Satellite Dish Goatee

Today, I am posting about a phenomenon of satellite dishes. in the top picture, you see the ice formed at the bottom lip of the dish. This is caused by heaters on the inside of the skin on the dish to melt snow. With the sub-zero temps, the snow melts from the dish, but freezes before it hits the ground. the second picture is a closer up view, and the last is a view from the back side of the dish and goatee. Stay Warm!

My life Flashes Before my Eyes

i should not be the one to harp about bad winter drivers. On Monday this week, I went to Jobeth and Brads house for a visit. And as the old saying goes, you should never take your eyes off of the road. I went to change the CD I was playing and when I looked up, here is the sight i was greeted by. A Freightliner coming right at me! It was on the wrong side of the divided highway! Yikes! You can see on the left side of the picture, I-90 westbound had two semi's already coming at me.

Let me tell you, my life was not exciting. So not exciting in fact, if you think about it, I had time enough even to pull my camera out of my pocket, aim it out the windshield, and take this picture, and still have enough time to put it back in my pocket before I had to swerve around this semi. What you cannot see, is that this semi was being towed, and it is in the correct direction of travel. As always though, it is a good wake up. Now that I have seen my life, I had better do something exciting so that the next time it flashes before my eyes, it will be something with a sequel worth watching. LOL, hope this gave you a smile as it did me when I took the picture

Tech Support Yeah Right!

Sunday night 12/21/08 We experienced A real cold snap. Temps went down to single digits. After I got home, power cam back up and I found out that I had lost both cable and internet. Called my supplier whom I will leave nameless right now, but not blameless. Hear that RR? Anyway, I digress. Called them up to report loss of cable. Once they determined what account I was speaking of, ( a story in itself) The agreed that there is an outage in my area, and they have A tech ( a, one, singular) working in the area, and will get to it ASAP. Hear that one before have you? Well, was already after 1 AM so i called it a night. next morning, no cable. Go figure!

So, called once again, and of course, all you get is the automated answering service. Press 1 for tech support etc. etc. Once I press 1, the phone disconnects. Tried and tried and tried again with same results. Well, tried cable at around noon, when I got home from errands, and woo hoo, had cable. Alas, still no internet. So, near 2 PM called the dreaded 877 number again, and went to #1 for tech support, and #1 again for automated help where comp talks to you,and you answer after you do what it asks to reboot. Even went as far as being instructed to go thru as far as Command Prompt. I know, Ree, all you hear is Blah Blah Blah, but stick with me. After all that failed, all told about 10 minutes of this, I got a real honest to god person. They went thru the whole script again, word for word with the computer generated one. When that failed, I got switched to the dreaded further "TECH SUPPORT" Now, am connected to a person half way around the world, who has barely passable English.

Now I am in a world of deep doo doo. After repeated failed attempts of them trying to fix it from their end, and with me seeing absolutely no change on my modem, I again remind them that this is the Erie account and not the Ohio account. Oh, Did not see that! Was their response. Sorry Ron, Ree, and Phil if you got interrupted Monday afternoon. 38:53 minutes into the call, eating up the cell minutes, my phone died due to lack of battery power. If I could have reached out to touch someone, I would have throttled them at this point! I gave up for the day just to calm down and regroup.

Bit the bullet once again and made the dreaded call again, and was put on hold for 12 minutes the first time, and hung up with out getting to a live person. Called back again, atleast this was after 9:01 PM so was on free time for the phone. Went thru live operator number 1 again with no positive results, and they said with their syrupy joyful tone thanking me for being a proud customer of their service again, before they transferred me around the world again. After hurdling the language barrier once again, we finally got it up and running. Fingers crossed this never happens again. I am just waiting now for their call back to see how stellar their rr tech service is. They so seem to want to be praised! My personal opinion right now is that they are knuckle draggers. Their arms are so long from patting themselves on the back congratulating themselves on how great their service is, is how I feel they earned the nic of knuckle draggers.

Thanks for taking the time to read my rant and raves

Careful In Winter Driving Safety Tips

Here are some things not to do with winter driving. The car on the right was tail gating too closely to a semi. As you can see, he kissed the rear end rather hard. I'll wager he gave a big Homer Simpson, DOH!" when that happened. I'd assume the semi never even knew that it had been kissed from behind. Do not take your eyes off of the road. Pay attention to where you are at all times. Here, someone had crossed the center-line of the road, crossed someones driveway and is now straddling a ditch. Good Idea! Do not drive yourself home. get some one to pick you up. No apparent damage other than the car is ditched. I have been saving these to add on here all at one time. I was going to come up with some witty caption, but I guess the pictures say more than I ever could.

Change Of Seasons, A Comparison

Not much new has been going on with me. Just have had a run of bad luck lately with the weather. It seems as though each time I work I get snowed upon. Last Sunday we had a Lake Effect snow, and I had to dig out my car before I could even get in it. I was off until Thursday, and again a Lake Effect hit us again both on Thursday and Friday. Looking at this snow fall, I went retro in my mind. Looking back at some photos I just took a month ago, It is hard to believe how much change came about in such a small amount of time. Here is a photo I took in October.

For comparison, the next one is one I took on 11/21/08 on my way into work. Both are taken from almost the same spot. All leaves are gone, and snow covers all.





The last will show that even when winter hits, there still can be beauty in White.

First Snowfall

This morning, Thursday was our first real snowfall. Although not much was visible in town, when I went outside to find slush on my windshield. In town, Nothing to speak of on the ground. You had to really look in the grass to see the snow until the sun comes out. I was on the highway all the way into NY state up on I-90, but no snow.

As it go to be time to go to work, and I was travelling West on Robison Rd, there was snow covering the whole grass. I got to work, and it was almost up to 50, and snow was melting, but, I can say that we had snow. This is first claim from my family. I know that Meadville got it worse, but I posted first. lol

First Scraping

This morning 10/19/08 was our first frost in the city. When I went outside at ten minutes to 8 this morning, I saw frost on my windshield. It was listed as 34 degrees. So, I went in and turned on the car, and started the defrosters. It sure is a sign that fall has arrived. The trees are now past thier prime for color changing, and the fish are coming upstream to spawn. Brrr, first clue this morning was inside of house temperature was only 59 degrees. No wonder I was so far under my blankets.

Rather than create another blog, I will just change the subject but still add here. Another era is coming to a close. Since we have had trouble at work with our antenna for broadcasting, we have been on reduced power. We were no longer broadcasting digital, and only were getting our programs out over cable television. Well, the repairs are in progress, and the damage was worse that at first expected. We do have a temporary antenna on our tower, and it is about half way up our mast. Although we are giving it full power, we are not broadcasting at full power. We are below 40%. We are back to digital and cable, but, not analog. The complete repairs will take approx two more months to complete. Since this now brings us so close to February, we have applied with the FCC to allow us to discontinue analog broadcasting.

That means that you will need those digital converter boxes or cable or have a television with digital reception tuners, you will no longer see us with the old TV sets with rabbit ears. We will be shutting down our analog transmitters for the last time sometime next week.