The cold is messing up my DirecTV

At least, that's the only conclusion I've come to.

Remember a week or two ago when we had several inches of snow, then a cold snap? The snow caused a bit of fuzz on my TV picture -- annoying, but I'm used to it. The next day, though, when the temperature dropped to -17 or so, my local channels didn't come in DirecTV at all. All the others did, but not the locals -- which is particularly annoying, since about 90% of my TV watching is on the local network channels.

Two days and a reboot later (there had been several other reboots that didn't help in the interim), the local channels were back.

Now, during the current cold snap, my local channels have gone away again. If they come back when it warms up again, I'm going to count that as a confirmed theory, even though there are only two data points. Not that it gives me any idea what to do about it, or why the cold is doing that, or why it's only the local channels.

In the meantime, I don't suppose putting a space heater on my roof near the satellite dish would be a good idea, on several counts -- not the least of which is that I don't own.

Anyone have any other suggestions? Other than Bittorrent, that is, which is my current workaround.

Alea jacta est, part 2

It really was only yesterday that I called Rick Charmoli and told him to go ahead. We arranged that I would get everything out of the living room over the weekend, and then he would start work on Monday. The denizens of Blaisdell Poly were going to help me move all the furniture and such over the weekend.

But I guess Rick couldn't stand the idea of an idle day, because he called around noon to say he'd picked up the wood and he had his assistant in tow, and could they come over today instead? I told him that the living room was full of stuff, and he said that he and his assistant would take care of that. And sure enough, they did. Everything is now piled either in the dining room or upstairs. They are currently ripping out the carpet. The rest of the plan for today is to take out the carpet, the padding, and the underflooring. I'm not sure if they're going to lay the foundation (or whatever it is) today or tomorrow, but things are proceedingly decidedly apace. Almost scarily so, in fact.

Alas, most of my knitting supplies got buried before I thought to pull them out, so I may be craftless for the duration, as well as TV-less.

But it's going to be a floor! And soon!