SITE NEWS

Today is St Patricks Day - one of the few saints that don’t feature in the Italian religious calendar. I do note that today also marks the anniversary of the first national parliament of Italy in 1861 (each morning my ‘inbox’ has free italian language email from the History Channel, entitled Succede Oggi. It usually list 3-4 events pertaining to that day in history - always of interest, but being in italian, isalso good compito for my comprehension of Italian)

It also means that the month of March is more than half over. The days are getting longer and the sun is in more evidence, drying out the soggy fields and providing an opportunity for those with olive trees to finish the required pruning (see previous front page).

This is not to suggest that the weather has been consistently better. Last Tuesday we were ‘blessed’ with the weather that you see in the image at the bottom of the page. In the almost five years we have been living here, and the 10 years we having been visiting this borgo, we have never had a snowfall like that - Not to worry - it was gone by the following day!

SKY Satellite TV: A Cautionary Tale.
Used to an assortment of channels, as we were in Canada before relocating, when we arrived we had a parabola situated on the roof of the house and paid for the subscription to SKY.it. It provided a wide range of channels, a number of them in english, and a variety supplied in multiple languages. Every month or so we received a fairly expansive journal of what was on. For a brief while we tried the extra movie channels, but discontinued it.

The problem started about two years ago with SKY announcing that the journal would no longer be provided for ‘free’. This announcement along with the continuing increase in the monthly bill for the ‘service’ was annoying. The journal was replaced with a publication roughly half the physical dimensions of the original and included virtually no content - still the monthly price rose. The number of multi language stations or programs in the ‘normal package’ seemed to decrease. But the final straw was the new practice of scrambling RAI1, the national station, when it carried any content that SKY charged extra for. In my case this meant no access to the Formula One Grand Prix . Sure if I was willing to pay for a Premium SKY package, I could watch it, but not otherwise.

So it was time to cancel the service. Buried in the small print of the SKY contract, in mouse type, there is a statement that this must be done prior to 60 days from the end of the automatically renewed yearly contract, with a letter to SKY. So I disconnected the decoder box, sent a ‘posta recommandata’ with receipt to SKY. I received the receipt stamped that the letter had been received by SKY. On two occasions I tried to return the decoder box to the SKY distributor in Perugia, and twice it was closed when I got there.

I paid for 2 more months of service and cancelled the direct debit that had been arranged with the bank. That got a response from SKY - Where was their money? Please phone them and explain. But wait, it cost me money to phone them, so we sent second letter, in the same manner to SKY, and subsequently got of receipt of delivery.

SKY actually phoned us! - we explained what we had done and why and also noted that on a third visit to the SKY distributor, he had been unable to take receipt of the hardware because of instructions from SKY.

So we thought we had resolved the issue. No such luck - the next call and subsequent ones have been from a credit agency demanding we pay our bill and making blatantly wrong statements - we need to return the box - SKY won’t let us - and we need to return the parabola - Wait a second, we bought that - it is ours!

So what does one do?
Thanks to some other expats, they let us know about the Movimento Difesa del Cittadino. Got an issue with a large company that seems intent on burying you in paper and ignoring your requests for clarification of service, or lack of it. These are your people. You join a society for a nominal sum and they provide the legal advice and act on your behalf to get the issue resolved.

In our case we met with the lawyer in a small office located in part of the university complex in Perugia shared with a sister organization named Legambiente that, rather than concern for consumer rights, is concerned with environmental issues. Regardless of the outcome of this skirmish, it is heartwarming to find such support for the average citizen here in Italy.

The upshot of all this is that the SKY decoder is now replaced with a free to air satellite decoder that receives too many channels I would never be interested in, still from the same satellite that SKY utilizes, and I have order a 2nd ‘illuminator’ for the parabola to obtain the same sort of signal from a 2nd satellite. That will give me CNN, BBC World and all the Italian national stations. In conjunction with a region free DVD player that should keep me amused when I tire of reading my way through the mountain of books I have to read.

So back to those books, till next time - Ross

from before:
Sarah continues to process her images from the Nevadaworkshops and with luck they should be posted soon.

As mentioned before the next workshop is already scheduled , again with David Muench, father of Marc Muench of Muench Workshop. She is busy reading through the Lonely Planets and Fodors books on Patagonia and a book on the Los Glaciers National Park.

We continue with the marketing of her images using our existing vendors of FotoSearch and SmugMug. If you want to see the latest completed work visit: Smugmug or Photoempt sites.

I continue my design blog, albeit infrequently, commenting on design issues. This is a continuation of the 'Design Special Interest Groups' I used to have in my Design Studio in Ottawa. Feel free to follow my thoughts on Hardware, Software and Design issues at:
http://photoempt.com/wordpress/

This site will be updated, but infrequently, compared to our previous entries. Enjoy what is here, it will remain

Ross and Sarah

Snow Fall in Monte Castello di Vibio in Early March - Not Normal!