These things happen.
Yes, all too often they happen at very awkward times.
But we've allowed ourselves to be at the mercy of technology these days, so who are we to complain.
There I was on a recent Friday afternoon, writing several things and watching something on TV. This was my form of dedicated multitasking.
Suddenly, my tasks ground to a halt: All of my Comcast[1] systems went down.
No TV, no internet, no life. (Schopenhauer was the first to say that.)
At least my iPhone[2] was working, so I went to the Xfinity website to see what had happened and when it might unhappen.
The engineers were working on the outage, I was told. Would I like to sign up for texted updates? Of course I would.
Precision Is A Wonderful Thing.
So I sat, waited, and watched.
The first texted offering was that the outage would be fixed by 5:54 p.m. I sat, waited, and remembered I had an Xfinity app on my phone. I tried opening that too, just in case there was more immediate news.
I tried reading a book, but I had those things to do. They were quite urgent, so I became somewhat itchy.
5:53 p.m. came along. It had been more than three hours. But, when you're told such a precise time, you believe that the texting entity is very sure that the outage is fixable by that time.
At 5:54 p.m. came the bad news. It would be precisely 9:54 p.m. Oh dear. This evening wasn't going well.
My wife and I cooked. We sat at the dining table, facing each other. We talked. You see, there's something marvelous about a Comcast outage. It eliminates the temptation of a TV