I bag on Time Warner Cable a lot. In real life, to friends, whenever possible — even on the Podcast upon occasion (when appropriate, of course). Even if I’m indirectly employed by them, doesn’t change the fact that they have pretty bad cable service in New York. Which is why I was calling them up tonight trying to get them to make my 5mbps cable line stop pretending it’s 128k ISDN (worse even, I was getting 1.3s+ pings and major packet loss). After the obligatory eight command repeats into the automated call attendant and a call transfer that was apparently necessary even though I had myself in the right call queue, I got my first ever TWC tech support guy who managed to totally make my day. Half way through troubleshooting he pauses and says:
“Hey! Wait, are you the Ryan Block from Engadget?”
“Um, yup!”
“Yeah, I recognized your voice! I love Engadget!”
Then he transferred me.