other thoughts
The aside to all of this would be that after a month of trying, Comcast has finally got their act together and hooked up my cable access. For those who were curious, Comcast is the devil. I will never recommend them as a digital service provider. Their customer service representatives and technicians mean well, but fail to communicate with one another, and often fail to go that extra mile required to complete a task. It seems to be easier for them to close out an account than to admit that they can't close problem tickets.
I wouldn't even be using them, except that they are literally the only game in town down here in south Florida. You can tell that they are a monopoly, because only a monopoly would refuse to take your money when you offer it to them. I may even yet look forward to having my service cut off, because their billing department appears to have screwed up my account now that the cable is hot.
Or maybe I'll just have free cable for a while. Who knows? There could be certain advantages to their incompetence.