You guys may get a laugh out my plight in a small town in CT.
(rant) We all hate the cable company, nobody likes the enforced monopoly, pricey service and crappy customer support. While looking at our apartment from the driveway, I noticed a DirectTV dish installed on the roof. Hey, there's an idea, time to check out the prices for satellite. Direct TV is almost as expensive as cable, but Dish Network and 5mb/s DSL would save us $300 a year, not bad. What can go wrong?
Fast forward to yesterday morning. Satellite guy comes at 8 and installs the dish on our roof, right next to the other one (he can't remove another company's dish and I wasn't there to do it) but didn't have a good line of sight since it needs to go in a different direction than the other dish. He moves it 10 ft over, on the rear corner of the roof of the main house. Perfect line of sight, and then the landlord walks outside. SWMBO can hear it from our living room, "Oh E36 M3, that can't be there." It turns out we're in the historical society and apparently no home in the historical society can have a satellite dish (but if it's not visible from the road then how would they ever know..). Immediately she calls up her other cohorts in the hysterical society and runs out to the road. Walking up and down the road (we don't have a sidewalk and traffic flies by the house at 50mph) leaning, squinting, "oh, I can see it from the road, can't you just move it this way, or that, how about behind the pine tree..." Mind you, this is just as visible as the other satellite that they never noticed before. We wouldn't want one of those car's flying by at 50 to possibly see a glimpse of a satellite dish. Meanwhile, she's commenting that "well, trees are carbon, they're opaque to satellite" and "why is it so big, shouldn't they be getting smaller" yet it's the same size as the other one.
The outcome of the morning is that the poor installation guy had to remove the dish he just installed and we would have to wait for the hysterical society to have their special meeting to discuss the foreclosure of the house across the street that needs alot of work (they're afeared the bank will demolish the house since it needs alot of work and the property may be worth more without it, but the history of that old farm house...) and discuss my infringement on the historical value of the region and whether or not I should be permitted a choice beyond cable. Oh, and they'reremoving the old dish, so that's no longer an option.
Another option they offered (albeit probably against the cable company's policy) is to allow us to purchase another cable box under their account and just pay them the difference. So, $10 a month for TV isn't bad. But, since it requires a splitter, a hole drilled in the floor from the basement, and that dangerous high voltage coax cable to be installed, they're requiring a licensed electrician to do the work.
So, to make a long story short, the biggest crisis these people face is my infringement upon the historical community with my choice of satellite. Meanwhile, the house across the street has a perpetual tag sale and a 16 year old in a hot pink bikini actively flagging down cars to stop and buy their crap.
(end rant)
Sorry for the uber long post.
