Satellite Down!!!!!

If you know me, there are two things that I cannot live without. My computer and my satellite dish.

Right now, I'm without one of those two things. And since I'm typing this blog out on my PC, you can figure out what's the other thing.

My satellite is down and I am very upset about it.

It all started innocently enough when the apartment complex where I live started doing some renovating outside. You know, new siding, paint job, the whole nine yards. Like I said innocent enough.

Until it got to my place and the workers decided it would be fun to take down my satellite as they made their renovations.

Now, at first I was mad about it. But, there was nothing I can do. I mean, it is their apartments after all and they can do what they want outside. Besides, I figured they be at it for a day or two at the most and I'll have it back.

Those two days turned into two weeks. Straight.

All the while, my dish was offline.With nothing more than a black screen with the words, "searching for satellite signal", posted on the bottom (the worst four words you'd want to see, by the way.)

Now if this sort of thing was happening during the summer, I wouldn't be all upset about it. But to have this happen in the fall, right when the new season of shows are starting up, is the absolute worst time for this to happen.

During the time away, I wasn't missing out on too much, except for Fox's Prison Break, one of my favorite shows. (Thanks to my good friend Sam, he was able to tape last week's episode for me.)

So on Tuesday, everything was finally done and I called the dish people to set up an appointment for them to come over and hook back up the satellite.

And that was when I got the news that I didn't see coming.

They told me, because of so many people around my area asking for appointments for dishes and other service, that the earliest that I would expect a service call to get it back up and running is October 18th.

Let me repeat that again. The earliest I can get my dish back is October 18th.

That's almost a month with out my TV. Technically, a month and a half if you count the time served when it was initially taken down.

Now I am livid. Not only for the fact that I'll be without my dish for so long, but I'll be missing a lot of my favorite shows and channels. Smallville's season premiere, Lost's season premiere, Prison Break on Fox, Supernatural on the new CW, Heroes on NBC, Dr. Who on SciFi, Wrestling, ESPN and on and on. For at least three weeks.

Now, there is a chance that I may get my dish back up sooner, since they placed me on a waiting list in the event someone cancels an appointment. But, either way, whatever day I get it back will already be several days too late because of what I missed and will continue to miss.

I hope that some of my friends who read this will be able to help me out with tapes and/or DVDs of the shows I'll be missing during this time span. But even I know that will be asking way too much of them. If you can help, please contact me.

In the meantime, I've been reduced to something that I haven't done since I was a kid. Watching TV with an small antenna where, instead of having hundreds of channels to choose from, I'm down to about nine where it's a crapshoot at best when it comes to picture quality.

So, this is not going to be a good time for me. At least until I get my dish back up again. Whenever that will be.