Driving in the rain, just driving in the rain

It is the typical early winter weather here in northern CA which includes quite a bit of heavy rain mixed with the occasional flooding. Now while I love the rain I hate driving in the rain. This has very little to do with my desire to drive in the rain and more to do with all the bad drivers who are clueless on how to drive in inclement weather. These are people who drive well below the speed of traffic in the fast lane and think there is nothing wrong with driving in bad fog and rain with no headlights or turn signals. What shocks me is when people complain about the number of accidents and blame it on poor physical road condition or fluke accidents. One wonders where some of these people are taught to drive as these are not teenagers driving without headlights just to be cute or rebels. Now with humility I will admit there was that one time at 3am that I was driving to a medical event and I forgot to turn my headlights on, so it does happen, but when a good 10-15% of the cars all have their headlights off one really needs to question it.

But my large angst today is with a major corporation. Comcast cable who is using their new ad campaign of their service being comcastic has just lowered the bar on how low a major company can go. This is the company that offered to me a free iPod shuffle for signing up for digital cable, now four months post promise, over a dozen phone calls I am still waiting for this promotional gift. Well today I received my bill and I found it has almost doubled in amount. Calling in, they informed me that promotional discounts have all expired. I have no problem with that, but if they are getting their promotional gift (more of my money) does this mean I should also be getting my promotional gift? Absolutely not. They inform me they have up to six months to send this promotional gift out to me, would you believe that? Upon asking them to itemize my bill they charge equipment rental on the digital box (I am ok with this), but then they charge me for ‘DVR service’. I ask what this service entails, the response the hard drive and other hardware. Well wouldn’t this be the digital box since there is only one box? Of course not, they get to charge twice for the exact same box, and you know what we let them. We have no choice but to go with this. Basic cable, we are talking nothing added, just absolute basic cable is now running at $47 per month. And they wonder why people are starting to complain. You have got to be kidding. I am so sick of this company and their shady business practices. If you have any opportunity not to go with them (they are the only cable provider here in CA), PLEASE for my sake go with the competitor.