Salad Is Slaughter

From DBSTalk.com

To put it bluntly, an unacceptable percentage of HDDVR installs/upgrades have needed multiple truck rolls due to signal level issues. Not equipment issues. The fault for these multiple truck rolls can only fall on one place. The tech. Either (s)he didn’t properly aim the dish, aimed it into trees, wrong switch, or old/bad cabling.

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Once activated, the box will run some internal self-tests on the signal levels. If the test fails, there will be an on screen display stating that the IV Test failed (IV = Installation Verification).

It failed, now what? Now the tech has a chance to tweak the dish, put in the proper switch, etc. Whatever needs to be done to get it to pass. Once it passes, life is good and everyone enjoys HD.

If true, this is a good first step but I don’t think it would have caught our problem (1 and 2) where the installation tech as well as the follow up guy did a half-ass job with the mounting and didn’t install all of the required hardware. I do applaud DirecTV for adding this feature because it should eliminate some of the installation problems I’ve read about.

Last night as I was falling asleep I felt Georgia clawing at the back of my head.  I wasn’t pleased.  I rolled over to see what the deal was and she immediately lay down on my arm and went to sleep.  The little fart wanted me to roll over for her convenience.

I finally got around to loading Firefox and Thunderbird on my home computer.  I know, I should have done it months ago but last weekend I was trying to log on to both Rick’s and the Burke pages using the current version of IE on Vista and couldn’t do it.  However, I could by using Safari and Firefox browsers on Vista.  I assume IE had some configuration change during a previous update which I can’t find.  That’s okay; I needed a reason to do this.

I switched to Thunderbird because my version of Outlook wouldn’t retain password info in Vista (known bug) and I wasn’t thrilled with the new Microsoft Mail program.  I guess now I’ll have to start looking for cool add-ons.  I already installed a calendar add on for Thunderbird which immediately makes it better than MS Mail.  Now I’m toying with the idea of having my laptop do a dual boot for Vista and Linux.  I really only need Vista for iTunes and I’d rather use Linux for everything else.

I’ve got several books on pre-order at Amazon.com and got a notification yesterday that one shipped.  Now, will it get to me before I leave town so I’ll have something to read on the plane?  Smart money says no.

Australians making odd choices for funeral songs

Hymns are being replaced at funerals in one Australian city by popular rock classics like Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” a cemetery manager said Wednesday.

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Among other less conventional choices were “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” by the Monty Python comedy team, “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead,” “Hit the Road Jack,” “Another One Bites the Dust” and “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.”

I do like “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” but I’m leaning toward Rush with either Dreamline or Roll the Bones from the album Roll the Bones.

New Zealand man puts up his soul for auction

Walter Scott, 24, put his soul up for sale on New Zealand Internet auction site TradeMe, and so far has received more than 100 expressions of interest.

Bids in the auction, which was to close Thursday, had reached $189 late Wednesday.

Hmmm, that gives me an idea…

In 2001, 20-year-old U.S. university student Adam Burtle tried unsuccessfully to sell his soul on auction Web site eBay.

Bidding had reached $400 before the auction was pulled from the site, with the company ruling something tangible needed to swap hands.

So much for that plan.

We’ve had the DirecTV HD DVR for about six weeks now. After the installation debacle things have been going pretty good. I’ll be honest; after some of the horror stories I’ve heard about the software problems (admittedly from the early days of the unit’s deployment) I was worried. But I’d also heard that most of the software bugs had been squashed so I went with it. For those keeping score at home, we have the HR21-100. The 100 designation pertains to the manufacturer.

Overall I love the HR-21. I can record two shows while simultaneously watching a show that was recorded earlier. I can also record a show while watching another one live. The only time we’ve had to use a VCR in another room is if there are three shows on at the same time that we want to watch. It’s pretty rare, but it does happen since NBC has some of their best shows on the USA network.

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