Charter. Internet. Problems. This problem has lingered on for three weeks.

The people on the phone have been nice. The technicians that have visited the house have been nice. There is a great disconnect between the two aspects of the company. It has been my experience that any company with the word “Communication” in its title doesn’t do an especially good job communicating within itself.

So we’ve had Charter troubles for a good long while and everyone who’s had the experience understands. Finally I became a little more insistent on the phone yesterday. A serious, sturdy fireplug of a man visited, fixed things and left. But the problem wasn’t fixed. So I called again and they rescheduled, but the guy apparently didn’t return last evening based on the phone call we didn’t receive. So we called again today, when the problems continued again, and I talked with a supervisor.

She listened patiently, said the guy had returned last night for outside work (but the story changes, so who knows) and professed her inability to do anything more than give a little discount before sending someone else out.

Someone else came out and worked outside, a condition upon which I insisted, as every variable inside had been tested and approved. We shall see.

All of this fussing, though, has resulted in two different Charter employees following me on Twitter. I told one of them, as I told Helen, the supervisor, that Charter needs a secret handshake. I appreciate that things occasionally go offline and need repair. I’m willing to accept it on good faith that the company has been responsive and is trying to find and fix the problem. By and large that has been the case during all of this. The frustrating part is having to detail all of this to each random person I meet on the phone.

“That’s a good idea!”

Write up a memo, then. Get a raise.

Brian is here, and Wendy too. They’ve each come to visit for the weekend. Brian made it this afternoon and we took him to the swimming and diving meet. Brian was a swimmer and The Yankee was a diver. I have watched both on television and covered the sport, but just sit and nod to their observations.

Auburn has one of those powerhouse swimming and diving teams. They have 13 national championships in the last 15 years or so. When I was in school I did a coach interview show where I had the great pleasure of regularly speaking with then-coach David Marsh. He coached 22 Olympians at Auburn and 89 individual NCAA title winners. This is the most important thing I learned from him.

“You have to respect someone willing to spend hours and hours, swimming hundreds of laps, to shave a thousandth of a second off of their best time.”

When David Marsh talked about swimming you sat quietly and listened.

So Auburn (the men were ranked sixth, the women 12th) upset visiting (5th/6th ranked) Florida, proving Tigers are better than Gators in the pool. Florida does well at distance, however.

But the sprints today were all Auburn. This is the men’s 50-free:

Auburn’s swimmers Adam Brown, Karl Krug and Marce Chierighini swept the top three places in that event.

Wendy got in this evening as the rest of us finished a delicious dinner The Yankee made. Tomorrow we’re going to Auburn’s national championship football celebration.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 21st, 2011 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Auburn, Friday, friends, iPhone, memories, video. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.