Aaaaaargh!

Sorry, frustrating week.

Today's fun comes in the form of problems with my Sky service. It's been a while since I've had those to deal with.

Anyway, on Sunday I noted that one of the two recordings I had set to run wasn't working. And, in fact, the only channel I could receive was the one that was recording.

Naturally, this suggested to me that I should check the two inputs from the satellite dish. After all, the box was clearly working, but one of the two clearly wasn't, causing the system to use the other exclusively. Isn't it amazing, being able to work things out?

So, I took a look, and found little pools of warm water directly below the two connections. Not a good sign, since electricity and water don't mix. So, I switched the whole thing off, disconnected the cables, and dried the whole thing off. And it seemed to work.

Yesterday, though, I found that the same problem was back, and the pools of water were also back. This time, when I took it to bits, I noted that one of the two cables had corroded through, and was no longer making a good connection. This clearly explained the problem, and just as clearly marked it as not being something I could deal with on my own.

So, today I phoned technical support, with the goal of booking an engineer visit to re-cut the damaged cable so it makes a good connection again, and to investigate just how water is getting into the system (and perhaps replacing both the cables to prevent this from happening in the future). That was clearly what was required, and so should be easy done, no?

No.

Having finally navigated the nine circles of call centre hell, I finally got to speak to an assistant, and explained the problem. Whereupon, he insisted on following his script, which called for a number of "troubleshooting steps" to try to diagnose the problem. Never mind that I had already done that - they can't send out an engineer without following the script. And, of course, being at work, I'm not in a position to follow the steps at the present time.

Fortunately, it's a 24-hour line, so I will be able to enjoy the fun of sorting all this out tonight. Yippee!