The DISH saga.

My next DirecTV experience. It started to snow last Sunday, and many people lost the satellite signal. I thought nothing about that until Monday night when I was missing the NFL game. Oh well. The next day though, still no signal. As you can see, the DISH was buried under the pine branches loaded with heavy snow. Well, this is 2 stories up and I could not get to the dish to free it from the snow covered branches.

So, I called a tree company. I called back every day, and they never called me back. I heard from other DirecTV customers that they could move the dish to a better location.

The response I got from them was that "they would not move the dish for "cosmetic reasons"....I should go pay to have it moved myself.

DOES THIS LOOK LIKE A COSMETIC REASON????

Anyway, thanks to Ted Preiss, he came out to the house on Thursday night with a long ladder, and worked in the snow, at night, helping me get signal back to my dish.

No thanks to DirecTV. They were not very helpful.

My DirecTV experience

This is just amazing. Very funny if not so frustrating. I have a house in Missouri, it has DirecTV. I am setting up a new account in Montana, with a new install.
CALL #1 to Customer Service: I explain above. Rule Number ONE: No changes to account in Missouri. New install at such and such address in Montana. I get a confirmation email: they are doing the new install in MISSOURI!
CALL #2: I explain all above. Yes, they had it wrong, but it is fixed now.
CALL #3: Installers are calling MISSOURI number, looking for the install address. They are 1500 miles away. I explain again, they show up in Montana, at the new address. Dish up, TV is on! But, no local channels....install was scheduled for Missouri.
CALL #4: Installers try to fix the install address so I can get all channels in Montana. They make it happen for about an hour.
CALL #5: Angry call from home in Missouri: Local channels have gone out, and it says Mountain Time, not Central Time.
CALL #6: I call Customer Service again: they had changed the install address in Missouri to the Montana address. We go over again the different account numbers, and the install addresses for EACH account. We go over the phone numbers for each account. We make sure there are different billing addresses, email addresses, phone numbers. All seems good for the moment.
I go online to check the accounts: The addresses seem OK, but the phone numbers for contact are wrong again. I give up for today! God only knows what channels I will or won't get tomorrow. This is my thanks to DirecTV, from me to you.

Today was a great day for hiking. Getting up to 70, and sunny. Yesterday I found mud, today I found snow. Went down to Sourdough Canyon to hike to Mystic Lake. It is about 8 miles or so up the singletrack side.

It was an easy 4.7 miles to the turnoff at the bridge. To the right is a road, snow covered. To the left is the singletrack, and there was a lot of snowpack by the river in the shade. After postholing about 1/2 mile, the trail heads up the side of a hill, rising steadily. I was out of the snow, and in the sun. It was gorgeous. I crossed over a fallen log, and rounded a bend to run right into a fresh deer leg on the trail. No snorting or chuffing, but I was stopped dead in my tracks staring at that leg. There was no smell, the blood was fresh, and I got very nervous.

I turned around slowly, and looked all over. I was crazy enough to get a picture as I backed away slowly, back over that same fallen log, and slowly making my way back down to the snow. I never did see a bear, but I was not going to keep going up the trail in case I ran into one on the way up or the way back. No thank you.