December 2-3, 2022 - I Hate Dish With a Passion!

 Kelly insists on having Dish TV here in Florida even though we can get cable TV in the park. Every year it is an ordeal for me to set up the antenna and find the satellites. Normally it takes a couple hours. This year was a MAJOR exception. I hooked it all up on Friday morning and spent six hours on the phone with Dish trying to get connected. We finally got one satellite. They said that since the receiver hadn’t been on for almost a year, in order to get the other two satellites we had to leave the receiver on overnight so it could download the software upgrades. I did that and this morning we had nothing, not even the one satellite from yesterday.

I talked with Dish for over an hour this morning and gave up. Kelly and I talked about ordering an antenna that automatically finds the satellite. One of these costs about $350.00 but we don’t think it has all the features Kelly wants for recording programs. We were going to order one anyway but I decided to look for an installer in the area to see if he could get the satellites locked in. If something was wrong with the equipment and we bought the $350.00 automatic antenna, we still wouldn’t have things up and running. I googled and found an installer with a five star rating. I called him and he said $100.00 to get it up and running. I agreed and in 45 minutes he was at the campsite. He found several things wrong with the Dish antenna and the connecting cables. He fixed all of them then worked on getting the antenna aimed correctly. Even he had trouble with that and had to get out his meter to verify the antenna was locked in correctly on the satellites. We then had to go through all the Dish upgrades, etc. These take a long time so he said he was leaving. He had done all he could. He gave me his address and said to send him a check. If it didn’t work call him back. Here is the culprit and my nemesis every year.

Bob used to be a Dish technician but quit some years back. He said their setup takes forever. After he left the screen was stuck for a half hour on the screen looking for a signal. I called Dish once again. The technician had me reset the Wally receiver once again. This was probably the tenth time I had done this in the last two days. The screen sat there for well over twenty minutes with the same message. Then FINALLY it started to load. After another hour we had programming. Everything was working as it should so I mailed Bob a check. I wish I had called him yesterday!

The next issue to deal with here on our lot is the sun. We have shade in the morning but sun all afternoon and it has been hot -  80, feels like 82. Here is a picture. No trees in sight.

A number of campers here have sunshades like this attached to their awning. They cut out 85% of the sun.

We decided to order one from Amazon. It will be here December 7th. It should be an easy install. Hopefully much easier than the Dish antenna! We then did a little grocery shopping, ate supper, and turned on the AC. When it gets dark it cools down to about 60 degrees and we can turn it off. 

We will give the Dish network a workout tonight to make up for lost time.

There is no recycling at the park because it costs them more than just dumping the trash. They have a big dumpster at the storage lot so I rode my bike up there with the trash. I hate throwing away aluminum cans but I’m not going to accumulate them for fourth months.

Settling in slowly.