Older Folks and Vaping Back Porch - Part Seven

[lulu836]

They proved so with twenty-seven eight by ten photographs. I'm sure the problem could have been remedied... after all, the satellites are still geo-positioned in space. Was my explanation of why I decided not to chase further after a satellite dish solution insufficient? Too brief?

Me too on the error code 775. Found a loose connection on the back of the receiver. Mostly fixed the problem but not entirely.

 

[bigbells]

Better seen than viewed!

Ooh, I really like that one. I hope to utter it many times.

 

[bigbells]

I'm watching Amazon Prime original series "Catastrophe". I've binge-watched the first 4+ episodes of Season 1 this morning. I really need to give it a rest after I finish watching this 5th episode. My burnout threshold is low and I want to remain eager to get back to it. This is great stuff!

 

[DavidOck]

They proved so with twenty-seven eight by ten photographs. I'm sure the problem could have been remedied... after all, the satellites are still geo-positioned in space. Was my explanation of why I decided not to chase further after a satellite dish solution insufficient? Too brief?

Um, no, but being as it's technically rented (or leased?) equipment, hardware fails are on them. We were with DTV for years, as in nearly 20, and had the boxes die now and then. A call to their customer service, after wading through the testing they want you to do (that yu may have already done) always ended with them shipping a replacement.

(Finally had to replace our antique CRT last year, and went HD. Due to surrounding trees, DTV couldn't get us a HD signal, Dish could, so we changed.)

 

[2legsshrt]

I also find Hulu somewhat difficult to navigate especially for what's going to be on later. Most of the networks are live, I think the TV guide would work for that. The most user friendly of the streaming cable replacements is PS Vue but it is also more expensive and doesn't have all the networks that Hulu has. If you have a certain network series that you like you can add it to My Stuff and it will automatically record all the new ones, or you can go to On Demand and catch up on the older ones. As far as their library of movies and tv shows it is very extensive, some have limited commercials if they have been on network tv. I get 2 local channels ABC and CBS live. I'm hoping they come out with a format more like PS Vue but at present I can find many shows that I have been missing on Dish. I may add the enhanced DVR with 200 hrs available instead of 50. I am pretty sure that in the future it will become more user friendly because that is the biggest complaint with Hulu, the schedule. Do they still have TV Guide. Don't even know for sure. The other thing I don't care for on PS Vue is the DVR only keeps recorded shows for 28 days then removes them, but it is rated #1 for the ease of use.

 

[3mg Meniere]

www.tvtv.us.com seems to work for me.

 

[Kenna]

Can't disagree with that. I know Cruise bought the franchise from Lee Child, so be it. But in my mind, Cruise ain't the Jack Reacher I picture in my mind. Oh well.

Now Harry Bosch? Amazon Prime has a show Bosch, based on Michael Connelly's Heronimous Bosch books. Connelly is one of the producers. Great casting! Titus Wethersomething is what I picture Bosh being. We have been binging the series..

Love Connelly & have to wait another year for more Bosch. Goliath is another good Prime show. Have to wait another year for more of that, too.

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[Kenna]

Love Michael Connely's Bosch… read all his books. Titus Welliver is very much as I would picture Bosch.

On the other hand I can't stand Tom Cruise…I think he's a bad actor so I won't watch any of his movies. Ducking…please don't hit me……

We watched a good movie last night on one of the Roku channels…The Red Violin.

I've never been a Cruise fan either.

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[Kenna]

Cruise certainly isn't what I picture when reading the books; he just seems (to me) to portray somebody who "works" like Jack Reacher quite well.

I really dislike streaming video, and I absolutely need subtitles (I'm fairly deaf) so while I have Amazon Prime (for the shipping) I don't have much use for the "free" Amazon videos. Too bad, I'm a fan of the Harry Bosch book series. (Hmmm, time to reread that series as well.) The "spin-off" Lincoln Lawyer (Bosch's half-brother) made a pretty good film as well.

The video has Closed Captions settings.

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[bigbells]

as it's technically rented (or leased?) equipment, hardware fails are on them.

That is not news to me. However, there's the caveat that if the failure was due to damage caused by me, then I would have to pay for the service call. I gave up the protection plan less than 3 months ago that would have covered any damage, regardless of who or what was to blame. At least for a while, I was convinced that the damage WAS caused by me.

Additionally, the trees are not getting shorter, so if the problem was due to line of sight becoming blocked, that is not a hardware failure. It doesn't bother me to never know.

I believe it was a ploy on AT&T's part, but after I went through the whole song and dance to cancel my service late one night about 5 weeks ago (when my satellite reception was perfectly good), they ended up telling me after about 45 minutes of being in a chat with them that I'd have to call during the daytime the next day. The ploy worked, because by the time the next day came, I had decided not to cancel yet.

DirecTv customer service was OK, sometimes OK+. In my opinion, customer service took a few backward steps when AT&T took over. However, I feel like AT&T customer service has been improving.

Whether I'll decide at some point in the future to return to satellite service, I can't tell you, but sooner or later I was going to explore these significantly less expensive streaming options. That time is now. My monthly cost was still $130 even after I dropped all of the premium movie channels and the equipment protection plan. Streaming the same channels basically cuts costs in half.

My internet speed is too slow for reliable streaming, but unreliable streaming is better than no TV. Hopefully I'll have faster internet on Monday. Sure, it would have been better to verify faster internet BEFORE switching to streaming, but I still would have given this a go, for a while anyway, even without improvement in internet speed.

 

[Kenna]

Well just got the MRI set up for her on Monday, I decided we could use a different office and get her in sooner cause she has to go to the Cancer Clinic to get her port ready for use for the contrast then flush it out after. I usually do all the appts setting up and getting instructions and try to coordinate everything so it can all get done at a time that is convenient for us and less for them, easier that way. Then it's all coordinated with Alexa and we can ask whats on the calendar for that day or the next if we remember to check the day before... She is a handy gal to have around the house. I've even got her waiting and letting me say thank you to her and she always comes back with different things like no worries or thats what I'm here for. Great like having your own personal secretary for 40 bucks.

Well it wasn't a heart attack which is great. I've been in the Heart Hospital 2x because of chest pains. It boiled down to panic attacks.

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[Kenna]

My DirecTv Saga: You Twisted My Arm, Don't Say I Didn't Warn Ya.
By Dave B

4 days ago, on Monday afternoon, I'm sitting on my couch watching my big screen TV. The weather outside is hot and sunny. The TV screen freezes and an error message pops up. For only a second or two, the picture comes back, but it then disappears and the screen displays an error message. Is it the usual 771 error message that appears when a storm causes a short-term outage? No, it is not. It's a 775 error, which I had never seen before. The accompanying language states that the satellite box is having trouble communicating with the satellite dish.

After checking the cables and going through the reset process multiple times, the result is always the same: 775.

I go outside to see if anything is blocking the dish. There's a cob web or two, but surely not anything which could interfere with the signal. Nevertheless, I go back inside and get a broom to sweep away the webs. Multiple failed attempts to successfully restart later, I stop trying. I watch already-recorded material from the satellite DVR box, without difficulty.

Eventually, I go to sleep without the TV on, very unusual for me.

It's now Tuesday morning, and I put my thinking cap back on.

It so happens that a few days prior, Steve, who is installing underskirting on my doublewide, had done the underskirting on the part of the front of the house where the cable enters. The cable is underground but not very far underground, and Steve is doing a really excellent (if slow) job with the underskirting. We're using metal roofing as the material, and Steve digs a shallow trench so that the bottom edge is slightly underground.

I send Steve a text asking if he thinks it's possible that the underskirting could have damaged the cable. "I don't think so", he responds.
"Well", I text back, "my DirecTv has been out since yesterday. How hard would it be to take off that piece of underskirting and take a look at the wire?"
"I'll be over in a few hours", Steve responds.

A few hours later, with about an hour of daylight remaining, Steve comes over, unscrews the screws holding the applicable sheet of metal, pulls off the metal sheet, and takes a look at the wire where it passes underneath the house.
"Looks like you were right", says Steve. "The wire seems like it got messed up".

I couldn't tell, looking over Steve's shoulder, what the degree of wire damage was, or whether there was bare wire showing. But I could see that the outer covering was abraded, and I judged that Steve seemed convinced that the wire was definitely damaged enough to make it impossible for the signal to travel from the dish to the box in the house.

Steve went ahead and severed the wire, then asked me if I had any cable connectors. He should have done these things in reverse order. He seemed to think he could attach the wires temporarily with wire nuts, but I knew that could not be done. In fact, he only attached the central wires to each other. You can't make a connection without the outer foil conductors being attached to each other as well. That makes one thing I knew, handyman-wise, that Steve didn't. Still, Steve knows about 10 times as much regarding construction as I do.

I told Steve that we were NOT going to be able to connect the wires until we had the appropriate tools and connectors, and that there was no point in trying to do anything else today. He came in the house and we had another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat a couple of Budweisers, played some guitar and then argued about whether or not the Floyd Rose bridge on my guitar can use strings with ball ends. I won my second dispute of the day on that one when I pulled out my coil-making magnifying headset so that he could see for himself that the string ends still had the balls attached.

I looked up the tools that we needed, and the next day, Steve went and bought them. In the evening, we added connectors, screwed the connectors together, cranked up the ole satellite box and... nope, still no dice. We tried a bunch more times but the results stayed the same.

We give up on the project for the time being. Steve comes in, we have some Bud (Steve brings his own), then I play piano while Steve plays drums. A good time was had by all. I tell Steve that I was sure the satellite TV failure was his fault, but that now I really am beginning to doubt that there was any connection. I pay him for the tools he bought... he doesn't want to take the money but I insist... it wasn't a huge amount but shoot, he had to make the trip to town to get the stuff and he's been working for nothing regarding this TV problem of mine.

So now I'm starting to really wonder if the problem had anything to do with the wire that runs from the dish to the box. I sign up for Hulu and watch some Amazon Prime movies, for which I have already given reviews. Of course, I could repeat those reviews here, but that might make this a long post, and I definitely am going to keep it short.

But that's not what I came here to talk about.

I soon realize that my Internet connection speed just can't handle any kind of heavy-duty streaming. Nevertheless, I'm able to get my news fixes online, and watch Amazon Prime. For some reason, Amazon Prime streams better than anything else... maybe they use superior technology... but still, that's not Live Streaming, it's stuff they already have in brown paper packages tied up with string... that's why they're a few of my favorite things.

I ditch Hulu and try Fubo Tv. For my money, Fubo is a better programming fit. I call DirecTv and suspend my service for 6 months, which they allow, in order for me to have time to think it over.

DirecTv has been pretty good to me, although it's pricey and they nickel and dime you to death. Now that my account is suspended, I try to sign up for DirecTv Now, a streaming service offered by DirecTv. By the way, AT&T now owns DirecTv, so it's an AT&T login rather than a DirecTv login.

What day are we up to? Not sure, it's kind of a blur. I'm unable to sign up for DirecTv Now, because I've got an existing DirecTv account that I've put in suspended status.

Today, I communicate with DirecTv via chat, and I tell them to terminate my account instead of suspending it. This takes like forever, but has the fortunate side effect that I can now sign up for DirecTv Now, which I do.

Meanwhile, I await the CenturyLink technician on Monday, hoping that they're actually able to install 25 Mbps service in place of the 10 Mbps service that they give me now. If so, it will be the same $45 per month that I'm paying now. I already went and bought a modem on Ebay that is compatible with both my existing service and with the faster service.

Faster internet ought to help a lot, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much. Even if things don't get any better than they are right now, I've got enough Internet and small-screen options to meet my needs without me feeling forlorn about giving up the privilege of paying oodles of dollars monthly for DirecTv UHD Satellite.

A favorite theory of mine is that the trees on the west side of my house, over which there was only a small amount of line-of-sight clearance 25 years ago, have finally blocked the signal. The only problem with this theory is that it would seem to make more sense for the service to become intermittent under those conditions, rather than being perfectly fine one minute and gone forever the next minute.

So, the actual reason may well be hardware-related.

Or maybe a turkey buzzard built a pretty solid nest right in the line of sight in the top of one of those western trees. We shall never know, and I'm OK with that. How about you?

I'm a stickler for proof-reading my own writing. But surely you don't expect me to proofread this. It's too much.

This was good reading, Bells! Could it be that your equipment is so old that it can't keep up with new tech? I've run into that. I have ATT Uverse because there is no line of sight available from my apartment. We can't mount dishes on the buildings.

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[3mg Meniere]

www.tvtv.us.com seems to work for me.

Let me try this again; for a local broadcast schedule, I use Local TV listings for 54660, Tomah, Wisconsin

 

[Bea-FL]

This was good reading, Bells! Could it be that your equipment is so old that it can't keep up with new tech? I've run into that. I have ATT Uverse because there is no line of sight available from my apartment. We can't mount dishes on the buildings.

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ATT for us too. No line of sight for us because we live in the woods and it's that way for miles.

 

[clnire]

No cable out here, so we are stuck with satellite, DSL, and antennae. Heck, at least we have DSL!! Not fast, but we can do some streaming and not loose it in a storm (which seems to be every day right now)

Love Connelly & have to wait another year for more Bosch. Goliath is another good Prime show. Have to wait another year for more of that, too.

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I want to check out Goliath! Sounds right down our likes...

 

[MikeE3]

Let me try this again; for a local broadcast schedule, I use Local TV listings for 54660, Tomah, Wisconsin

Thanks for fixing the link. That could be a useful site.

 

[2legsshrt]

Well heres an update on Ginny. She's been really tired today, a lot of that is probably my fault. I wake up and if it's anytime after 3am I start thinking about losing her and what it's going to mean. Forget about any more sleep for me, so I have to get up which I can't do quietly because I need the lights to get my legs on right. A bull in a china shop as she says. Once I get down to the living room and turn on the show we always watch in the morning, "Madagascar" with David Attenborough narrating and take something I can get back to sleep but it wakes her and then she is up and doesn't get back to sleep till she is down here also. Then she may get an hour or so then she is able to go back to bed and get a little more. I think she is also getting into what I think the PA said they call the Nadir stage when your blood count gets to it's lowest point after chemo. Now is the time she has neutropenia, I think its called.
Damn it so much to know and watch out for. She gets an infection and could be life threatening.

I hate this damned disease and what she has to go thru. I don't know if I am doing the right things or not taking enough precautions. She is starting into that stage I fear. She is getting sick when she eats, lasts for a week and Monday is the MRI. Damn I hope that is negative but its one of this cancers favorite places to go. Considering getting a 2nd opinion and seeing what comes of it. I see Medicare takes care of it.

 

[Bea-FL]

Well heres an update on Ginny. She's been really tired today, a lot of that is probably my fault. I wake up and if it's anytime after 3am I start thinking about losing her and what it's going to mean. Forget about any more sleep for me, so I have to get up which I can't do quietly because I need the lights to get my legs on right. A bull in a china shop as she says. Once I get down to the living room and turn on the show we always watch in the morning, "Madagascar" with David Attenborough narrating and take something I can get back to sleep but it wakes her and then she is up and doesn't get back to sleep till she is down here also. Then she may get an hour or so then she is able to go back to bed and get a little more. I think she is also getting into what I think the PA said they call the Nadir stage when your blood count gets to it's lowest point after chemo. Now is the time she has neutropenia, I think its called.
Damn it so much to know and watch out for. She gets an infection and could be life threatening.

I hate this damned disease and what she has to go thru. I don't know if I am doing the right things or not taking enough precautions. She is starting into that stage I fear. She is getting sick when she eats, lasts for a week and Monday is the MRI. Damn I hope that is negative but its one of this cancers favorite places to go. Considering getting a 2nd opinion and seeing what comes of it. I see Medicare takes care of it.

second opinions are always a good thing. ((((Hugs))))

 

[Janet H]

The heat index at 8:00 PM yesterday evening was 103o ..

Ugh! We've got the same kind of weather here at least for the next 10 days. Looks like it's going to be one of those summers where even a pool is not going to be refreshing. We've got the family coming over with the kids today so it's going to be hectic, but the rest of the week I plan to stay inside except for morning and evening hours. I feel so sorry for people who work outside in this kind of weather! I always opted for working inside where the AC is!!

 

[Janet H]

Well heres an update on Ginny. She's been really tired today, a lot of that is probably my fault. I wake up and if it's anytime after 3am I start thinking about losing her and what it's going to mean. Forget about any more sleep for me, so I have to get up which I can't do quietly because I need the lights to get my legs on right. A bull in a china shop as she says. Once I get down to the living room and turn on the show we always watch in the morning, "Madagascar" with David Attenborough narrating and take something I can get back to sleep but it wakes her and then she is up and doesn't get back to sleep till she is down here also. Then she may get an hour or so then she is able to go back to bed and get a little more. I think she is also getting into what I think the PA said they call the Nadir stage when your blood count gets to it's lowest point after chemo. Now is the time she has neutropenia, I think its called.
Damn it so much to know and watch out for. She gets an infection and could be life threatening.

I hate this damned disease and what she has to go thru. I don't know if I am doing the right things or not taking enough precautions. She is starting into that stage I fear. She is getting sick when she eats, lasts for a week and Monday is the MRI. Damn I hope that is negative but its one of this cancers favorite places to go. Considering getting a 2nd opinion and seeing what comes of it. I see Medicare takes care of it.

Do you have another bedroom you could use where you wouldn't disturb Ginny? You both need your rest.

Do you have a nurse coming in? Going to a support group would be helpful if you have one in the area. Check with your local hospital. Also, I think you mentioned Hospice before. They would be a wonderful resource for you so you didn't feel so alone with the decisions you're making in your home. Also, make a list of questions as they occur to you and Ginny so when you do get to talk to someone you won't forget anything. Meanwhile, make sure you take care of yourself.