Green light
So bright
First thing I want in sight
I wish I may, I wish I might
Have it glow again tonight.

I wished with all my heart, clicked my heals together, squeezed my eyes tight then opened them again. Over and over. Aaaand…nothing. I didn’t bother bundling up out on the porch to star gaze into the murky, still-winter dusk. Or even peer out the front window where my “forever Christmas” LED light display brightened up the white birches and my mood until it got buried in a four-foot drift three months ago. Nope, I was holed up in my living room, staring at my DirecTV Genie 2 receiver, hoping against hope that the damn status light would go green.

But, alas, my wish was not to be. No way, no how. Genie had gone back in her bottle and taken her two little sisters—downstairs Mini and bedroom Mini—along with her. And with no fairy godmother or Jiminy Cricket coming to restore my once magical whole-home DVR satellite television, I had no choice but to wait for the next available service tech to show up and rescue me.

“Remember when just being up here in this little cabin was the fantasy? When camp TV meant watching the wood stove or the fire pit and you liked it?” I said to myself, sounding eerily like my father. “Turn that damn thing off and go outside!” he’d bellow if he came home and found me binge watching game shows during summer vacation. “But it’s not summer,” I said to my lifeless screen and the surrounding darkness. “Not even close.” It’s final episodes till fall season! Time to wait out the good weather watching The Good Doctor!

But I couldn’t. Not unless I wanted to stream it off the internet and watch my Verizon Home Fusion data overage surge through the roof. And worst of all, I couldn’t record it. That’s what DVR was for until Genie turned into a gremlin.

For a whole year, I hadn’t even cared what my Genie 2 setup looked like. Didn’t know if its lights were twinkling a certain color, or what lights it even had. So enraptured was I with whatever wizardry the DirecTV guy had performed, I never really checked out what was behind my magic wall of endless programs coming out of the northern sky. Oh, I knew there was a free equipment upgrade back there. And, as a retired technical writer, I knew it wasn’t just running on fairy dust. But why poke around with optimal performance, with what was finally letting me be one of the cool kids who could record stuff while watching other stuff—in two different places, fast-forwarding and pausing every riveting moment in sync with my sleep cycles and biological urges?

And then it happened—the fate my mother-in-law warned about when acquiring anything computerized, digitized, or smarter than a toaster oven. It “all went at once.” And being the hapless dummy holding the control “clicker,” I was screwed, stranded up High Tech Creek without a paddle. Had I not given complete control over to them thinking machines, I would have at least been able to tweak my rabbit ear antennae, replace a blown tube, or dial up a working channel. Instead, there I was, numb as a plugged owl, gaping at a troubleshooting screen in place of my prime time lineup. “Error 775—No dish communication,” it said above a bunch of numbered steps with circles and arrows pointing to plugs and parts I never recalled having before.

My first fix-it step was to sound the alarm to Tom: “There’s snow on the dish! Can you please go scoop it off?” It being a Monday (AKA “those hospital shows you watch” night) and not a Wednesday (AKA “I’m really looking forward to Survivor” night), he might have been a bit more enthusiastic about putting on his boots to trudge out and inspect the situation. But he did as asked, verifying there were “no visible obstructions.” (Believe it or not, we hadn’t just experienced a dish obliterating snow storm. That happened when we had the flu. And I think it was a Wednesday, so Tom powered through like one of those “gotta get the job done” DayQuil commercials.)

A few hours and a bunch of unplugging and re-plugging later, I needed re-verification. “Are you sure there’s nothing blocking the dish and the cables?” I asked, until I got “the look” warning me to stop. “Sure, there’s a crap ton of snow over the dirt that’s burying the underground cable coming toward the house,” he seemed to say. “And a whole mountain of snow blocking me from actually seeing what’s going on when the cable comes from there into the house.”

So I was left to my own devices. Literally. I hauled the Genie 2 receiver, the downstairs Mini, the power adapters, and the cluster snarl of connection cords out onto the rug for closer inspection. “No fairy dust happening here,” I said, “But would ya look at this house dust!” I did what any self-respecting tech savvy girl would do when crawling around behind her home/office componentry. I grabbed a rag and dusted it off. Then, lest that be my only sense of do-it-myself accomplishment with the current procedure, I unplugged everything, untangled it and laid it out in a pattern I thought I could reverse. Next, I plugged it all back in again, checked that each thingum’s power light was green, and waited.

“Green light…so bright…” I whispered, watching the newly-discovered Genie 2 status light. Green is good. Green is good. So’s flashing green, I reminded myself. It means there’s a ghost of a chance you’ll get solid green. Silent drum roll. Inhale and hold. Aaaand…nada. Solid yellow. Never a mellow color when it comes to operational status. As a documentation specialist for many years and many “black boxes,” I’d written my share of front-panel status light descriptions. And I sure didn’t need a how-to guide for interpretation. Basically, flashing green to flashing yellow means “Go get a cup of coffee, put in a load of wash…and hope for the best.” And when you come back and see solid yellow? That’s better than a red light which, of course, stands for stopped dead. But stuck on yellow means “I thought I could, until I churned and burned and decided I couldn’t.” My cue to get up off my aching knees and call DirecTV support.

I did learn a couple things on the phone with tech support. That a 775 error message is not caused by snow, rain, or other flying debris landing on the dish. “That’s a 771 error,” the rep said, leaving me wondering just how infinitesimal the list of possible problems could be. I then learned that being walked through the disconnecting and re-connecting procedure again via speaker phone and an exotic accent yielded the same grey screen and no-go status light. And that, surprise…surprise…I needed an onsite service technician.

While I was on the phone, though, did I also know I qualified for some even better DirecTV upgrades? Yup, I figured as much, and preceded to “no thank you” my way through the latest up-sell offers. (As a loyal longtime customer, I’ve also learned that amassing every DirecTV programming “deal” onto my bill is kinda like leaving an old shed unattended during a Rangeley winter. You know snow and ice keeps piling up on it, that the roof is sagging under the pressure. And if you don’t shovel a few layers off now and again…boom…it’s just too much and you need to start from the ground up.)

Nope, I just wanted to resume my status quo, hopefully before I spent any more prime time nights in the dark. Doug, my whole-home service technician seemed tentative but upbeat when he arrived. “Oh, jeez, you’ve got one of those!” he said when he spotted my Genie 2 receiver. “That model was installed for free last year for a reason. But, if it hasn’t acted up until now, maybe you’re one of the lucky customers.” He had an unflappable Foghorn Leghorn voice that seemed like it could recharge anything within range.

By the time Doug was outside getting snow in his boots and wind in his face checking my equipment with his, my hopes were growing dim. “No more magic from this Genie,” I thought. Then suddenly…zip-a-dee-do-dah… there was my status light glowing green and my TV lighting up my living space!

The problem, Doug reported, was up on the garage roof about as close to the dish as possible without being in the dish itself and, therefore, a 771 problem versus a 775 problem. The initial cable was hand tight but not wrench tight. “So I gave it a couple good cranks and there ya go!”

“But couldn’t it loosen up in the future and all go at once again?” I wondered. “Nope,” Doug said. And then he used the old tactic I’d come to recognize as the service tech’s version of “paying it forward.” Doug blamed it backward. “The previous installer shoulda wrenched it down, but he just fingered it in place and probably forgot to recheck his work. I’m surprised it held for a year.” You’ll never see it on the grey screen of death as one of the official DirecTV errors. But other than Acts of God, apparently most loss of connectivity is caused by your previous installer being a Mickey Mouse.

Doug was my hero, I had to admit. I was delighted that I could put my Genie 2 back
behind the TV to secretly work wonders without another thought. And I was in the process of doing so when…oh noooo…whatever daytime drama had been playing suddenly switched to a grey screen. “Error 775—No dish communication,” it read. What the….? Lucky, troubleshooting the cause required only an instant of hunching on the floor in repeat status check mode. The cause was me. I’d shoved the receiver just a bit too hard into the corner and unplugged the damn thing! A classic PEBKAC error, as we used to say in the business. You won’t see that on any official self-help screen either, because it stands for Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair. Meaning the equipment is fine but the customer sitting at her computer desk is a complete doofus. Or, in my case, PEBGAC (Problem Exists Between Genie and Couch). But, no need for another support call and promises of even more magic than I could handle upta camp. I plugged it back in all by myself just in time for Survivor. Zip-a-dee-YAY!

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For more “Camp Connectivity,” see:

• I dream of Genies (part one)
• Codifying my blessings
• Directionless TV