Thanks for all the good wishes! Cem even called from Holland and Will and Kathy from here in southern California. What comes out of this is the realization of how much we're dependent on being plugged in to the the rest of the world for electricity, communication, work and and entertainment. However, to the cable company, Time-Warner, TW, Corporation, there's no urgency, pressure or rush to fix things that fail. Why? Well they see Cable and the internet as being merely "entertainment"!
So after 10 hrs on the phone, I got the mayor's office into the act. Well the TW president's office called from Colorado and said they were dealing with it. However, here the man who turned up at our door wanted to adjust our TV! The layers of management is so bad that they still had not got the message down to the service repairmen after 30 hours! Back to the mayor's office then an apologetic executive from Time-Warner told us they would send guys with trucks!
The moral of the story is to not be vested in Cables that run through mazes of overgrown trees.
Asher