Trouble in the man cave

As if weathering the current shitstorm hitting planet Earth were not enough, and by that I mean being cooped up in the house with my crazy family, a dog that whines for a walk every five minutes, and getting stiffed for a freelance gig I completed way back in January, were not enough, the gods have decided to hurl one more torrent of wet sloppy excrement my way.

The TV in my man cave, my sanctuary, my escape hatch, is not getting a satellite signal. Instead I have the dreaded 771 - Signal Loss message beaming across an all black screen, tormenting me with a loading bar that promises progress, but does not deliver.

Worse yet, the scoundrels at AT&T, they of the billion dollar profit and the billion dollar bailout of our tax dollars, have some handy dandy do it yourself fix it solutions for me to try at my convenience.

As it turns out I have nothing but time on my hands.

So I set out to reconfibulate the flick flacks, calibrate the voltage and ohm/wattage ratio and readjust the azimuth setting so that it was in perfect alignment with DTV Sat.6831K/#4B

The first suggestion was to make sure the satellite dish bolted to my roof was not obstructed or damaged in any way. I took a hard pass on this. I have a two story house and have long since abandoned the idea of climbing around on top of the slippery asphalt shingle roof. The way 2020, and for the matter the past 4 years, have been going, it's a sure bet I would have lost my footing and fell face first into the compost bin.

The second suggestion was to disconnect all the line ins and line outs. Then reconnect them making sure the cables were firmly inserted in place. This is no small task as the receiver for my my man cave sits hidden in a closet so that the TV mounted on the wall has that nice clean, well art directed look.

Furthermore, the light in the closet does not work. And has not worked for 15 years. It's an old fashioned chain pull contraption and as my luck would have it, the chain no longer pulls.

Nevertheless, thanks to the flashlight on my iPhone I was able to sort past the flannel shirts and winter coats that are gathering dust, and manhandle the receiver box until all the connections had been sufficiently tightened. Leaving the fingertips on my thumb and forefinger thoroughly calloused.

And guess what?

Nothing.

They even suggested that I hit the channel button up twice followed immediately by hitting the channel button twice down. I did that for about an hour and then the callous on my thumb burst open.

Finally, I reached their last suggestion, the one that applies to all of today's electronic wizardry: I unplugged the receiver box, waited 30 seconds and plugged it back in.

And it worked.

At least it worked yesterday. Today the 771 signal is back. And my starting/restarting the receiver has not produced yesterday's winning results.

This year sucks. Yugely.