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Define for me “aggressive mediocrity”.

I am one of those technopacifists. I take it as it comes and when it’s needed. I don’t have to try the latest hot shit on the street or attempt to hack, circumvent, or otherwise upgrade through undue initiative the gizmos and gadgets with various sundry (slightly redundant, I know, but I’m on a rant) wires, cords, and battery suppositories. I had the same 19” brick television for 16 years before adopting a flat panel LCD HDTV. I am probably the last person you know to get an iPod (barring new births subsequent to this post). I didn’t even have a cell phone until I was 28. Who the fuck possibly needed to reach me that badly? That being said, when I do chose to accept a new addition to my collection of our modern age, I expect the product to at least remotely work as advertised. Working in the technology field myself, I understand there are occasional speed bumps along the road to marketechture’s promised functionality and that is why God invented tech support. Intent on not diverging onto a topic about how God invented everything, let’s just say Comcast sucks and stay on track. I’ve been through a bushel of cell phone providers and home internet/cable providers over the last decade. In rare instances, it was the same logo on a common invoice. Since I moved to suburbia, my broadband access and cable content delivery has been via Time Warner Cable. They had their moments over the years with this and that, but by and large, they provided a solid service for my residential best effort SLA. One sunny day, the folks at TWC broke bread with the folks at Comcast and they dropped the deuce that has become the Houston/Dallas Kansas City Shuffle. TWC relinquished the Houston market to Comcast in exchange for Comcast’s Dallas market. From that fine day to this very moment, I’ve had problems with service(s) (not-)rendered by henceforth-to-be-known-as Crapcast. There have been many hiccups, but the one beef that I just can’t seem to choke down is the irrefutable fact that my VoD service (video on demand), which worked flawlessly under the reign of TWC, has not worked since the migration to Crapcast. Here comes the boring timeline.

I can access the VoD service.
I can access all the menus for schtuff you can order (rent).
I can watch all the free content.
I can watch all the previews for the pay content.
As soon as I try to order anything that has a dollar value next to it for rental, the system errors out.
I call and weed through the automated system to send a reset pulse to my DVR.
That didn’t work. I wait a couple of days.

I call and gain access to a live human being. I give them the run down on how we got here and what the symptoms are before hearing “I can’t find anything wrong. Let me send (another) reset to your system.”
That didn’t work. I wait a couple of days.

I call and gain access to a different live human being. I give them the run down on how we got here and what the symptoms are before hearing “I can’t find anything wrong. Contort your fingers into a funky gang sign and press all the buttons on the front of your DVR at the same time to low level boot it.”
That didn’t work. I wait a couple of days.

I call and gain access to yet a different live human being. I give them the run down on how we got here and what the symptoms are before hearing “I can’t find anything wrong. Let me transfer you to sales.” Sales says, “We can’t do shit but sell you more service(s) that we may or may not be able to deliver. Let me transfer you back to tech support.” Tech support says, “I can’t find anything wrong. Let me send (another) reset to your system.” I feel like a trend is developing.
That didn’t work. I wait a couple of days.

I call and gain access to holy-shit-another live human being. I give them the run down on how we got here and what the symptoms are before hearing “I can’t find anything wrong. Let me recreate all new account codes for you that use the Crapcast Capt. Crunch decoder ring instead of the TWC Capt. Crunch decoder ring, then send another reset pulse while you throw the gang sign at the front of the box and make it low level boot again.”
That didn’t work, so I asked this: “If I want to escalate this to the next tier of tech support, during what hours should I call in during the day?” Doctor Cranium says, “I can send out a technician to check your levels and you may need to replace your DVR. We don’t have any more tech support. I can’t spare a square. I don’t have a square to spare.”

The end.

So basically, in a nutshell, to summarize, wrapping up, to roll up the tortilla, etc. Crapcast is no Time Warner. There was actually some other banter between me and the flowchart card reader on the other end of the line about escalation through to someone that supports the VoD backoffice systems that validated authorization for content delivery and tied into the billing system as this was clearly some sort of flag associated with only the pay content faucet knob in the big ‘ole bucket of bits back at the farm. I think his head exploded at some point because all I got back was some slurred speech about how they don’t have anyone that knows anything about those systems. Right. That’s why Crapcast has a 78 billion dollar market cap and is trading 32 million shares at 25 bucks. Anyhoo, there is this indie film I wanted to rent while I snuggled up with some Henry-time tonight and was (still, after a week) unable to give my money to a clearly undeserving disorganization in exchange for it. All wasn’t lost however, I ended up watching the newest episode of Californication and relegated my frustration with Crapcast to a later moment on the soapbox. Lucky for you, that moment just happened. I’m hittin’ the hay.