Gardening mishap

[dormouse1953]

So I was chopping back the vegetation that was encroaching on the path in my back garden when something thin and black moved beneath my shears.  I had just chopped through a cable connecting my Sky satellite dish to the box.

For those that don't know, there are usually two cables connecting the dish to the box so that you can record two programmes simultaneously, or record one whilst watching another, so  I can still get Sky, just not as conveniently as usual.  The other cable is stapled to the wall at about waist height, so it was well away from my shears.

Fortunately, I have a Sky Protect repair contract.  Surprisingly, they say they'll send an engineer out Sunday to fix it.

UPDATE

The other feed from the dish failed last night.  I can't think why.  And it turns out you can't reboot a Sky box without a satellite signal, so now I can't even see my previously recorded programmes.

FURTHER UPDATE

Somebody on Cix suggested swapping the input connectors around on the back of the box.  Seems that input 1 was the one that was cut and if that is not available it eventually fails to detect the other input.  And that has solved the problem for now.

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Years ago I had this happen with cable internet. That was a bit of a bugger, but at least you've got a spare line.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

I've cut through my hedge trimmer cable 3 times...

[pauldormer.livejournal.com]

When I was a student I worked on the parks for a summer job and often worked at a park that had a bowling green. This was surrounded by grass bank. You couldn't use a petrol-driven mower to cut this grass as the angle of the bank was too steep.

So they had an electric Flymo. (There was a Flymo factory near the town.) This had a long cable to allow it to be plugged in at the bowling green pavilion. And the cable was often cut. It had had several makeshift repairs by the time I started there.

Trouble was, there wasn't a proper electrical repair kit available at the park. No insulating tape. So the head gardener had improvised. He had found a roll of elasticated adhesive bandage in the first aid kit and used lengths of that. And that was definitely not insulating tape. In fact, it was rather porous.

Many's the time I used that machine on a morning when there was still dew on the grass. And many was the time I got nasty electric shocks from the damp tape.