Things started going downhill as soon as we began setting up. I plugged in the electricity and things started going downhill. The electricity began surging and cutting off and back on and Stella came out to tell me about it. She immediately turned the air conditioners off and switched the fridge to propane so they wouldn't be damaged. I told one of the park workers about our problem and she called the office to let them know. Soon a young man came by but went to the wrong site. The lady worker called him to show him where he needed to be and he came over and said he would call his boss because he didn't work on electricity problems.
It was very hot with no a/c, so we took out some lawn chairs and sat down in the shade. It wasn't too bad in the shade with some breezes and we were kind of enjoying it. The other guys showed up and determined that it was a bad electric plug that was causing the problems but said we could plug into the 30 amp side, which gave us enough service to run one air conditioner and the fridge, but we kept it on propane, just in case. About three hours later, the power went out again, but this time it was the guys back working on the plug. No notice, they just went to work...
It wasn't long before they were through with their work and we were back in business with 50 amp electric service and both air conditioners pumping out cool air! Whoopee!
Then I got started setting up the television. The TV worked fine but the Carryout antenna wouldn't do anything. Rats... I soon determined that the antenna wasn't getting power to operate and that the 110 volt-12 volt converter that is needed to supply power to the antenna wasn't working. The antenna couldn't search for the satellites, so we were dead in the water for television, or at least satellite television. After taking a break to eat supper, our friend Dave came over to see if we needed help, so we decided to go to Wal Mart and several other stores trying to find a converter with no luck. We finally gave up and came back home and used the rooftop antenna to pick up local TV channels for the night.
This morning we started out early with finding a converter and located one at the Love's Truck stop. Apparently truckers use these for hooking up CB radios and other electronics in their trucks. Hooray! We hurried back home and I went to work getting everything hooked up. The converter worked fine but now we found another problem. The Dish Network control box was dead, so we still don't have any TV.
I called Dish Network and learned that I can buy another box from them but it will take a week or so to receive it. Not good! We tried calling local Dish retailers but had no luck getting through to them. They either didn't answer the phone or it went directly to Dish Network. We finally decided to drive over to Tyler to find one of their stores and buy what we needed. We got addresses for several of their stores off the Internet and off we went. The first store that we went to was now a car repair shop but along the way, we saw another store that wasn't even listed. We went back there and luckily the owner had just returned from service calls. He had a new box that he had just activated, so we were in business, so we thought...
We returned home and got everything plugged in and working. Still couldn't get a signal!I tried everything I knew to get things to work. No joy. By now, several other rally-goers had arrived and we decided to go for a swim in the pool. Mike and Peg had fixed some jalapeno "poppers" so we went over to eat with our friends. After awhile I came back home and again started working on the TV. Thats when I discovered that the guy in Tyler had programmed the Dish box with the wrong satellites. I called Dish Network to see if they could help but they just switched me to others for help or blamed my Carryout antenna so I just gave up and hooked up to the crappy park cable. I am going to a concealed handgun class tomorrow which will be all day long, but Stella will call the guy in Tyler to find out what he wants to do.
I'll keep you posted on our progress. Sorry for the long rant.
So long.
1 comment:
Sorry to hear, Jay! Went to Terrell last weekend (did not take our satellite) and when we returned, our receiver box has no power. Took a few calls to Dish but a new one has been shipped.
Post a Comment