Return of the One-Eyed Brain Eater

Astronomically speaking, June 21st is the longest day of the year. But in our household, June 20th will go down in history as the longest day of 2006. That was the day I attempted to assemble and install a satellite dish.

This endeavor actually began on the 19th, when the dish arrived, and continued until the afternoon of the 21st, when it was finally up and running.

We picked the damn thing up from the airport on the 19th. It came from a store in Yellowknife. Because they decided to ship it on Canadian North rather than North-Wright Air, the supposedly free dish and cheap receiver cost us an extra $160 in shipping fees. I can only hope the dish enjoyed one of Canadian North's delicious in-flight meals and a beer on its way here.

I brought a rickety aluminum ladder home from work with me that night. Nicole already had the dish and receiver out of the box, the TV tuned to a bright blue screen, and she was doing a little dance around the rather large pile of nuts and bolts in the middle of our living room floor.

The dish wasn't one of those snazzy dinner-plate sized "bell express-vu" dishes. It was a metre in diameter, which is pretty big when you only have a rickety aluminum ladder. The dish had the red lightning bolt symbol you often see on big, abandoned, obsolete dishes. I was beginning to see why the company had only charged us for the receiver and not the dish itself.

The assembly instructions for the dish were unlike any I've ever seen. Most instructions painstakingly list each piece, including the nuts and bolts. There is a diagram showing you how a bolt goes in a hole, and a disclaimer warning you to put the washer on BEFORE the nut. This was not the case with our dish. Instead there was a list of the nuts and bolts, and a few tiny pictures of the assembled dish. It was one sheet of paper. Finally! Assembly instructions that understand and respect a man's God-given ability to assemble anything without the instructions.

There was only one problem. From the pictures, it was clear that we were missing an unnamed, unnumbered triangular piece of metal. There would be no TV that night.

The next morning, I called the customer support number for the dish. It was made by a company called Andrew Corporation. What a great name for a company! Andrew Corporation. It almost exudes manliness. The first picture on their website was of a US soldier talking on a walkie-talkie while crouching in the desert. No wonder they've obtained military contracts with the US army. Their website listed separate numbers for "customer support" and "technical support." I forget which one I called, but I was immediately informed of my error (how stupid of me), and transferred to the other.

The fellow on the customer support line spoke not with a middle-eastern accent, but with a southern drawl. The fellow, being a man, understood my predicament. From the pictures in the instructions, it was clear I was missing a triangular piece of metal. But, being a man, he couldn't admit that he didn't know for sure what that piece of metal was, or if it was necessary. He also couldn't ask any of the other men there, because that would be paramount to admitting that he "didn't know." To make a long story short, he promised to get back to me but I never did hear from him again.

That night I attempted to assemble the dish without the mysterious triangular piece of metal. Everything seemed to hold. But now came the task of mounting it.

The locals were out in full force on the evening of the twentieth. The twenty-first is National Aboriginal Day, a holiday in these parts. I too had the day off, and had therefore already indulged in a small drink from a bottle of half-expensive scotch that I had brought with me. Around Tulita, holidays are taken very seriously, despite the high unemployment rate. It seems that even if you don't have a job, Fridays and holidays are designated drinking times. On this night, half the town had piled onto the backs of five or six trucks, and they were cruising around, yelling and hooting drunkenly. I could hear rap music coming from a house across the way. I witnessed this scene perched on top of an aluminum ladder, often while clutching a heavy and awkward satellite dish. However, whenever a truckload of locals drove past our house, they grew silent. Everyone watched in anticipation, waiting for this lone white boy to fall, bringing his dish with him.

I scrounged up a few nails and a couple of pieces of two-by-four from around the house. The log exterior of our house doesn't lend itself to the mounting of satellite dishes. Nicole tried to hold the ladder, except she tended to let go every three of four seconds to swat at a mosquito, or run from a dragonfly or horse fly. Being a biologist, Nicole KNOWS for a fact that dragonflies DO NOT BITE. But this doesn't stop her from crouching or flailing her arms each time one comes within ten feet of her. As for the horse flies (which are simply called bulldogs up here), I can't blame her for running from those. They are big suckers: fast and aggressive. It's difficult to distinguish them from hornets.

In case you're wondering, No, I didn't fall. It took about an hour, and there were times when the dish was the only thing keeping me form falling, but I got it installed. Then came the fun part: trying to find the signal. I'd like to show you an excerpt from the Bell Express-view instruction booklet which explains how one should go about this task.

Your partner at the TV set should inform you at each step if there is an indication on the meter. The conversation usually goes something like this:

"Ok I moved it."
"No Change"
"Ok, I moved it some more"
"Hold it, I see something on the meter....Move it some more"
"Ok, Moved it some more. Any change?"
"Yes, It's getting better."

....And so it goes.

As you can clearly see, the Bell instruction booklet was written by a woman and/or a group of women. It is the size of a novel.

Our conversation went more like this:

"See anything?"
"Nope."
(a minute of silence, while I move the dish in micrometer increments)
"Anything yet?"
"NO! I'll yell when something happens."
"I can hardly hear you!"
"Just keep going!"
(another minute of silence)
"Ok! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! No! Go back and do what you did before!"
"I'm trying!"
"You had it!"
"I ____ing know I ___ing had it!"
"Well you don't have to yell at me like that!"
"Well I'm ______ing sorry but this is ____ing hard to do when you're not holding the ladder!"
"Woah! Stop!!!"

And just like that, I had it. I tightened the last few nuts and bolts, and ran inside. It was one a.m. by this point. We couldn't get through to the help line to activate the channels, so we went to bed.

We were to discover the next day that I had tuned in the wrong dish. Another hour of dish tapping brought in the correct satellite. Nicole did another dance. I mourned the loss of my quiet evenings.

We had gone an entire month without television. Each of us had read a couple of books in that time. Nicole, whose excuse for not reading is, "I read all day at work," said she had forgotten how enjoyable it can be. We also spent hours playing crib and Trivial Pursuit together. On the night of the twenty-first, I found myself half comatose, staring at the TV watching something called "America's Got Talent." Hosted by Regis Philbin, and with David Hasselhoff as one of three judges, it is a modern day cross between the Gong Show and American Idol. And to think I almost missed it. Thank God we are once again in touch with the outside world.