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Digital cable? What digital cable?
Apr. 21st, 2008 07:24 amI think I posted about our problems with our digital cable reception. It got so bad last week that more than half the channels were so pixelated that it looked like animated abstract art. It got better after that but still was missing syllables now and then and the picture would suddenly smear into giant pixels. The cable guy came out Saturday morning. We hoped he'd be able to find the problem outside but unfortunately he needed to come in. Argh! He was supposed to come in the afternoon so we had no time to straighten up. I'd just gotten up when they called, so before I ate breakfast Eric and I picked up boxes of CD's, stacks of VCR tapes, Scampi's various sleeping mats and scrubbed the dried cat barf they'd hidden off our hardwood floors. Scampi was barfing a lot for a while. It's dark in that corner and didn't see it. Thank goodness for the washable finish the previous owners put down on the floor! It came right off.
Then we opened the door and back window to air out the house a bit. He was pulling up as I opened the door. His name was Chris and he was really nice. He explained the screens he was looking at and showed us the high number of errors he was getting from our cable box. Then he worked backwards to the different connection points.
Our path the the backyard was getting blocked by roses growing toward the dead hibiscus bush. I cut the hibiscus back to stumps to widen it for him/us. There are some sprigs of leaves at the base of it. Maybe we can save the hibiscus? Wish I knew what was wrong with it.
Our biggest problem was from the old cable coming from the outside to the inside of our house. There was another old section that was bad outside. We had to excavate the back corner of the living room for him to get to the outlet. He did the outside stuff while we found new resting spots for more stacks of Eric's magazines, VCR tapes, CD's and various computer gear. I now have the rudder pedals and two se rial joysticks together in a box not quite big enough to ship to our friend Armand who has been waiting a very long time for them. Larger box should be available at work today. By golly, I'll get those things shipped to him! I just need to get the other set of rudder pedals. Armand is trying to set up a flight center for his son and himself.
Squeakers kept an eye on Chris. Pretty soon, Loki was back from next door and was keeping an eye on him, too. When Chris was working on the indoor cable, I told him I hoped he wasn't bothered by our big black cat. He said he wasn't Loki went into the kitchen and started telling Eric all about the stranger in the living room. Eric replied, "Tell me all about it!" and Loki went on Yowing at him. lol
In the meantime, Squeakers had settled on my chest and wanted kisses. I found myself a little self-conscious about talking to her with my usual baby talk and giving her loud kisses on the top of her head and ears.
Chris did everything he could do and we still had too many errors on our cable. He was mystified. I asked if our wireless network could be causing problems. He didn't think it should. I didn't think it should, but just in case I went in and turned off our router. The problems dropped to an "acceptable and correctable" level. He said that was a first for him. That led to a discussion about tech stuff. He only knows cable so far but is learning a lot as he goes. I know networking but nothing about cable. We agreed the frequencies shouldn't even come close to each other.
He said he had a website at home to check the connection speed and I popped up with "2wire.com" which amazed him. Eric said "Geek!" and I put my hand up. It was almost as if we rehearsed it. Chris laughed. We agreed he'd come back at 9AM the following Saturday for a presentation of cable internet.
While we were talking, the cable modem rebooted and came back with a blue screen that had green vertical lines down the middle. He said his boss sometimes "pings" him when he's working and reset it. As he was putting his tools into his truck to leave, it did it again. I called him back and he fixed it.
After he left it happened again. I called the cable company and they sent a signal to the box that reset it. A while later it happened again. Turns out the box was swapped and the new one is bad. Grr. I'll swap it at their store at lunch time today. They told us to connect the cable directly to our TV. Couldn't do that. Chris gave us a very short cable. I connected it to the VCR. That worked. We're back to basic cable.
My next task involved contacting Linksys to get complete instructions on what do do with our router. I had to completely reload factory defaults and set it up again. No clue whether it solved our problem or not. In our conversation with Chris about it, he said his company had switched from Linksys to Netgear for reasons he didn't know. If the Linksys router is our problem, we'll replace it with Netgear.
Yesterday was a day fighting major allergies, sore muscles and tiredness from so much activity. I guess I should have worn a mask when I was working on the hibiscus. My nose is still very stuffy. :(
Then we opened the door and back window to air out the house a bit. He was pulling up as I opened the door. His name was Chris and he was really nice. He explained the screens he was looking at and showed us the high number of errors he was getting from our cable box. Then he worked backwards to the different connection points.
Our path the the backyard was getting blocked by roses growing toward the dead hibiscus bush. I cut the hibiscus back to stumps to widen it for him/us. There are some sprigs of leaves at the base of it. Maybe we can save the hibiscus? Wish I knew what was wrong with it.
Our biggest problem was from the old cable coming from the outside to the inside of our house. There was another old section that was bad outside. We had to excavate the back corner of the living room for him to get to the outlet. He did the outside stuff while we found new resting spots for more stacks of Eric's magazines, VCR tapes, CD's and various computer gear. I now have the rudder pedals and two se rial joysticks together in a box not quite big enough to ship to our friend Armand who has been waiting a very long time for them. Larger box should be available at work today. By golly, I'll get those things shipped to him! I just need to get the other set of rudder pedals. Armand is trying to set up a flight center for his son and himself.
Squeakers kept an eye on Chris. Pretty soon, Loki was back from next door and was keeping an eye on him, too. When Chris was working on the indoor cable, I told him I hoped he wasn't bothered by our big black cat. He said he wasn't Loki went into the kitchen and started telling Eric all about the stranger in the living room. Eric replied, "Tell me all about it!" and Loki went on Yowing at him. lol
In the meantime, Squeakers had settled on my chest and wanted kisses. I found myself a little self-conscious about talking to her with my usual baby talk and giving her loud kisses on the top of her head and ears.
Chris did everything he could do and we still had too many errors on our cable. He was mystified. I asked if our wireless network could be causing problems. He didn't think it should. I didn't think it should, but just in case I went in and turned off our router. The problems dropped to an "acceptable and correctable" level. He said that was a first for him. That led to a discussion about tech stuff. He only knows cable so far but is learning a lot as he goes. I know networking but nothing about cable. We agreed the frequencies shouldn't even come close to each other.
He said he had a website at home to check the connection speed and I popped up with "2wire.com" which amazed him. Eric said "Geek!" and I put my hand up. It was almost as if we rehearsed it. Chris laughed. We agreed he'd come back at 9AM the following Saturday for a presentation of cable internet.
While we were talking, the cable modem rebooted and came back with a blue screen that had green vertical lines down the middle. He said his boss sometimes "pings" him when he's working and reset it. As he was putting his tools into his truck to leave, it did it again. I called him back and he fixed it.
After he left it happened again. I called the cable company and they sent a signal to the box that reset it. A while later it happened again. Turns out the box was swapped and the new one is bad. Grr. I'll swap it at their store at lunch time today. They told us to connect the cable directly to our TV. Couldn't do that. Chris gave us a very short cable. I connected it to the VCR. That worked. We're back to basic cable.
My next task involved contacting Linksys to get complete instructions on what do do with our router. I had to completely reload factory defaults and set it up again. No clue whether it solved our problem or not. In our conversation with Chris about it, he said his company had switched from Linksys to Netgear for reasons he didn't know. If the Linksys router is our problem, we'll replace it with Netgear.
Yesterday was a day fighting major allergies, sore muscles and tiredness from so much activity. I guess I should have worn a mask when I was working on the hibiscus. My nose is still very stuffy. :(
