The Yard Is Gonna Be Torn Up...

I curse the technologic upgrading that faceless mega corporations do in the name of earning the approval of the gods called profit and shareholder wealth. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest the overstuffed leather chairs in the executives' office suites!

I won't even begin to hide my loathing for a certain cable company that we are glad to be free of... Comcast... as they are the culprits for this soon to occur raping of my property. I don't care if it is considered "easement". Have you guys seen the stinkin' plat map of our lot? Half the front yard, half the side yard, and about a third of the back yard are easements for the utilities and / or city... And since when is Comcast a public utility?

Comcast's contractor already has the heavy machinery on the street next to our yard and in our neighbors yard (how they got it there without crossing our property is beyond me at this point). But, probably tomorrow morning bright and early, they will be digging up the right of way in both our side yard and our back yard, potentially impacting the electrical lines (Detroit Edison never got staked, so I'm sure Comcast is perfectly safe in their excavationary pursuit). They may find a way to "Oooops..." cut the phone lines that did get staked, and will definitely not give a lick about cutting throw any thing as mundane as the sprinkler system water lines or the invisible pet fence. I'm not so concerned about the pet fence thingee... we don't have a dumb dog that we need to keep in the yard.

But the sprinkler system is gonna torque my shorts. We don't use it currently, but daggnabbit... they are probably going to end up destroying two of the four working zones. And no, they couldn't have done any of this in the middle of the summer when the lawn was on the verge of being utterly wasted thanks to the cursing of drought that was called down upon the State to punish it for re-electing the Billary wannabe governor that it did... no, they have to wait until mid-September when the rains have come again and the weather has cooled down and the lawn has just about recovered and is getting healthy again.

I saw our neighbor out in our back yard taking pictures of his precious pine trees that year after year, he allows to keep encroaching into our yard. Seems he must not have gotten the memo that it was Comcast and not AT&T doing the digging. The phone lines are staked under your trees, Dude... the Comcast lines are the ones that in my yard. You have nothing to worry about unless you are afraid that their machinery is going to rub up against the edges of some of the needled boughs. I think I would be more worried about the fact the Comcast lines look like they go right under the root system of the tall tree in the corner of our mutual neighbors yard. They cut through those roots, and the tree could fall on any one of our four houses... "Ooooops!"

Of course, maybe I should go out and take some pictures too. Of course, it is dark now, and there isn't anything really to take a picture of on our property... but, maybe he was on to something... maybe it would be good in case there is need to file a complaint or claim against Comcast and their conractor.

Afterall, we are not even a customer of said faceless mega-corporation, and after getting Dish Network several years ago and getting the Comcast monkey off our back, it will be a cold day in some level of Dante's Inferno before I will feel beholden to them again to be their customer. Yes, they have lost so many customers, they now feel that they have to go through and dig up people's yards to upgrade their cables so that they can win the fickle, uninformed masses back to paying them. And there is absolutely no word of compensating people for their inconvenience or loss at making their yards uninhabitable. There is no word that they will even plant new grass where they kill it.

But, should I expect that of them? I mean, afterall, we aren't their customer so why should they care? Ameritech certainly didn't years ago when we had to have a new phone line laid... we were MCI customers, but Ameritech owned the infrastructure outside the house. The phone line went bad in the fall, Ameritech replaced it a week later, but left it unburied for the whole winter and spring, and then finally sent someone out in the dead of summer to manually bury it. Apparently, Ameritech thought that burying the new phone line about 1 - 2 inches under the sod they just killed by carelessly spading off the root system in rock hard dry earth was sufficient. It took over a year for the grass to grow back.

Well, at least when that phone line goes bad (any bets Comcast cuts across it tomorrow as it isn't marked between the box to the house?), AT&T, who is our current phone carrier and the descendant company that ended up owning all of the now defunct Ameritech's infrastructure, will be obligated to repair it and I can insist that it be done correctly this time...

On the bright side of the day, I found one of my cousins found the Blunt Edge and had made a comment. I and my wife read several of the postings on her blog, and it was uncanny! We have very similar writing styles. Can't tell we're related! No sir-ree Bob! I encourage you to patronize her endeavor, there ain't nothin' shameful about Random Bits Off The Floor... :D