When I called Tuesday to order my return to expanded basic cable, they told me I had to be home for the service appointment. I really didn’t believe this, because I knew they’d done previous changes and inspections without me at home, but I went along — which meant I couldn’t get a Wednesday appointment and had to wait until today for an evening appointment (some time between 5 and 8 p.m.).

I had to run home at about 10 this morning to e-mail some documents to the Mountain T.O.P. office and checked my TV. Sure enough, they’d already been to the apartment and hooked up the extra channels, even without me being there. That was the good news. The bad news was that the 10 highest channels got progressively snowier until the last one was unwatchable. (Oxygen; no great loss, but still, I’m paying for it.)

I called customer service this morning and got a hideously snotty woman who informed me that because the work order hadn’t yet been closed out, it was obvious that the crew hadn’t finished hooking up the service, and once they finished everything would be fine. Well, I knew the work crew was nowhere to be found and I knew that the process of hooking me up was a relatively simple one involving some wires or filters at a little gray box on the side of the apartment building. But this woman would have none of it.

Sure enough, the problem was still there this evening. I called back and got a much nicer customer service representative, who took my information and said they would send someone out Saturday morning to check on the problem.

Anyway, all of the channels I really care about are back now — in about 20 minutes, I’ll be watching the repeat of last night’s “Daily Show.”