Climbing on the Roof

It hasn't rained for a while. And the baby is sleeping. Our satellite dish is not aimed correctly at the satellite any more. Against my better judgement I am going to climb on the roof, up to the peak by the chimney, and try to re-aim the dish. Unfortunately I can't remember if I need a screw driver or a wrench or what. Maybe I'll just load a bunch of tools in my pockets so I don't have to go up and down. The good news is that I have a pair of wireless headphones that I can use to listen to see if the dish is aimed better. Call me in a half hour on my cell phone if I don't post by then :-) If I don't answer then maybe you should call 911 'cause I've fallen off the roof or something.

9:55am I am alive

OK... rather than add a post after this one I'm continuing where I left off. I MADE IT! I am alive! The ladder was wet and I wiped it down. The roof was dry up by the chimney so, uh, that was safer. (Note to my parents: skip the next sentence. Hmmm. Maybe skip the whole paragraph.) The rest of the roof was pretty wet though. Once I got to the top I stood up on the peak and did my best to hold onto the chimney with one hand while I nudged the dish and loosened bolts. Fortunately there was a (now rusty) set of pliars on the chimney cover. Apparently left after the last 2nd story roof expedition. In summary, this new expedition was a total success. I could hear that I'd aimed the dish better than before (a higher pitch tone) but couldn't know for sure until I came inside and looked at the numbers on the tv settings screen. I just checked and on a scale of 0-100 I got it from 59-60 on most of the transponders to 95-100! Plus. The baby is sleeping. And I cleaned out one of the gutters (with my bare hands). Gross.

11:23am It's still not working

The TiVo says the signal is great but the video still stutters. The sound is ok. I'm irritated at www.blogger.com because I just lost two giant paragraphs which I am now re-writing. I called DirecTV and my TiVo's current software is out of date. They also explained that the stuttering video is a known problem. If I connect it to the phone line (as it's supposed to be all the time) then it will download the software update and everything will be good. So it's downloading now. The support guy tried to sell me on a replacement TiVo for $49 even though this update should fix the problem. I asked if I could get an HDTV TiVo instead of the same model. He said they're ~$1000 and they don't sell them. It's ridiculous that they're so expensive considering you can only use it with DirecTV service. i.e. You can't switch to cable tv or another satellite service and use your $1000 box. It's only good with DirecTV. I still want one though. Mmmmm. HDTV. :-)

4:09pm It's fixed

Yup. It was the software. Now that it downloaded the update everything looks great.