Men are Weird!

[Mary Kay]

Ok..remember when I told you Mike was fed up with cable because after 3 raindrops in a row it went out? He cancelled it and called the satellite people.

They came and put up a dish on the side of the house..it is about 5 feet off the ground and is right at a corner! They hooked us up and we had satellite TV! Whoohoo..for about a day!

I hated trying to figure out the channels, I hated clicking through 2 channels for every one you are looking for (one normal, one dsl..or something) I hated 50 HBO channels, 20 cinemax..10 showtime ect. Then the 20 shopping, 50 gabillion sports and all the stupid info channels, like stop TV taxes Now! Not one e-smoking channel in the bunch.

So that night the storms from Ana hit, the satellite went out..but I explained to Mike about the gray out thing..with heavy cloud cover. Ok after resetting on the main TV we had satellite again in a half hour.

Mike was not mad.

The next day same thing..satellite went down after whichever storm came by..

Mike reset but wasn't happy.

Day 3..things are tense..the satellite is down...all night!

Reset..nothing..RESET.nothing! It was still out in the morning, RESET Damn it!

Mike is mad!

He calls the satellite people monday morning..they said "Did you reset?" Yes! Then they went a bit farther out on that skinny limb.."Can you saftly climb up to the Satellte dish and ajust it?" It's 5 f**** feet off the ground, on a corner that is sure to get the wind from all 4 directions! Why does it move at all!!

I knew the end was near..he was at the low end of the hearing range now..with that dangerous growling sound in his voice. (I go to the high end so only bats can hear me, makes for interesting fights) "Well sir, we can have a man out there on Wednesday!" SNAP! That skinny limb just broke!
Mike went ballistic!

He called the cable people, he said hook me back up and fix the original problem! (our cable leading to the house is old and water gets in the connectors) They said "Welcome back. Sir...we can be there on Wednesday!"
OH NO! 8-oBut he was so mad at Satellite..he just said Fine.

They came and hooked us up..we have 5 satellite boxes waiting for the boxes to send them back..we have one Satellite dish stuck to the side of the house..maybe somebody will steal it!

Life is back to normal..wonder what Hurricane Danny will do to cable?

 

[SudokuGal]

It's been years since I had DISH...always had a problem with it.

Poor Mike! Give him a hug from your lady friends here.

 

[maryjo]

Nobody is gonna steal that eyesore. The sucker will be there long after you are gone (trust me, I know these things). Good luck with cable. I have satellite at home and cable at the office. Both are a pain in the backside.

Good luck.

 

[Mary Kay]

Oh gee thanks MaryJo! You are a ray of sunshine..lol What if I paint a football logo on it?
I am getting notes from the guys sympathizing with Mike!

 

[Harry Crazington]

I worked for cable TV for 30 years....we tried to warn you, didn't believe us ehhhh

 

[Mary Kay]

Warn us that cable is better? I don't know..we only had sat for 3 days! But I can tell you it didn't have the checkering or streaks we get with cable..too bad the sat didn't work for more the 2 of the 3 days!
Hi Harry!

 

[Harry Crazington]

Hi MaryKay

You have to call them 3 times every day until they get tired of going to your address and talking to you on the phone, they'll fix it.

 

[rocketvapor]

Turn the dish sideways - it makes a great birdbath!

 

[Harry Crazington]

Warn us that cable is better? I don't know..we only had sat for 3 days! But I can tell you it didn't have the checkering or streaks we get with cable..too bad the sat didn't work for more the 2 of the 3 days!
Hi Harry!

Warn you about satellite outages.
Actually both CATV and satelliteTV are enormous rip offs. They make obscene amounts of money. I worked at a privately owned CATV company in Toledo Ohio and we estimated they MUST be netting at least 50 million dollars a year, and that was over 20 years ago.
They make money on not only subscriber fees but also sell time to advertisers, and more. That's why we now get 200 channels of...yep commercials, the same irritating buy my insurance, pills, cars, lawyers, etc. etc. over and over every day on every channel until ya want to scream!
If I have to pay to watch TV then it should be commercial free...like Sirius Satellite Radio is commercial free. I'm not paying to watch the same commercials endlessly. I have to pay for cable internet but I removed the filter so I get the TV portion too ( I still have all of my cable tools heh heh).

 

[Mingolvr]

Turn the dish sideways - it makes a great birdbath!

I was going to suggest that!!!... My husband did the same thing to our dish. Took it off the post, laid it flat on the top of a 4x4 he stuck in the ground, screwed it down and painted it white.....

It worked too! Those were the happiest birdies in town, and the BEST use for a satellite dish EVER!

We had the same problem here in S.FL, but it I swear a good flock of birds would kill the signal.

 

[marg]

OMG MaryKAy! You so crack me up! I was almost feeling down in the dumps until I opened this post!

The first sentence I read I thought, oh it's your connection outside (for those of you who don't know, MaryKay and I live in the same area) it happens to us all the time. Hubby finally went and changed the connection himself (after me SO not happy w/o Tv or, God forbid, no internet) Didn't take long for that problem to be solved.

We have a dish in Rv and the cabin and I, can I scream this loud enough? HATE IT. but it's better than the alternative, no TV at all, so I must have it. (our Tv's are not digital) since our 'dish' box is from another state I didn't see network TV for FOUR months! WHAT? OK, how does that make sense. "no sir, you can't, your sat. box is from FL not from MN." WHAT? Finally, after they sent (snail mail, haven't they heard of the internet?) us the paperwork we had to fill out and snail mail back it would take another 4 WEEKS to set us up to get network? Come onnnnnn.........

My sister dropped her cable yrs ago because someone told her 'dish' was better. she's so stubborn that I have given up but let me tell you, when I try to get her off dial up and she comes back and says "oh ya! I saw the dish has internet now!" ARE YOU KIDDING ME? LMAO ya, that's the time I really really must keep my mouth shut and explain it calmly. Ugh.

I have been on dial up now for months not knowing I was going to be in another state so long. Dang, I woulda paid for the lousy DSL contract for a yr like they make you do here, it is making me crazy (OK, so you have noticed, haha)

Just typing this up I ran my pv battery out, I had better stop lol

 

[Mary Kay]

Get a passthru! LOL All you have to worry about it topping up. That said I just topped up with the whong liquid..chocolate coffee isn't bad!

 

[marg]

Oh. forgot to say, drop that dish off at some subdivision lawn off 192 near Kissimmee and it'll be gone by morning, lol. I like the bird bath idea though, haha

 

[CZEdwards]

Let's see... We dropped cable after the 5th bill in a row had erroneous charges (we don't watch PPV, we weren't subscribed to the Ultra-Platinum-Plated Super package with Scrubbing bubbles, we didn't order a fourth box -- we only own one television -- and we never would have subscribed to the All Sports, all the time package). Comcast is evil that way; a lot of people will just pay the bill and never really look at it. Screwing up once might have been acceptable, but five times in a row? That was edging into scam territory, and their on-hold music sucks big rocks. (I know. I heard Journey about ten gazillion times over six phone calls.)

So we wanted BBCAmerica and SciFi (and that was pretty much all we watched and if there was an a la carte mode, we'd have bought it in a moment) so we went to Dish. I figured out pretty fast how to block the 901 shopping channels and the 6422 religious channels (Seriously? Not even the most Praise Gawd Put Your Hands on the TV and be HEALED devotee needs THAT many channels) and I kinda liked the DVR... but then the first bill came. Yup, somehow, we got charged for PPV three football games, a basketball game and some kid's movie. (DH and I pretty much hate all sports, but football and basketball top our lists of "Will claw out our eyes rather than watch" and we don't have children.) The service was always fine -- this is an advantage of living in a place with 300 days of sunlight a year and being a mile above sea level -- but I was getting worried.

I set them up to pay like every other bill -- we do billpay through our bank -- a set amount a month. The RIGHT amount. And yet, every bill has some little fee that wasn't in our initial contract that I have to call and fight about. We kept the contract for one year... and that's it. My time is worth more than fighting with call center idiots.

That was in 2003. We've had Netflix ever since. I don't miss it at all.

 

[Harry Crazington]

Actually all cable TV companies are really satellite TV companies because that's how they get all of the channels that they pump out over wires to every house, from satellite dishes. Their dishes are way bigger than the dish on your roof but it's still the same concept, just on a larger scale.
So whether you have a dish on your roof or pay for cable, it's still satellite TV.

 

[Mingolvr]

Heck yeah, Harry! I've seen those monster dishes outside of the Comcast buildings....but I can't get one in my yard!

I will say though, I get the VERY rare signal loss when the storms are really bad (being in my area, that's a better than 50/50 chance) but usually the cable holds up. Power failure causes more problems.

With Dish it was a dead loss with a thick cloud passing overhead. Or a duck who finished dinner not long before passing over my house.

Just not worth the trouble for me I guess.

 

[JennFL5366]

i will say i have had both dish and cable..dish if someone passed gas on the block it went out..we were under 2 year contract so we delt with it..as soon as it was done we went back to cable..well the problems started all over again...they have re done our outside lines not once,twice, or three times...five times!! my bil is a supervisor over at the cable company so i finally got him involved and he sent out a super tech to my house rewired for the last time got a new box, new remote, and he made sure all connections were good. have had no issues sicne. except the stupid box resets alot. we are just too lazy to take it back..lol unfortunatly since bil works there if i call to cancle they don't try to keep me they said w ehate to see u go...neighbor did it he got a year free movie channels..wtf? oh well....they looked into my call history and since we have gone back to cable i have had ot be on the phone every month to deal with an issue..until bil came to my rescue.nice to have bil in high places..lol

 

[Harry Crazington]

Heck yeah, Harry! I've seen those monster dishes outside of the Comcast buildings....but I can't get one in my yard!

I will say though, I get the VERY rare signal loss when the storms are really bad (being in my area, that's a better than 50/50 chance) but usually the cable holds up. Power failure causes more problems.

Yep those cable company dishes would crush your house, and your wallet.
Power outages will kill your cable even if the power went out a few miles away & your neighborhood still had power on. Most systems use battery back up power supplies now though to keep the signals flowing.

 

[Crankyfuzz]

I do not have cable nor do I have a Dish if and when me and hubby want to watch tv we do it online way easier. I grew up without tv and hubby is a tv addict but he will watch a movie or watch tv online.

But men are still weird...we had a convo about stopping smoking and he was like thats a stupid idea (ecigs) now he has one and is trying to get other people to switch.

 

[Kelly79]