DELARANEWS
Craig
Craig Miller, W8CRCutting the 22,236 Mile Cord
Several years ago, I decided paying almost a $1,000.00 a year for a Direct TV subscription was down right ludicrous. A few times before finally doing the final cancellation, the customer representative on the other end of the phone kept sweetening the deal to keep me on for another year or so. I started out paying only $29.95 a month for a thousand channels, 995 of which I never watched. At the end, I was paying about $80 a month for still only 5 channels worth watching. I guess cancelling satellite TV is like quitting cigarettes, you gotta do it few times before you’re successful. Well, I put on my big-boy pants and finally got firm, no matter what wonderful discounts and freebies they offer. It was tough, but I got through it “It’s you, not me, I just can’t take it anymore!”. Then the calls and mailers started to get me back, offering even better deals than ever. I started getting rather snotty at times telling the rep “Where were you when I was grinding my teeth over these charges last year?”. Silence. “Oh, by the way, when are you gonna come out and remove this butt-ugly dish out of my yard?” “Click.” The calls finally faded away, but the dish remains. I’ve hit it with the mower, tugged on it a few times, it holds firm. Time to do this myself I guess. So I gather the appropriate tools to get the job done. I find the post was sunk in concrete, not just pounded in the dirt. I opted not to just saw it off at the base but remove the whole damn thing. As I was snipping the coax wires I was pleased to discover I woke up about 30 pissed off wasps building a nest inside the structure. Having already a record year of predator bug bites and stings (yellow jackets, mosquitoes, bald hornets and wasps), I wasn’t progressing until the wasps relocate or see their maker. As usual, we’re out of the good bug-killing spray so I went to plan ‘B’, a Gatorade bottle of 87 octane should do it. Sorry, nothing personal: OK, now that’s out of the way, I spent the next hour chipping and digging away on the base. This is turning into a bigger project than I anticipated. I have to admit, I don’t think this dish ever needed readjustment, boy it was anchored in. I was even able to pull out a 6’ ground rod, I can always use one of those! One last thing, let’s see if I can extricate some of the old buried coax cables. I soon discovered there’s two sets of three-wire cables running to the house. They were only buried an inch or two under, so they ripped up in short order. Sure, the yard experienced some damage, but this divorce is final! Somewhere up in the sky, in a geo-synchronous orbit about 22,000 mile away, a lone satellite is shedding a tear. Breaking up is hard to do, sometimes it takes a pick and shovel.
DELARANews
Craig
Craig Miller, W8CRCutting the 22,236 Mile Cord
Several years ago, I decided paying almost a $1,000.00 a year for a Direct TV subscription was down right ludicrous. A few times before finally doing the final cancellation, the customer representative on the other end of the phone kept sweetening the deal to keep me on for another year or so. I started out paying only $29.95 a month for a thousand channels, 995 of which I never watched. At the end, I was paying about $80 a month for still only 5 channels worth watching. I guess cancelling satellite TV is like quitting cigarettes, you gotta do it few times before you’re successful. Well, I put on my big-boy pants and finally got firm, no matter what wonderful discounts and freebies they offer. It was tough, but I got through it “It’s you, not me, I just can’t take it anymore!”. Then the calls and mailers started to get me back, offering even better deals than ever. I started getting rather snotty at times telling the rep “Where were you when I was grinding my teeth over these charges last year?”. Silence. “Oh, by the way, when are you gonna come out and remove this butt-ugly dish out of my yard?” “Click.” The calls finally faded away, but the dish remains. I’ve hit it with the mower, tugged on it a few times, it holds firm. Time to do this myself I guess. So I gather the appropriate tools to get the job done. I find the post was sunk in concrete, not just pounded in the dirt. I opted not to just saw it off at the base but remove the whole damn thing. As I was snipping the coax wires I was pleased to discover I woke up about 30 pissed off wasps building a nest inside the structure. Having already a record year of predator bug bites and stings (yellow jackets, mosquitoes, bald hornets and wasps), I wasn’t progressing until the wasps relocate or see their maker. As usual, we’re out of the good bug-killing spray so I went to plan ‘B’, a Gatorade bottle of 87 octane should do it. Sorry, nothing personal: OK, now that’s out of the way, I spent the next hour chipping and digging away on the base. This is turning into a bigger project than I anticipated. I have to admit, I don’t think this dish ever needed readjustment, boy it was anchored in. I was even able to pull out a 6’ ground rod, I can always use one of those! One last thing, let’s see if I can extricate some of the old buried coax cables. I soon discovered there’s two sets of three-wire cables running to the house. They were only buried an inch or two under, so they ripped up in short order. Sure, the yard experienced some damage, but this divorce is final! Somewhere up in the sky, in a geo-synchronous orbit about 22,000 mile away, a lone satellite is shedding a tear. Breaking up is hard to do, sometimes it takes a pick and shovel.
