Satellite Sam...

Sam’s resume boast that he is a satellite engineer, but his home experience says otherwise. Last week Sam decided that he could no longer live without football; therefore we would be getting AFN, Armed Forces Network, that weekend. We went down to the base to buy the decoder box, after some severe sticker price shock, we walked out of the BX with the AFN box and a web address with instructions on how to hook it up. We were very confident that the satellite dish on top of our 3 story house would be facing the right way and we would be watching T.V. in no time, after all our neighbors had all informed us that an American family had lived here prior to us. We soon found out that the dish was in fact positioned wrong; Sam assured me that this was no big deal for a satellite expert like himself. He used some sort of sliding chart that I am certain has never had a use before despite the fact that we have been moving it around the country for years, then climbed out of Laura’s window and scrambled up to the peak of the roof. After about an hour of me relaying the signal strength via cell phone to Sam on the roof we finally achieved a lock on a signal. Already just a few minutes after Sam had clambered back inside the window the seven AFN channels started coming in, along with our new channels came a knock at the door. The German neighbors eighteen year old son was at the door, when Sam answered he asked “Do you know about satellites?” Sam was excited, maybe he was spotted up on the roof fixing our satellite and now the neighbors needed some advice, Sam could finally apply his work to home life. The boy next door then asked in broken English if Sam was up on the roof, apparently Sam had moved a shared satellite dish away from the German T.V. satellite. After it was confirmed that the dish, that is anchored to our roof was indeed a shared dish, Sam climbed back out the window and pointed it back toward the German satellite. As you can imagine this put Sam in a sour mood come Sunday. Our next move needed to be decided we could return the expensive decoder box and go without T.V. including Sam’s precious football, I did not think that this option would stick considering Sam’s need for a football fix had gotten so bad he was willing to attend a pee wee game. The next choice was buy a new dish and find a way to anchor it on the house or roof without messing up the German’s T.V. reception, I was not a fan of this second option. Later after some investigation a satellite dish on a tripod stand was spotted in the American neighbor’s lawn. Sam rush the two steps next door and rang the bell after explaining it was decided Sam would rig two hook ups from the dish and use his acquired experience to point the dish in the proper direction, therefore both house could enjoy AFN.