TV woes...take a turn

Winter has returned. We had snow and sub-zero temperatures for the first time in a couple of weeks. The wind blew hard, and cold.

I went out in the morning for a fast walk, along with Fred Douglass. His long sojourn in the British Isles is finally over. He has returned to America a free man - friends in the British abolition movement arranged to buy his freedom. 

Although he was homesick for the last half of the UK trip, he doesn't end up spending much time with Anna and the children before he heads out on the speaking circuit again. Douglass has become more radical during his two years away, more critical of the U.S., less tractable to management by the American Anti-Slavery Society. He's increasingly his own man.

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This morning, I started reading The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, about new science around how trees experience their lives. The sub-title: What They Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries From A Secret World.

There's some pretty amazing stuff so far. I'm thinking I need to start a new feature: Amusing/Amazing Tree Facts...

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I went out again briefly this afternoon, mostly to run errands, but I took my camera and shot some more around downtown, including a double-exposure image that I think shows the possibilities of this technique.

Back of provincial government/Bell building

North east corner of Talbot and Dundas streets: reflections

Sculpture behind provincial government/Bell building - double exposure

Talbot and Fullarton streets: reflections

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The TV-woes saga has a surprise ending.

It all started when we noticed a few days ago that we were getting no audio from our Bell Satellite TV receiver, only video. The Apple TV we use for streaming services still worked fine, so it wasn't anything to do with the TV. A Bell tech support agent concluded that the fault was with the receiver. It would need to be replaced, he said.

At one point, I actually placed an order for a new $500 receiver. Luckily, on further reflection, I cancelled it. We had an older receiver kicking around. I would set it up in place of the supposedly defective one.  But I couldn't get it to work either - at all. 

That got me on the phone with Bell tech support again - for about the fifth time since this started. Out of that call, it was decided that Bell would provide a free house call by a technician to help get the old receiver set up. The call was scheduled for tomorrow, Good Friday, and confirmed by email. I put everything back the way it had been before the original problems started.

Today, I turned the TV on, selecting the Bell receiver as the input, and was gobsmacked to hear sound blasting out of its speaker. What the...?!

There could be a few different explanations for the miraculous recovery of this receiver that was supposed to be toast. 

We had high winds just before the problem surfaced. High winds can sometimes knock the satellite dish on our building's roof (which is shared by all Bell subscribers in the building) slightly out of alignment. The odd time this has happened in the past, the symptom has been the picture breaking up. But could it in this case have caused our no-audio problem?

If so, though, what happened to fix it? 

One possibility is that somebody else in the building complained about the same problem, got entirely different tech support people who came to different conclusions, and ordered a technician out, who came and re-aimed the satellite dish. At Bell, as in most big bureaucracies, the right hand rarely knows what the left is doing, so no surprise if its tech support department was unaware of two different calls about the same problem. 

Another possibility: we've also had high winds today. Could they have knocked the satellite dish back into alignment?

Or it could be some completely other explanation that will remain a mystery until the end of time. We don't care. As we enter a new lockdown, the TV is working. 

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I've also been continuing today with renovating pictures from our 2016 winter away. We're still in Valencia, enjoying watching preparations for Fallas, especially in Ruzafa where some of the biggest tableaus, sponsored by beer companies, are built.