Jeff and the important things in life
Jeff is lucky to have me for many reasons. First and foremost, I seem to relieve him the burden of thinking in exchange for heavy lifting and cat box cleaning. It works for us. In talking about all the things we’re going to have to take care of during the move, one thing that is weighing heavily on his soul is whether or not the satellite will clear the trees in the backyard.
See what I mean?
Because I have wicked awesome RSS feeds, I came across the Satellite Dish Alignment / Setup Calculator 2.0. You basically pick the satellite you need (that might take some work on your part to find out which particular satellite your satellite provider uses to service your geographic location), enter your address (which can be anywhere on the planet) and voila — exact settings.
The coolest part about this, though, is that it’s a Google maps mashup so you can switch to satellite view, zoom in and place the marker on various parts of your roof. A blue line shows the angle from which the signal is coming so you can move the marker around until you find a location that isn’t blocked by a mass of trees or whatnot. Of course this depends on how updated the satellite photo is (mine is older since the neighbor doesn’t yet have his pool in the image) but it’s really accurate in the coordinates it gives and the marker placement is very handy even if you have to mentally edit a few details.
