1150. "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" and "Storm of the Century" by Stephen King -- 5 Stars

 I just finished rereading both The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and Storm of the Century by Stephen King

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and Storm: A story about a little girls who gets lost in the forest and her scary (of course Stephen King version) experiences over a week long. Unlike other King novel, the main character is about all their is and the adventure was particularly limited to the forest trek. But his writing is awesome enough to carry your interest through the scary sounds and eyes of an unknown. Where does Tim Gordon, closing pitcher on the Boston Redsox back in the day, fit in. Her radio provided broadcasts of the dames that kept her going. She experiences the food and water shortages, sickness, mental lapses, etc. until she runs into a man of her dreams to rescue her and save her from the mysterious unknown in the forest. This is a very satisfying, simple, short, easy to read novella. Well worth your time.

Storm of the Century: I forgot about the structure of this book and it took me a few pages to get in sync. It is not a novel written in story mode. Had it been, this book would have be 3-4 times longer I'm sure. It is a movie Script format, i.e., explain the scene you would see on the movie screen, then give the dialogue of the people speaking. You get used to this and can move quite rapidly through the book. You can also view the movie (3 episodes on HULU at the moment). Basically, it takes place on an island off Maine where inhabitants are few and have common bonds. A mysterious individual shows up and kills an old woman rather nastily. Who is this, Andre? It won’t take you long to assume he is a typical Stephen King entity with powers way beyond normal. Murders continue even when he is locked up with his cane with wolf head. But somehow the wolf head cane causes many more murders and weird happenings. Excellently told, Stephen’s script was obviously adopted and a movie produced. Go find out the details.

- Rich

1149. Dish Problem Hopper periodically shuts off by itself FIXED

If you remember, I had a Hopper, FOUR different ones now, that would shut down while watching active program or a DVR recording. Quick resolution was hit the SAT button on remote to get back.

After 17 technicians, 1 local one, 3 supervisors, Dish wrote it off as SOFTWARE issue. This was one possbility since 4 different Hoppers fixed it. Not one rep would do troubleshooting and instead looked at their displays, typed in keywords, and hope something came up to recommend customer to TRY!

I resolved the issue by testing 3 different surge protectors (failed), swithcin wall receptacles entirely (failed) then finally asking Dish whether power rant to the external dish itself. Answer was NO. Well, it does! A low voltage, something 30v, is passed back through the coax FROM the receiver to the LNB on the external dish. After a lot of searches I found one article that said it did AND that if disrupted it will shut down receiver. BINGO. I looked the the externally mounter dish on my roof and the coax from the LNG to the house and receiver was swining wildly in the stead 0-25 mph winds of Amarillo. No problem until gusts above 30. I checked history of winds on weatherunderground site and it wrote the dates down tsince December when this occurrene was experienced. Lo and Bhold EVERY day I reported the issue to Dish! Apparently, they fasten the coax at initial install, by the PLASTIC fasteners complete deteriorated into pieces and the coax was swinging in the wind causing the disruptions and receiver shutdown. One would think the local technician would have checked everything instead of just swapping Hoppers again ! Wrong. 

This is so common with ALL technical customer service phone reps who get paid NOT to spend more than 30 minutes on the phone and to ONLY look up possibly helpful information on their displays. Then you get to reexplain the problem to each and every other rep you get since you can NEVER GET BACK to the initial one. How things have changed since I did my technical work 25 years ago! I never passed it off and always did actual troubleshooting and ALWAYS fixed the problem withing 1-3 days. Over 2-3 months I have been reporting this particular problem to DISH! Inexcusable!

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1/23/2023 After over a week without an incident, issues began again on 1/21. First double recordings of a program, then pixel scrambling, then not recording even when told successfully doing so, then recorind the next show instead of current one. These happened 1/21 and 1/22. On 1/23 OFF goes the hopper when I was watching a DVR resorcing! So much for the wind theory that corresponded every other time unless something else is loose. I went out and shook the cable and physical dish while the wife watch an active program. No interference at all! For the 2 week good period I had both the Hopper plugged directly into the wall receptacle and then off another wall receptacle on a different circuit. Had no problems, switched back on 19th and encounterd the powwer off on the 23rd. It seems hopeless! I am back on the different circuit at the moment. If it fails there, then it is a software error as initially suggested! But, who else is experiencing this?

1148. "Malibu Burning" by Lee Goldberg -- 5 Stars

 

Malibu Burning  by Lee Goldberg -- 5 Stars

Publisher:  Thomas & Mercer

ISBN: 9781662500671

 

Like all of Lee Goldberg’s books, this one is fast paced, inventive, and twisty. The dialogue between the two arson investigators is witty.  Good people and bad people get what they deserve. It is an overall well told story and was fun to read.

 

Reviewer: Nancy

1147. Dish TV now sucks!

Forget getting good technical service with Dish TV

Back in the old days when the V722 receiver worked errorlessly as did older ones, Dish couldn't be beat -- a solit 5-Star company. I am now on my 25th year with them, but when I had to replace the V722 with a Hopper and an OTA adapter the bottom fell out. Constant problems which woudn't be a problem except the technicians can't even follow the script in front of them let alone fix anything!

I'll just comment on the last 10+ issues since October 1, 2022. Now, I say 10+ issues, but multiple that by 2-3 times and 15x for the current bugger and you'll see that I have been ever in firefighting mode.

Memory Corruption Issues: The first Hopper needed an OTA adapter to pull in Antenna channels. It also offfered for the first time the capability to use the Prime Video (Amazon) APP via the Dish receiver. Those, along with the use of TV live streaming and DVR recording, tripped over each other. What I saw on large computer operating systems resurfaces here with corruption of another tasks memory. We even had to create a randome task to "garbege collect" the fragments of memory use never properly deleted and freed up for anothers use.    

Well, Dish has no clue what I'm talking about. In ma case every time I used the Prime Video APP it took less than 3-4 days before some catastrophic behavior occurred causing a reboot of the receiver. So, instead of using the APP I switched my input mode to TV and went to the FireTV directly to use Prime Video. Bingo, problems reduced instantly by 70-80%! Dish technicians can't understand this and the probelm still exists. This problem began for me on FIRST Hopper back in 2020. 

Anyway, at least 20% of the problems still existed thanks now to either the OTA (unknown where its driver was written), or the DVR or both running together, DVR memory will get clobbered OR OTA menory will get clobbered.  Example are: 1) black screen on playback of recording freezes everything->need to reboot, 2) random 2-5 second scrambling on recording (OTA channel OR satellite cchannel), 3) automatically and randomly reboots itself, 4) double recordings of programs (fist for a minute, then a second for actual program), 5) recording a active program sometimes stops the recording itself, 6) sometimes you get the "recording" indicator only to find out nothing recorded, 7) sometimes when a active program is recording and you try to stop it you can't and you can't delete it. It hangs around in DVR list forever until reboot, 8)while watching a program recorded from OTA channel and "Guide or Troubleshoot" buttons flash up, 9) same message pops up more frequebtly as time passes when you try to get to an OTA channel (stays for about 5-7 seconds before it realizes the channel is at 100% and then connects (this causes some of the previous problems)

I've been through 3 Hopper replacements so far to this point.

Add 2 more for folowing that I diagnosed as a Software Issue, but after 15+ calls to technicians, 3 to supervisors, and one local technician visit, only the local technician could understand that it had to be a software issue too! Here's what I can expect each each day until the Dish Softwher Engineers come up with a solution for problems 10 & 11 (Started around Septemper 2020):
10) Hopper powers off by itself and screen saver screen appears. This happens both when watch a live program OR playback of a DVR recording
11) Same issue as 9, but it then begins to download the TV Guide
12) No recordings can be played. Each oneplayed gives you a black screen...reboot required. This is same problem as previous hoppers
13. Tried to do Check Status under Diagnostics and it looped. COuld not get out of it, nor send status. Also could not call using the phone number in my profile while in thes state. Could call Dish with my cell phone though. Issue # 10 has ocurred 15 times since 12/23 (now 1/6) and each phone agent gave me a different "solution" that didn't work. My entire settings have been changed multiple times, at least 15 reboots dodne, plus two omre Hoppers replaced previous ones. btw, I am finally on a NEW Hopper, nont a remanfactured one like the previous one.
Where do I stand? The supervior I talked to last evening gave me the line that they already know about this problem and their software engineers are working on it. Should I applause? I TOLD THEM THE ISSUE back in October 2022 and the cause (Software)! Out of characters for this review shortly. Bottom line, do NOT go with DISH until they turn around. Look at reviews since Hoppers came out!!!!! And, they are getting WORSE!

Issues 12 & 13 have not been addressed by them, but they have been notified.