Doing my best to get to-do's done during the weekend

It was supposed to have been a productive, to-do list shredding and checking off day last Saturday.

1. Go catch week two of my grandson Logan’s ice skating lessons and see if he could cut down on the number of falls he had in week one. Checks on both accounts.

2. I wanted to check out what kind of deals — and more importantly what trade-in policies — my friendly hockey shop might offer to put my grandson in hockey skates. Check.

3. Grab some of that wonderfully cheap gas to make my daily 50-mile round trips to work more affordable. Boy does $1.71.9 today work better than the $4.50.9 when I first started trekking to Cheney in 2007. Check.

4. Make trip to Comcast to pick up new modem so that the “Network interference, please try later,” message didn’t keep showing up when we try to access to Netflix. Check, kind of.

The trip to the Xfinity store was surprisingly painless with the wait less than 15 minutes. It allowed me to pass the time talking hockey with one of the dozen other Vancouver Canucks fans in the area.

It was what came next that was agonizing.

When my wife came home she asked how was my afternoon?

Without hesitation, I blurted out the last words found in the old theme song from the “Gilligan’s Island” sitcom of the 1960s. “A three-hour tour, a three-hour tour.”

I thought the modem issue, which periodically had problems connecting our smart TV to the Internet, was all settled weeks ago. That is when the process of getting our home phone “ported over” from being handled by our cell phone provider to our cable TV source began.

After several calls from Comcast/Xfinity looking for account numbers, the landline conversion is still in limbo. Our trusty 924 prefix we’ve had since 1984 is kept so a handful of people in our lives — plus, thankfully, all the telemarketers — can call and leave messages we rarely check.

But back to the cable modem/router activation.

The installation was simple and accomplished connecting a cord and cable. Step two was to call the 1-855 activation number and listen to the pleasant automated voice that miraculously had me up and running in minutes. Check.

Excited to see if we could finally catch up on any new “Mad Men” episodes, I fired up the smart hub and clicked on Nexflix. Again, I was greeted by the “network interference” message. Damn!

It was back to the 1-855 number where that pleasant voice was back again asking how she could help. After she told me, “I see you are calling from 924….” I was asked to press a number so I could be directed to the right customer service queue.

A voice on the other end, I think his name was Ken, greeted me in broken English.

He asked me to provide account verification: my address and the last four of my social security number. After 61 minutes, 45 seconds with my customer service person — my phone, not me, tracked that time — numerous trips up and down the stairs to check activation lights, start and restart the modem (which was in the basement), everything worked but Netflix.

The problem was shuffled off to a higher level of tech expertise, and again I was asked for account verification. Really?

After two more sessions with support, another hour-plus, not including two calls dropping off and being disconnected, a guy named TJ and lady named Shay finally completed the journey. Thankfully, neither asked me to verify my address or my SSN.

Netflix was working, but after all the hoop jumping there were no new episodes of either “Mad Men” or “House of Cards.”

Now where was I on that list?

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].