Back in Business - Part One

 I suppose it's been a month or so since I posted anything, but the last two weeks were not my fault.  It was a dark and stormy night when I lost my internet access.  That happens occasionally when you get your internet from a satellite dish, as I do.   It's not the rain that causes it, it's the tall thick clouds that frequently accompany a thunderstorm that interfere with the signal.  It usually comes back in 15 or 20 minutes, but not this time.  Since it was late and I was tired, I soon gave up and went to bed.  I began to suspect something else was wrong when I still didn't have access the next night and the following day.  It was then that I noticed that the four winky-blinky lights on my modem were not shining in their usual fashion, leading me to believe that my modem was dead.  We used to have a guy right here in Cheboygan who fixed things like that, but he has since retired for health reasons, so I had to call the DISH people.

After navigating past the recorded messages, I finally got to a human guy who obviously spoke English as a second language, as so many of the telephone people do nowadays.  He told me to try a few things, which I did after my wife helped me untangle the 50-foot cord on our phone to reach the computer room, which is on the other end of the house.  It was only later that we remembered we have another phone jack in that room as well as a spare telephone that we could have plugged into it.  (I understand that a certain amount of memory loss is normal at our age.) After all that, the guy agreed that my modem was probably dead, and scheduled an appointment for somebody to come over and replace it in a few days.

  The day before the appointed time, a different guy from DISH called and told me that they no longer work on VIASAT equipment, and that I need to call the VIASAT company instead.  I suspected this was some kind of scam, since I assumed that VIASAT was a competitor of DISH.  I found out later that, when DISH went into the internet business some years ago, they bought all their equipment from VIASAT, but I didn't know that at the time.  I then called the DISH people, found out that this guy was on the level, and that I indeed needed to call the VIASAT people.  It was late and I was tired by this time, so I gave up for the night and resolved to call VIASAT the very next day.   

---To Be Continued---