from someone in Atlanta. I explained that this was a new neighborhood and that the computer system must not have this new address in it. They said that normally I would get a response in a few days. The next day, on a Saturday even, I got a call. It was from Nancy. She said that she'd get my mail flowing and it did.

So while that one was a bit painful, nothing is as bad as the cable company. I only need them for my Internet access. Originally I had DSL from the local phone company. But apparently, land lines are non-existent here because they weren't given permission to bury any phone lines. So its up to the cable company for my Cable Modem. Every time I've contacted them, I get a different story as to why they can't get me service yet. At first, I was told that the city forbid them from digging until the end of April. What's to dig? They did all their digging last year. Then I was told that there is an obstruction from the junction box to my house. A complete lie. There is nothing between the junction box and my house. The guy then tried to tell me that the box must be too far away from my house. It can't be more than 350 feet. Umm....its about 20 feet from my house. Any of the twins can throw a rock that far so you know they can run a cable. They told me that there was too much frost. Yet I see an excavator digging for a new basement a couple of lots over and frost isn't a problem for them. One day at lunchtime, it was pouring rain and I saw a contractor working in the neighborhood. These must be contractors to the cable company. There is a pipe running from one end to the other. I stood in the pouring rain and talked to the guy at one end. He was holding on to a string. He said the pipe was blocked with ice in the middle. They specialize in horizontal boring and laying fibre optic cable. They had just gotten a string passed from one end to the other. He said it would be no time before they had the cable running through that pipe. As I got back to work from lunch, I got a call from the cable company. They wanted to hook up my service. I scheduled it for the next week, the soonest I could get a technician to the house. That evening, I drove past the spot the two guys were working at in the pouring rain. I could see cables sticking out of the ground. Success! Or so I thought. I knew they'd have work to do to get those cables useful for my Internet service. On the day of my scheduled installation, I drove by those cables. No work had been done on them. So I knew, even before the technician arrived that this was a waste of time. I told him right away to check the signal at the junction box because he won't have one. He looked at me puzzled. He went and checked and sure enough...no signal. I told him why we didn't have signal. He made some phone calls. In the end...no service today or any time soon. Last week, those cables sticking out of the ground were now under a box. But there is one power cable sticking out of the ground there which needs to be hooked up. One of our neighbors said they talked with the crew working out there and he said that they need the electricians to come out and hook that up. Then the cable company needs to do another thing. Then the county needs to inspect the results. So not sure when we'll have Internet.