4.1 Million Customers

I was sitting at work yesterday morning, doing a little surfing, when I noticed we had lost internet service. I went to find my tech guy and discovered that the problem was outside the building. I shrugged it off and devoted the rest of the day to actually doing my job. I checked on the internet a couple of times the rest of the day. Nada.

On the drive home, listening to the radio, I learned that some bozo had cut a main line with a backhoe, killing internet service to most of Rapides Parish Louisiana. The radio station did some digging and found the particular bozo and the particular backhoe and broadcast the location so that irate citizens could drive past and give the guy the finger.

When I got home, I found that I didn't have internet service at home, either, so I called my ISP (Cox Communications) and asked them about it. The customer service rep at Cox told me that the cable belonged to a telephone company and that every ISP in the area was affected, but that Cox had 4.1 Million Customers affected in three Louisiana parishes. The affected parishes were Rapides, Grant and Natchitoches.

I call bullshit. There aren't a quarter million people in those three parishes. According to the latest census data, Rapides has 128,000 residents, Natchitoches has 39,000 residents, and Grant has 19,000.

So, if everyone has two accounts, one for business and one for residential, we still can't have more than a half-million customers affected. I am assuming, for the purposes of this little exercise, that customers are people.

Geeze, Louise, you would think that Cox would know that the same internet they provide could be used to fact-check their asses. They must count customers like the Democrats count votes. I guess the dead have Cox internet service in their coffins.