Ouch! Right in the shorts!

My wife called me just a bit ago. “Oh, I’m mad,” she said. “I called that dumb CableOne place to see why our bill is so high. They raised our rates eighteen dollars a month!”

“You gotta be kidding me!” I expostulated. “That’s not fair! They didn’t tell us they were going to do that!”

“I know,” agreed my beloved Viennese Snowflake. “The lady said it was explained on our bill.” We have it set up so they just take the money out of our account; we’ve gotten out of the habit of reading our bills unless there’s a price change. “We must have missed it.”

So, we’re paying almost twenty bucks a month more for the same service we’ve always had. I’m upset that they didn’t warn us better – they could have sent us an e-mail, or mailed us a flyer, or sent a message through the TV menu, all of which they’ve done before to tell us about deals they offer. So now I’m going to find a way to reduce my bill by twenty bucks. I just don’t wanna pay it!

We use the Internet quite a bit (I update and maintain several websites, and we spend several hours a day on the net for various other activities – ordering digital photo prints online, doing the occasional crossword, reading the news, blogging, etc.) so we’re loath to lose our high-speed cable modem. I’d switch to a different company or go to DSL if I could, but all the research I’ve done tells me that CableOne has a monopoly in my area – I have no option. I’m constantly getting junk mail from Qwest and Earthlink offering me high-speed DSL, but neither seems to want to deal with my neighborhood. It may be simple logistics (I think you have to live next door to the phone company for DSL to work), but I really wish I had an option. If anyone in Sioux City knows of any other high-speed Internet providers in the area, please let me know!

That leaves me cutting twenty bucks worth of programming, which doesn’t bother me in the least. I pay about that much to get the Science Channel, which I enjoy, but they really only show three shows a day – they just repeat those three over and over again. I can live without the Science Channel. I’m just sad that they raised the rates without any warning…

Upset, I am. Upset. Kinda like pulling up to the gas pump with five bucks in your pocket, putting five buck’s worth of gas in your car, then finding out at the cash register that they raised the price of gas while you were standing in line and you now owe them seven dollars.

Iowa Tobacco

I just read on the Woodbury County Democrats’ blog that Iowa House Speaker Christopher Rants received $138,497 from RJ Reynolds Tobbacco’s political action committee. Mr. Rants has been consistently blocking state legislation to raise the tax on cigarettes. The cigarette tax increase is supported by a majority of Iowans, and is also supported by our governor. It seems, though, that Mr. Rants is getting enough money from tobacco companies that he doesn’t need to concern himself with issues in Iowa any more. He certainly does not represent me or my values.

We gotta remember stuff like this when we go vote.