Satellite Dish Rules

I've posted this before in my Oahu Favorites post (intended to inform new people moving to Hawaii), but looking back, it doesn't really fit there and really deserves it's own post. A few times, I've had friends or coworkers mention an interest in getting satellite TV, but uncertainty over whether or not their HOA or condo will allow them to put up a satellite dish.

The short answer is:

YES, YOU CAN, and NO, they CAN'T STOP YOU!

Reposted from my Oahu Favorites post:

We hated the Time Warner Cable and really missed our Dish Network service. We submitted the form with Forest City (Pearl Harbor military housing management company) to get permission to put in a satellite dish and got approval within a week. There is a booth set up right in the foyer of the NEX, and they offer a pretty good deal on the installation.

Note that FCC rules say a HOA cannot prohibit you from putting up a satellite dish (as long as it's less than 1 meter in diameter). Here's an excerpt from the FCC website:

The rule prohibits restrictions that impair a person's ability to install, maintain, or use an antenna covered by the rule. The rule applies to state or local laws or regulations, including zoning, land-use or building regulations, private covenants, homeowners' association rules, condominium or cooperative association restrictions, lease restrictions, or similar restrictions on property within the exclusive use or control of the antenna user where the user has an ownership or leasehold interest in the property. A restriction impairs if it: (1)unreasonably delays or prevents use of; (2) unreasonably increases the cost of; or (3) precludes a person from receiving or transmitting an acceptable quality signal from an antenna covered under the rule. The rule does not prohibit legitimate safety restrictions or restrictions designed to preserve designated or eligible historic or prehistoric properties, provided the restriction is no more burdensome than necessary to accomplish the safety or preservation purpose. [Emphasis added is mine.]

Note that they are allowed to impose certain restrictions. For example, Forest City says you can't mount it to the house. What the local satellite dish installers do is put a cinder block base down in your yard and mount the satellite dish to the cinder block base. Reception is great.

Revision 9/8/2008: Okay, we have had occasional minor interference on the screen that we never experienced while we had Dish Network on the mainland, but it hasn't been bad. I started keeping a log of the outages in March 2008, and I only logged one outage in April and one in May. So it happened less than once per month.

Note the satellite is over the continental U.S., so the dish will need to aim to the EAST-southeast. Functionality is ten times better than Time Warner Cable.

I have anecdotal evidence from one of the other officers in my wardroom that DirectTV requires a larger satellite dish than what is allowed, and he was forced to take down his DirectTV satellite dish.

End of Repost.

Update: Now that we're back on the mainland, I'm ecstatic to have DishNetwork HD service. We have an HD dual-tuner DVR receiver that feeds the family room and home theater in the basement, and we have a standard definition dual-tuner DVR receiver that feeds the master bedroom and the guest bedroom.

The dual tuner DVRs are really nice. They allow you to record two shows at the same time and watch two other shows. Plus we rarely watch commercials anymore. Just record the shows you want, watch them a little time late and fast forward through the commercials.

You have GOT to be kidding me...

Today will go down in history as the SECOND time in my naval career where the detailer has dropped a bomb in my lap and made a run for it. (Aside: The "detailer" is the guy sitting at a desk at Navy Personnel Command in Millington, Tennessee who decides where you are going for your next tour of duty.)

The first time this happened was just after we moved to the DC suburbs for my last shore duty. We had JUST bought a house in Ashburn, VA, about 20 miles outside the beltway to the WEST of DC. Our household goods had JUST been delivered. I hadn't even reported to my new command yet. Then I received a voicemail from the detailer that went something like this: "Yeah, hi, Kevin, congratulations! You're the submarine force's nomination for the flag secretary position at the Naval Academy. The USNA offices will be contacting you to set up an interview with the admiral. Oh, and I'm going on leave for the next two weeks, so I'll talk to you when I get back. Hope it goes well, bye!" Nice. Input from the service member neither required nor desired. There was a week or two there we were really stressed out and wondering if we were going to have to pack our stuff up again and move to the OTHER side of the beltway so I wouldn't have a two hour commute to work at Annapolis. Luckily, I didn't get that job. The detailer dropping that in my lap without even asking what I thought and then taking off on leave just really drove me nuts.

Fast forward a couple of years to this very afternoon. Remember the detailer has recently told me I'm staying in Hawaii. Although we didn't really want to stay in Hawaii, we have come to terms with this and were moving on. We stopped shopping for houses on Realtor.com. LW started working on reservations for our timeshare vacation in January here in Hawaii. LW started making a long honey-do list for things she wanted to change around the house since we were staying for a few more years. I started working on some of those tasks over the last couple of days - like moving furniture around two nights ago. Last night, I cancelled our reservations in the Navy Lodge. I had made reservations for us as a placeholder for the last couple of weeks I expected us to be on the island before transferring, but I didn't need them anymore since we were staying.

So I get this email from the detailer this afternoon...

In essence, it said something to the effect of, "Yyyyyeah, hi, about that job in Hawaii I was going to send you to? Yyyyyyeah, not so much. Admiral ___________ called and picked someone else by name he wants to take that job, so that's off the table. Well, I'm going on leave now through next week, so give me a call the week after next and we'll see what we can work out for your next set of orders."

Um...

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

I think I must really be a pessimist at heart.

Case in Point #1: All the past week I've been trying to focus on the positive aspects of staying in Hawaii, but I was still grimacing over the fact that I really didn't want to stay in Hawaii. For example, I was really annoyed the other day when I was drooling over all the HD channels available now on Dish Network, only to find out that you can't get most of them in Hawaii.

Case in Point #2: Now, again, am I trying to focus on the positive aspects of NOT staying in Hawaii. We didn't WANT to stay in Hawaii in the first place. Still, my thoughts are in turmoil right now not knowing where we're going next. At least when we thought we were staying in Hawaii, the path ahead was clear and we could plan accordingly. Although the path wasn't the optimum path / not the path we had chosen, at least we knew which path we were taking and where we were headed. Now, that's all out the window. It's like we've discovered that previous path was washed out by a landslide and there's a heavy fog set in for the next week, so we just have to sit and wait until the fog lifts (when the detailer gets back from leave and I get some orders) to start evaluating the new path we're going to take and making appropriate plans.

Keep in mind, we're about 2 months from wanting to have our household goods and our car packed out and shipped off the island if we're heading back to the mainland, so it would be NICE to have ORDERS so we could reserve the move dates we want. Summer is a big time for PCS (Permanent Change of Station) transfers with a lot of people moving, so a lot of the move dates are already reserved at this point - there are only just so many moving companies on the island.

Argh this is frustrating. I know the Lord has a plan for us... I just wish we knew what it was.

I'm going to go make those Navy Lodge reservations again...

Saturday Evening Stew

A smattering of odds and ends to tell you about tonight.

Snow... er... Carpet Angels

After seeing the patterns that the vacuum cleaner leaves on the carpet, YS decided to improvise a Hawaiian version of snow angels. He calls them [YS]-Angels. It's funny watching him waving his arms and legs back and forth on the carpet. I wish it actually left an observable impression like snow angels do that I could photograph.

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Latest Technology in Making Pillow Forts

The Lucky Wifey wrote a post about building forts as kids. I know, I know, I had fun building forts when I was a kid, too. As a parent though, it's frustrating to not be able to find a place to sit in the family room with all the dining room chairs, sofa cushions, blankets, and miscellaneous other stuff all piled in heaps to make forts.

This morning, I woke up and came downstairs to find a new variation on the pillow fort...

That's LW's laptop and my laptop side by side making one wall of the boys' new "video game fort."

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Chuck Rationing

With the writers' strike putting a big damper on our favorite TV shows, LW and I were really excited to get a double-dose of new Chuck episodes this week. We decided given the overall lack of new episodes to watch though that we should ration ourselves and not watch both episodes in one night. LW checked and double checked to make DARN sure the DVR was going to record both episodes though.

During the first episode, I saw an ad for the Chuck spy games on the NBC website. The games are okay, nothing to rave about. The Nerd Herd car is pretty hard to drive, but maybe that was the point of the game. I think the "I Spy" game was the hardest (find the four things that are different between two VERY similar looking pictures of Buy More store shelves).

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Another Bullet for the "Con" List for Staying in Hawaii

Bugler, sound taps please. (If you live here in Hawaii, you may want to get a tissue box before you read any further). I sincerely regret to inform you that the ONLY Einstein Brothers Bagel Bakery here on Oahu has closed. That said, there aren't ANY places around here to get a good bagel.

Friends of ours who were stationed here previously tell us there used to be Dunkin Donuts here, but they closed before we even arrived on the island last summer. When I got up Friday morning, I was starving, but I refrained from eating so I could go to PT. I got to the gym and was running on the treadmill when they showed a Dunkin Donuts commercial on the TV that seemed to last forever. [Cue stomach noises: gurgle, gurgle, gurgle.]

That's one of the disadvantages of getting satellite TV here in Hawaii... You have to endure the homesickness induced by commercials for Target, Dunkin Donuts, Olive Garden, etc...

On a positive note though, LW did find Dunkin Donuts coffee at the store this week!

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4-Year Old Birthday Party

Today we had YS's birthday party. It was controlled chaos as you would expect. I thought it was pretty funny that YS announced to LW and I a day or two ago that he wanted ONLY BOYS at his birthday party. LW was like, but YOU invited J, can she come? Oh, yeah, J! And you asked C to come, do you still want her to come? Oh, yeah, C! The list went on and on... Off the top of my head, I think there were 7 girls and 3 boys on the guest list. YS and ES evened out the boy-girl ratio to 7:5, but the boys were still outnumbered. I just found it odd that he came up with this "only boys" proclamation when so many of the kids he enjoys playing with are girls.

LW got the "cake" from the Commissary, and it was REALLY GOOD! I say "cake" because it was really a whole bunch of cupcakes, but they were all frosted over the top to make it look like a regular cake (see picture below). It turned out to be quite messy as LW and I were pulling the wrappers off the cupcakes before putting them on plates, and the abundance of frosting was getting all over our hands. Even so, it was delicious!

You probably can't tell from the picture, but it was a Backyardigans cake. One of the other dads and I were commenting on how frustrating it can be to have the Backyardigans theme song stuck in your head all day at work.

YS quote of the day: "I'm four, so I can jump high now."

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Bedtime Stories

Every Friday, ES goes to the library at school and gets to check out two books. He ALWAYS picks out at least one military book. I've been surprised by the wide selection of kids' military books they have. They've got first-grade level books on just about every type of military aircraft or vehicle you can imagine.

One of ES's current library books is on the Army Rangers. I've been very impressed with what a good job ES is doing in reading. He blew me away tonight when he read the sentence, "Usually this means solving difficult problems in stressful situations, such as simulated combat conditions." No help from me, he just read it. His spelling word lists for school are like "was", "does", "goes", "their." It's a lot easier recognizing words and reading them or sounding them out than it is to recall their correct spelling form memory I guess.

We got to a hard word that ES didn't know: reconnaissance. He asked what that was. I explained to him it's just like a reconnaissance satellite takes pictures of where the bad guys are (he's familiar with this concept from my last shore duty job at the NRO). Rangers go out on reconnaissance missions, not to fight, but just to take pictures or observe where the bad guys are and report back to the generals so the generals can decide where to send the Army. This lead into a discussion about how the Rangers have to be stealthy and quiet so they can sneak behind enemy lines, close to the bad guys to see what the bad guys are doing. ES giggled and said, "So the Rangers aren't allowed to laugh." I asked why not, and he said they would want to laugh because they were able to sneak up on the bad guys without the bad guys knowing the Rangers were there watching them, but they can't laugh because then the bad guys would hear them and know they were there. Ya know what, son? You're absolutely RIGHT, they CAN'T LAUGH. I suppressed a laugh myself and continued reading the story.

Gouge, Kudos, and a Rant

Playing Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, I found a lot of great gouge on the internet with lots of pretty color pictures and videos. Now, playing Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, it's thrown in a few new things here and there, and the internet knowledgebase just isn't as robust as it was for LSW II.

I went on a quest looking for information about the blue cannisters.

You see, for each level of LSW, you have to play the level once through in "Story" mode using the characters that are given to you. After you've played the level once in "Story" mode, then it unlocks the ability to play that level in "Free Play" mode. In "Free Play" mode, you get to choose any character you've unlocked on other levels or purchased in the Mos Eisley Cantina with the points you've earned playing so far. Different characters have different special capabilities that enable you to reach or access different hidden parts of the map.

As you play the game in either "Story" or "Free Play" mode, there are ten white cannisters hidden throughout each level. When you find all ten white cannisters, it gives you like a 50,000 point bonus and a vehicle you can use in some race later on.

So far, everything I wrote above was the same from LSW II to LSW CS. Now in LSW CS though, after the "Story" and "Free Play" it has added the "Challenge." The "Challenge" mode is ALL about finding ten BLUE cannisters hidden throughout the map. You have a 10 minute time limit to find them all. There are no studs (coins) to be found anywhere in "Challenge" mode, but all the same bad guys are there to thwart you that were there in the Story and Free Play. It's pretty... well... challenging.

In my search for hints on the internet, I found lots of discussion forums, and I clicked here and clicked there and through some untraceable series of links, I ended up at THIS site. I don't know why it didn't pop up as the FIRST result on the list when I googled it. It SHOULD have.

Now, this guide is technically written for the Wii version of LSW CS, but it's all good gouge for playing on the XBox, too. It's not pretty and doesn't have any color pictures or other frills, but it is very well organized and logically laid out.

For the sake of anyone who hasn't played Lego Star Wars before, I wanted to share this "hint" from that website, because I thought it was a surprisingly simple synopsis of the game:

Shoot.  Freakin'.  Everything.  If it's made out of LEGO
bricks and not obviously part of the background, gun it
down, or saber it down, or whatever you have to do,
because a lot of stuff to move ahead in the game requires
you to go on a destruction frenzy.

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PT Update: I got my trophy back! On my Polar F11 heart rate monitor (HRM) watch, it keeps track of my workouts. I set up a plan for how many and what type of workouts I'm going to do each week. If you reach at least 75% of your goal each week, then it displays a little trophy icon for the rest of the week. I had lost the trophy over the holidays from holiday laziness. Thanks to getting back into my regular weekly routine last week, my watch gave me my trophy back on Monday.

Unfortunately, a shipyard fire drill prevented me from joining my crew with the PT Nazi over at Bloch Arena this morning. I'm really disappointed I missed it. I hear he had the guys running quarter mile sprints out on the bike path.

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Proud of my Tiger Scout: Last night at our Cub Scout Pack meeting, ES earned his first awards as a Tiger Scout. He earned his Bobcat Badge, six beads toward his Tiger Badge (there are 15 total to earn the badge), the Geography belt loop, and the Swimming belt loop. I know during the week or so before the pack meeting as I was quizzing him on the Cub Scout Promise, the Law of the Pack, the Cub Scout Motto, etc (all things you need to know for the Bobcat badge), he got a little frustrated or annoyed with me. I think when he got the awards last night though, it really gave him an ego boost and made the effort worth it. Now he's excited and wants to start earning more belt loops.

It was interesting to see the difference in awards last night though. Most of the other boys in his den got the basketball, soccer, baseball, and other sports belt loops. Not only did ES not get any of the sports belt loops that the rest of his den got, he was the only one to get the geography belt loop. I think that's more of a reflection on his non-athletic nerd of a dad though.

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CBS Rant: LW and I were REALLY excited to watch the season finale of The Amazing Race on Sunday. We plopped down in our chairs and clicked on the DVR, and... found... nothing... Our DVR did NOT record the finale of the Amazing Race.

So you say to yourself, "Self, WHY on EARTH would the DVR NOT record the finale when it has recorded EVERY Amazing Race episode before this?!?!?" Well, I'll tell you. Some IDIOT at CBS decided to change the official NAME of the show in the electronic listings that go into TV Guide and Dish Network and everywhere else. Our DVR was set to record every episode of "Amazing Race 12," and that worked for the entire season, because that's what it showed up as in the Dish Network guide. For some reason, they changed the name to "Amazing Race: The Season Finale" or something like that. So NOBODY's DVR recorded it if they had it set up as an automatic "record-all-episodes" function. Turns out the same thing happened to my Mom, too. She isn't using Dish Network, so it's not a problem unique to Dish.

I read the recap of the final leg of the race, and it sounded pretty intense. It's a real bummer to have missed it. Why do they offer to let you watch full episodes of all their other shows on their website, but not Amazing Race? To CBS, I say, "Thbbbbbbt!" >:-P

Saturday morning odds and ends

A smattering of random items this morning:

• Lord help us! ES has discovered how to Google. I came downstairs this morning to find he typed in "apache helicopter" and was looking at Army websites for pictures of... well... Apache helicopters. After I came down, he asked how to spell "sub hunter" (because we were reading his library book about cruisers and talking about the helicopters that hunt for submarines). I'm very afraid to see where this will go. What pray-tell will he Google next??? It might be time to invest in some parental controls on the computer - anyone got any recommendations?
  
• We went to ES's school fall festival last night. I must say, there were a lot of really well done and cute pirate costumes there - especially my Nav's kids. What threw me for a loop though, was sitting behind us was this family where the mom was cussing at her daughter. I mean, the poor girl looked to be about 8 years old or so, and as far as I could tell she wasn't doing anything egregious or misbehaving (not to imply that it would be okay to cuss at your kid if they WERE misbehaving). I mean, it's a Catholic school for cryin' out loud! (Again, that is not meant to imply that it would be okay to cuss at your kid if it wasn't a Catholic school.)
• I think the highlight of going to the fall festival though was getting to meet Alyssa. Every day, ES comes home from school and we ask what he did at school. Typical response: "Nothing." So we dig a little deeper, "Who did you play with at recess?" Typical response: "Alyssa." A little while back, when he told us he DIDN'T play with Alyssa, we asked why not, and found out some other rotten little boys in his class had been making fun of him for playing with a GIRL, so he wasn't playing with Alyssa anymore. My heart sank. We explained to ES that it's perfectly okay to be friends with a girl and that those boys weren't very nice. We also gave his teacher a heads-up so she would watch out for the teasing, too. Since then, it hasn't been an issue, and we've gone back to "Who did you play with at recess?" "Alyssa." So it was nice to finally meet Alyssa last night. Her dad's in the Air Force and they just moved here from Okinawa, so she and ES both have the "I just moved here" thing in common.
• While my MIL was here visiting, I was going upstairs to watch Heroes on the old TV in our master bedroom. Now she's gone back to Boston and I've started watching Heroes downstairs on the HDTV - OMG what a difference!!!
• We're very excited for the Dish Network installation guy to come on Wednesday. The local cable TV here is super-lame and non-user-friendly. We had Dish Network from 1999 in Monterey all the way up until we left Virginia in June, and we miss it. I'm just worried he won't be able to get a good angle on the satellite from our location in housing. We're on an east-west running street, and slightly downhill from the house to the east of us, so somehow we have to find a way for the satellite dish to look around the house next to us to the east.
  

Okay, ES wants the computer back so he can Google something else. Have a good weekend all!

Chuck

It's nice being back in a regular routine at home (as opposed to being on deployment or our hectic preparations for interfleet transfer or driving the boat halfway around the world, etc). I'm catching up on some old shows and picking up a new one - Chuck.

I thought it was pretty funny when I Googled "Chuck" the top two links that came up were to this new TV show on NBC. Chuck is a regular geek who works at "Buy More" for the "Nerd Herd." I missed the beginning, but somehow he is in an accident that results in the contents of some super-secret national intelligence computer being downloaded to his brain. Now the NSA has put an agent in as a "coworker" of his, and the CIA has put in an smokin-hot blond agent at the nearby Weinerlicious as protection for him. There's all sorts of spy-story action, intrigue, explosions, gun-fights, etc, but all with a geeky sort of slap-stick to it. It's like a geek version of Alias. (I was never a fan of Alias, although LW was an Alias addict). Chuck is actually a pretty darn funny show - check it out!

My other addiction right now is Heroes. Thanks to Bubblehead raving about it, and reading a WIRED magazine article about it while we were on deployment, I decided to pick it up season one on DVD. I've been watching about one episode per night, and LW is being so kind as to set up the DVR to record the new season when it starts.

We've also got the DVR recording our other favorite show, How I Met Your Mother. I'm dying to watch season two on DVD. In case you haven't seen it before, HIMYM is narrated by the main character, Ted, telling his kids about his love-life and how he met their mother. Sounds odd, I know. It's actually really funny. LW sent HIMYM Season One with me on deployment, and we watched it in the wardroom in the evenings after dinner. I got the whole wardroom hooked on it. It became required viewing for newly reporting officers (including the PCO) so that they would understand our vocabulary - for example: "suit up!", "high five!", and "legendary!" Or, when someone is consciously deciding to procrastinate a project, "Let Future-XO and Future-CO worry about that." Then later, when the previous procrastination came back to bite us, "Darn it Past-XO and Past-CO!" Anyway, I was out at sea while season two was on, and it just came out on DVD. I've got it in my hands now, but I'm being good and waiting until we go out to sea this week so we can watch it together in the wardroom (LW already watched season two while we were out at sea). After we get through season two though, I'm not waiting around on the rest of the wardroom to watch season three on the DVR.

Aside for HIMYM fans (skip ahead if you've never watched before): Incidentally, if you are already a HIMYM fan, the DVD has some really cool special features on it. For example, there's one video-collage of Barney's many variations of the "high-five" in rapid succession. High Five! Phone Five! Low Five! Little Five! I was surprised how many there were. There is, likewise, another video collage of all of Barney's different "Suit Up!" moments. In the interviews with the cast, they said that the "legendary" thing was totally unintentional. It looks like they have some similar things on the CBS website for season two, but I'm not going to watch those until I finish watching season two.

Oh, here's a great little 2 minute sample of HIMYM (and some of our wardroom vocabulary):

You gotta love YouTube!

Speaking of DVRs... What on earth did we do before the days of DVRs??? The first time I really realized the impact in had on our lives was when LW flew up to meet me for a port call in Bangor, WA a couple of years ago. My eldest son's favorite cartoon back then was called Max and Ruby (about two rabbits). It came on at like 6 o'clock in the morning, but it didn't matter because the DVR was set to record it, and our eldest could watch it whenever he woke up and whenever else he wanted to during the day. Well... fast forward to us sitting in the Navy Lodge in Bangor. Eldest says, "I want to watch Max and Ruby." LW and I tried to explain to him that it just wasn't on at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. This was just a totally unfathomable concept to the poor boy. "Just push the buttons!" he would say, holding the remote control out for us to do the magic that made Max and Ruby appear on his demand. We quickly learned that when going on trips, we have to bring DVDs of the kids' favorite shows with us.

I must admit, it's rather nice not having to watch commercials anymore... most of the time anyway. There are those annoying times, like tonight, when you catch-up with a live show and can't fast forward anymore, then you have to sit and wait. LW and I have been known to hit the pause button and go do stuff around the house and come back a few minutes later to resume watching time-late so we can fast-forward through the commercials.

We're finding that we miss our Dish Network. LW wasn't sure if it would work in Hawaii, or if Navy Housing would allow us to put up a satellite dish, and thought the local digital cable would be fine. I do NOT criticize her at all for her decision to sign up for the local digital cable while I was gone. Unfortunatly, the cable service here is totally LAME. The DVR is very non-user friendly. It won't auto-tune to the shows you tell it you want to watch, it only flashes a reminder to tell you something is on. When you hit the channel guide, it just shows ALL the channels that exist, regardless whether you subscribe to them or not, and it won't let you set up a short-list of your favorite channels to quickly browse. So I'll skim down the channel list and say, "Oh, I wanna watch that!" and click the button, and an error message will pop up that we don't subscribe to that channel. Gee, thanks. Plus, we have separate DVRs in each room and have to set up each one individually if we want to be able to watch a show in any given room.

So I'm going through the process of getting Navy Housing to approve putting in the Dish Network satellite dish so we can get back to having a favorites-list and a dual-tuner / dual-recorder DVR that'll feed both the family room and the MBR TV. I think the housing office's rules on applying for installation of a dish violates the FCC rules and constitute an "unreasonable delay," but I'm going to try and get it approved peacefully / without raising a ruckus.

It actually comes out to be about the same price per month as the digital cable here, but with so much better functionality. There are some sunk costs in terms of the installation fee for the digital cable, but there was no way for us to know in advance how bad the cable service was here.

I wonder how many states are changing their official "state flower" to the satellite dish? I know I heard the joke in California when we lived there. Then I heard the same joke in Virginia when we lived there. Now we're about to help the "flower" infest Hawaii.