Whoosh!

What was that noise?

It must have been time flying past.

Wow.

Okay, so a lot has gone on in the past week or two. We got the new satellite equipment in for TBS, TNT, CNN, and Headline News in Marquette and Bentley, and Fox News Channel in Bentley.

Got ‘em installed.

Even bought a spare... which was a good thing, because one of them didn’t work at all. Then, another one (TNT in Bentley) “gave it up” less than 24 hours after we got them in. So, I’ll be back to replace that as soon as the vendor sends me a replacement unit.

Last week, I also switched Bentley Public Access Channel 2 to a new digital stream from News Radio 1330 KNSS. Sounds much better. Much better. Much. My next plan for this is an automatic switcher to fall-back to the off-air AM radio signal if the digital feed should happen to drop out.

I did a bit of work on the www.blueskycable.com web site this weekend, adding the channel lineups for both towns... and, true to my usual form, I wasn’t satisfied just to list the channels... no, I also built a table to show which package included each channel, and included links to the web site of each channel.

Also on the web site, a question from a customer prompted me to add a “Check E-Mail” link, allowing those who use a blueskycable.net or blueskycable.com address to check e-mail from anywhere... if you can remember “blueskycable.com,” then you can remember how to check e-mail remotely.

Ron continues to find and repair tiny defects in the outdoor feeder cable – mostly hair-line cracks that are the result of mechanical or thermal stress (translation: wind and heat) and replacing the defective section of line each time he finds one. This will all add up to a generally more reliable system, and specifically will improve some picture quality issues and Internet issues.

And, this past week I received the first of several shipments of items we will be using to further improve Internet performance. More about this as deployment time approaches.

I had my little girl with me this weekend, which makes traveling and working kind of tricky. The only time I can really get anything done is at nap time... at which time I, myself, am ready for a nap.

But, Lord willing, I plan to be in Bentley on 5/9 and Marquette on 5/16 for more testing, refining, and upgrades.