My Dog Ate My Satellite...
..okay, you can stop laughing...really, you can...cause it's true and it's sad and well...it's funny too. You are probably wondering what the story is, so here we go.
We have been on Hughes Net satellite Internet for a few years now. We live where there is no cable, no DSL, and we occasionally find cows wandering through our yard. For awhile we had a T1 line, but that was in the pre dotcom failure days when we could afford to have our very own T1 line. Ahhh...those were the days. But I digress...
So Hughes Net comes with its problems. One is it is affected easily by weather and things such as trees (did I mention we live in the woods). But the main frustration is their fair use policy. Hughes Net has sold satellite space to so many users, that they have to decrease the amount of download that a user can have today. We had the basic package (which hubby swears started of with us have 500 MB of download available a day), but now it only has 200 MB of download available today. We are a family of four. We each have our own computer. 200 is nothing in the grand scheme of web surfing and uploads.
We have a satellite set up for our office which is across the street. We have the mother of all dishes up there and 1250 MB a day. We decided that it was time to switch the two, seems simple enough, right?
Well, I will spare you the one hour and 15 minute phone conversation I had yesterday morning, by summing it up. It can't be switched. Different technology. Different modems. Different dishes. We can't just switch! What we we thinking!? We could however get the big kahuna like we have across the street...and the set up would only be 699.99!!! Wow, what a deal...um, thanks, but I have to think on that one. I didn't say yes, did I? Whew...Good-bye.
Fast forward through conversations with hubby and a few hours of time. I called back and told them that I wanted to go from the basic home set up to a pro set up which would allow us more speed and more download but on the same equipment and for about $30 extra dollars a month. She signed me up, but said I would have to call back in the evening to go through the registration process because I had exceeded my fair access usage numbers and they couldn't do anything until I was back in Hughes Net's good graces (my words, but you get the gist). This call took around 20 minutes.
Fast forward to last evening. Made the call to register. Something that should have not taken very long to do. But there was some slight confusion. Remember me saying that we had two dishes? We pay for them on one invoice, but they have different accounts. So while I was talking to her for the first 45 minutes, she was actually making adjustments to our satellite across the street at our office. Once we got that squared away, things started hopping along. It also was raining pretty heavily by this time.
Another hour or so passed and we finally had things working. Couldn't get it working through the wireless router in our house, but when I plugged directly into my computer, we were able to get the system registered and things were looking good, but suddenly, I had no connection. I looked at my modem and instead of 5 lights, only 2 were on. The one for power and the one for LAN. We assumed it was due to the deteriorating weather conditions, after all, it had welcomed me when I registered so we signed off.
It never came back last night. This morning I got up and still only two lights, though the weather was clearing. So I got on the phone and called again. As the gentleman started asking me questions and running diagnostics, he said it appeared that the modem was getting input from the dish...from the dish...the little gears began to turn and while he had me on hold while he worked his magic, I went outside. Last night, Plato had been whining for about 30 minutes or so, not at all like his normal self, but we figured he was just tired of the rain.
Now I think he was nursing a sore mouth...because he had found the cables and had chewed through them...while I was talking on the phone last night with Hughes Net. What are the odds of that!!!??? For those of you worried about Plato, his mouth looks fine, he is acting normally and I haven't killed him.
So...where was I (and are you still here or am I just talking to myself?) Anyway, the very nice man from Hughes Net comes back on and starts to speak and I tell him I have discovered the problem. He is amazed(not everyone calls in to say the dog ate my satellite). So he offers to switch me to the people who can help me get my cables repaired. Unfortunately, they are closed at that early hour and I had to wait until after 9:00.
Turns out our modem is older than dirt (it is the 6000 series) and now they are up to the 10000 series...they no longer do work related to our old modem. So, we are getting a whole new system! For a mere installation cost of 199.99... I wonder if I can shave Plato's fur and sell it to pay that back? The good news is, the new system has more options and we will be able to sign up for faster speed for not too much more money. I am happy about that. The bad news is that it will be up to three days before I hear from the installer and then I have to figure out when he can come here. And until then I am on dial up...very slow dial up....
The other exciting thing that occured is I went to power cycle our wireless router (part of the instructions from Hughes Net. Well, I inadvertently picked up an adapter cable that was plugged in to the electric but not into anything else. I thought it was the one I had take out of the router minutes before. But it wasn't. And it was more powerful. And it fried my wireless router. So now I can't even talk to my printer.
Is it Friday yet? Will someone please pass me a green beer?
I was unaware that there were no images of William Shakespeare that could be attributed to having been done in his lifetime, until my DH sent me this article 