A second visit with Videotron

This story is a continuation of a saga that began with the installation of our internet.

In January, Mitali announced that with the upcoming winter olympics followed by a new season of American Idol, it was time for us to get cable.  And so, with some trepidation, I picked up the phone, made a call, and we braced ourselves for a second visit by Videotron.

Given my past experience with Videotron, calling to schedule a second installation had the feel of arranging to have someone stop by, vandalize the apartment, and punch me in the face on their way out.  Of course, living in Montreal, we'd resigned ourselves to the fact that this is simply how telecommunication business is done.  Furthermore, with television being one of the our only remaining connections back to our beloved, hedonistic American culture, this seemed a small price to pay.

In the interest of minimizing destruction to home and personal property, Mitali and I decided it would be best if both of us were present for the installation: one of us to tend to Sonya, the other to watch Mr. Videotron.

And so, on the morning of the installation, I stayed home from work and readied myself for the visit.  When the technician arrived, he offered a gruff "Hello".  I resisted the urge to pat him down at the door for any drills, opting instead to return his greeting and invite him in.  Kicking his shoes off, he walked directly past me and proceeded to take a brisk self-guided tour of our apartment, surveying the location of cable outlets and, no doubt, identifying any bare stretches of wall where he could punch some holes.  After finishing his circuit of the rooms, he returned to the study to admire the handy-work of the drill-crazed technician who installed our internet in the fall.  He paused for a moment to reconnect with that spirit of genius from the past: placing a finger in the gaping hole that had been meticulously drilled in the middle of the wall and then tracing the cable that sprouted from the window frame.

Sucking in a breath, he stood and informed me that to deliver cable to the television in the adjoining room, he would need to snake the cable emanating from the study windowsill across the study room floor, through the opposing wall, and then around the living room.  I quickly agreed that this was, indeed, an excellent option, relieved that his plan did not involve knocking out a wall, drilling through a radiator, or dismantling our toilet - I had expected the worst.

As he headed out to his van to get some tools, I went to find Mitali in the bedroom to deliver the good news that this installation would only involve drilling a hole clean through one of our internal walls.  I stayed in the bedroom for a moment playing with Sonya as Mitali stepped out to grab a drink from the kitchen.  She re-entered the room with a restrained, but panicked sound in her voice: "Have you seen the size of the drill that guy is using?"  Immediately recognizing my momentary lapse in Videotron vigilance, I raced out of the room to find the technician.

I turned the corner into the study just in time to see him pull the trigger on a drill that was attached to a bit the length of my arm.  He looked like he was using the apparatus to pack dynamite into our wall: positioned with the drill against his gut so he could lean all his weight against the bit, which was rapidly disappearing into the study wall.  It took only a moment for him to rip a hole straight through to the other side.  He pulled the drill out, set it on the floor, and we both proceeded to the living room to investigate his work.

The hole into the living room was nearly perfect, with one cosmetic flaw: the drill bit had exploded through the moulding along the floor boards, leaving me wondering what kind of repair bill I should be expecting from our landlord when we moved out.  That small detail aside, it had missed our bookcase by about an inch and our, now saw-dust-covered, poker set by less than that.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  Content with his work, the technician returned to the study, produced a staple gun out of his pocket, and proceeded to staple the cable along the study wall, thread it through the freshly drilled hole, and then staple it along the living room wall to the television.  It was a fine piece of work ... which actually did work.  He hooked the cable up to our television and, within minutes, had the entire setup working.  Leaning his monstrous drill against his shoulder like a rifle, he marched out the front door.

Cable installation, however, was not yet complete.  We realized that the media computer which ran our TV was missing a crucial component required to control the cable set-top box.  Several minutes of internet research revealed that the component we lacked was effectively a speaker wire attached to an infrared diode, allowing the computer to pretend to be a remote.  Online the wire-diode component cost $20.  Convinced I could make something just as good for free, I warmed up my soldering gun and proceeded to rip apart an unused remote control in order to salvage the necessary pieces I would need.  Thirty minutes later, I had the gizmo in hand.  Affixing it to the set-top box, however, turned out to be quite tricky.  No discrete solution worked, leaving me no choice but to secure the diode to the front of the cable box using about two feet of electrical tape.  The end result was thrilling.  I proudly paraded Mitali into the room to display my work.  She surveyed the damage: one ragged hole in the wall next to the book case, a cable wire stapled around the perimeter of the room, and a new centerpiece for the TV stand, a sad-looking set-top box that appeared to be held together entirely by electrical tape.  She sat down with the TV remote, clicked the television on, and determined that the cable was very, very good.