Well, it does appear that once again there has been a gap in postings. In the interim, I have been rebuilding the hard drive on my laptop as I had to replace it. What a bloody pain installing the software all over again! Remembering all those must have pieces of software that were on the original drive is damn hard.

Then, when it appeared that I had almost reached the end of the job, my internet satellite connection decided that it wanted to mess up. See, around the time that I was busy rebuilding the drive we had some nasty winter weather which involved some very high winds. My house is rather heavily insulated so, it takes a lot to actually cause me to hear the wind in the house. This time, the wind was heavy enough that Dawn, my cheeky young cat, was spooked by it.

What I didn’t notice at the time but it became noticeable over time was that apparently the wind managed to shift the dish a bit and considerably weakened my signal for my net connection. What brought it to a head was when I couldn’t keep an IP when hooked through the router. The dish needed to be repointed. That was done last Friday.

Then, on Monday late in the afternoon, I’m working away on the web and down went my connection. Well it was a bit windy and some storm activity was going on that sometimes puts the connection down so I didn’t get into a panic about it. After an hour of no connection, I switched over to my backup dialup connection and carried SLOWLY on with what I was trying to do. The connection wasn’t back by bedtime and still gone in the morning.

Sort of figured that didn’t bode really well.

When I got home from work on Tuesday and it was still out, I definitely knew I had a problem. Got hold of the fellow who did the repoint. He stopped in on his way home to check that maybe he’d left a bolt loose and it had shifted again. No such luck. So, on the phone I get to my satellite provider and spend what seemed like hours on hold waiting for their 2nd tier tech support.

After trying the tricks she had in her bag of trick, she informs me that she will be sending a work order out to the local shop to come out and check the system. She says it could be a part on the satellite for which the warranty is no longer in effect. The warranty is a year long and I’m two months past that. I argued with her that I signed a three year contract, I expect my hardware to be covered since they expect me to pay my part of the contract. It is this thing called reciprocity.

Her response was that I when I buy a car it will break down and I’d have to fix it. Not a year after buying a new car I wouldn’t! Not without raising bloody hell. Wasn’t a whole lot of sense in arguing too hard at that point as it might not even be the hardware so I let her off the phone and prayed it wasn’t going to be the hardware, it doesn’t come cheap.

Well, this morning I got a call from the installer who had received the work order. It seems that one of the parts the tech person  was saying may need to be replaced, at my expense, was part of a batch of parts that had not been well produced. The company was replacing it as their expense and extending the warranty by 6 months which means I have another 4 months of warranty. WHEW!

So, I’m back online and on the satellite instead of on dialup. Sometimes prayer just works!