Ah.................satellite tv.

The wonders of modern technology. Who ever thought we'd be able to "pause" at commercials, make a seven course meal, mow the lawn, catch up on the phone with long lost Aunt Myrtle and come back not missing a single word of our program? No more missed punch lines or car chases or that final minute of a "who-done-it". I almost can't remember what it was like without it.

That is, until I WAS without it.

At first the signal kept cutting out for no reason. I went outside and checked for any blockages around my dish. Nope, nothing. Could it be my neighbor's tree? It HAD taken a growth spurt lately. Well,maybe,but who knew? I just threw up my hands and didn't think too much more about it because it finally stopped on it's own and went merrily about it's business, recording my shows and saving them for me so nicely. 

It lead me to believe,the little sneak.

But the next morning when I turned it on, I noticed that 40 hours of my programs were suddenly missing! All my reruns of Magnum P.I., Rockford Files, KNIGHT RIDER!! that I had so painstakingly set and recorded for weeks had gone up in smoke!

How dare the Dish do this to me, take my Simon & Simon's, Airwolf's and Incredible Hulk's that I was planning on "marathoning" in the future when I had some time to curl up with just me and my bag of pretzels! I kept staring at the menu, flipping back and forth, there had to be some sort of mistake.

Reboot!....That's IT!.....That's always the first thing the phone tech says to do when there's a problem,right? Right! Right!...Okay....okay......easy now.....just turn everything off....okay,there....got it unplugged.....now we'll just wait 15 seconds...that's right.....it'll all be fixed now...Okay....let's get it started up again.....there we go....there we go......

There we..........NO! 

30 more hours had vanished!! The DVR was making a meal out of my shows, gulping them down like it hadn't eaten for weeks.

Well,that was IT! Give me that phone,they're just going to get a call! 

They received 2 calls and still the only advice they gave me was to reboot. And nobody could seem to explain to me why this had happened. Just to make sure I "protected" my recordings from now on. 

After awhile I got over this disappointment but I never quite trusted it again. It did go back to being normal for a few days but then......

It started shaving minutes off the new shows I was trying to record! If it was an hour long show it would only record 33 minutes.

How would the Dish like it if I "shaved" a few dollars off their bill? 

I started missing my VCR at that moment. Ah.....the old days of that prehistoric technology. When you couldn't watch any other show but what was on when you were recording something.

But so what? At least if I had been "VCR'ing" instead of "DVR'ing", I could be watching KITT turbo boosting right now or the Hulk bursting out of his shirt.

If things ain't broke,don't fix 'em!

Finally the dish techs had to be summoned. I was no longer getting any signal at all.

Come to find out it's not just my kitty who has "eye" problems, my Dish does too! They told me it's eyes went bad! And part of the problem WAS the neighbor's tree so they moved the whole thing to the other side of the house. So far,it's been "seeing" better over there.

Now I'm back to recording again. I'm still a little leery of it, it let me down and it's going to have to build my trust back up. DVR doesn't know it but I've kind of fallen out of love with him.

VCR is back in town and wooing me now,and he can "see" just fine whereever he is!!