HD - oh yeah - we got it

Our Dish HD Turbo 1000zx (or whatever) was installed today.

Cutting to the chase...Is it better?

Yeah, I guess. But it's just TV, so other than the fact that most channels now use of the full glorious 47" face of our Toshiba TV, it's still kinda lame if you ask me. Not quite sure what all the fuss is about.

The receiver is much better. The guide is better. The scrolling is better. The DVR hard drive is ginormous.

The installer was a complete, mouth-breathing moron. And there, dear friends, is the heart of the story.

First, he showed up and started asking where our "Comcast cable TV conduit box" was. Umm...we've lived in this house 10 years and it was built for us from mere sticks. We've never had Comcast. Any wiring dangling around the outside was put there by a Dish installer whose parole has probably been revoked by now. He seemed to think it was odd that we couldn't find this thing.

When my wife, who was supervising the first part of this operation, asked me about it, I had no idea what the heck he was talking about. By the time I raced home from work, she had the blueprints of the house spread out on the living room floor looking for this mystery box.

Turns out he was looking for something like this. More searching on the web would seem to indicate that this is not really a standard piece of equipment - Comcast or not.

Boy Tesla also had to ask my wife to lend him a screwdriver. That seems like something that someone whose job title is "installer" would have in his truck. Sigh.

OK, those of you who know me know that I don't like ladders. I always say that putting up my Christmas lights is one of the scariest things I do on purpose. As it turns out Jimmy Neutron here is also afraid of heights. He took one look at where the dish was going to be installed and said "Wow. That's high." No kidding dude. That's why I called someone else to do it.

Another weird thing is that he asked if we had an alarm system and he wanted to look for the distribution box in the master bedroom closet. It did concern us that maybe he was casing the joint. At least we know that if we secure our valuables with a screw or put them on the top shelf, there are probably safe from him.

I asked him a couple questions about the receiver, but that was a waste of time. I knew more about it from reading the blurb on the web than this guy did. And, with my 12 year old sitting on the couch, he demo'd the marvels of HD to me by turning to Jerry Springer during what looked like was going to be a particularly shocking revelation about what this wife found in her husband's cell phone.

By the time he left, I was beginning to wonder why I even own a TV.

I still think the guy installed some additional stuff on our roof (shown at left) that isn't on our plan. Oh well, maybe there is a special promotion on.

On the plus side, while he was here he did offer to sell us "rabbit ears" so we could get local channels without paying Dish for them. And an HDMI cable. I'm sure Dish would love his side businesses. Maybe if he didn't have a truck full of rabbit ears, he would have room for a screwdriver.