VIDEO: From TV Lover to TV Installer

Editor's Note:  ‘Fish Out of Water’ features Minnetonka Patch Local Editor Katelynn Metz (me) trying my hand at a new job somewhere in the west metro. New editions of Fish Out of Water will appear every Monday. In this second segment, I try my hand as a cable installer for Comcast in the Twin Cities west metro.

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I love television. All kinds. News. Cop dramas. Reality. Game shows. Soaps. I know the well-worn buttons of my TV remote by heart—able to switch between shows like a master channel flipper. It’s actually one of my most admired talents (so I'm told).

So it seemed a natural fit that for this week’s “Fish out of Water” segment, I do something television related. I’m almost as comfortable around TV cables as I am TV remotes. In fact, I was the kid who used to take apart the Betamax as a kid, just for fun. (I can’t believe I just admitted that).

But as it happens, cable installation is much more than just fiddling with cables. It’s actually quite physical—and dirty—and complicated. 

In the course of the hour-long installation, we shoveled dirt, dug in the mud, threaded cable under a sidewalk, stripped cable and, my personal favorite, we crimped cable.

Pro-installer, Steve Wittrock was recently named one of the top Comcast technicians in the country. And I was lucky enough to have him guiding me through the process.

In the end, success! And for a bona fide TV junkie, there’s no feeling like seeing a new cable box light up. 

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On Tuesdays Patch runs —a video segment highlighting notable athletes and teams in community sports leagues. Wednesdays feature the ‘feature where local experts in various arenas of expertise showing us what they do and how they do it. And finally on Thursdays, Patch features  which introduces us to the personalities in the kitchen of a local restaurant.

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