Satellite TV

I've never had Satellite TV. I guess it must be nice, in the right conditions. Apartment living is not exactly ideal for such a beast, I gather.

Our downstairs neighbors have Satellite TV. Everybody knows it, because of the extensive experimentation it took for them to get a signal.

We live in an apartment complex where there are many buildings. We face the back of this particular building. Boxing in our "back yard" are two other buildings. The effect from the sky is that these three buildings form a big triangle. They are all three stories tall, and our downstairs neighbors are at ground level.

They can't get a signal from their porch area. They dragged the dish out several feet into the yard (toward the center of our backyard triangle), and still couldn't get a signal. They got longer cables, and put the dish out about 30-40 feet into the yard. They got something at that point. From then on, all the adjustments were minor. For the next couple of hours the guy would come outside every 10-15 minutes to move the dish around some more, fine-tuning his signal. At one point, the dish's cable was perilously close to his charcoal grill.

While this was going on, my wife and I were sitting comfortably inside, watching our TV, and looking at this monkey through our window. We were wondering if he'd give up (he never did).

You know, I see something like that, and suddenly I don't feel bad about watching shows on a 15 year old TV.