Searching For Signal

And our satellite issues continue... A little background. Joe and I live in a co-op community with housing-association-like rules. One of which regards satellite usage...they can't be larger than x width, must be within 1 foot of your house, cannot be on the roof, etc. When we purchased our home we had no idea our house faced in the opposite direction of DirectTV's signal. Fortunately the house caddyshack to us on the otherside had DirectTV and we were able to connect our cables to their dish and run it through our basement window. We had a verbal agreement with them that this was all fine and dandy.

So, let's talk about last night. Joe turns on the TV and it's repeatedly says, "searching for signal." This is not new since a tree intermittently blocks the signal. We reset our receiver, the usual solution. No improvement. Joe goes around to the other side and checks the dish. The DirectTV dish is gone and in it's place is a Dish Network dish! Now mind you, this is 11 o'clock at night. Joe is furious!! I mean hotter than hot. I try to calm him down, explaining the dish isn't on our property, yada yada. Never the less, we're out there with flashlights trying to trace the wires and see what home they enter. Lo and behold, it appears they enter the townhome who's property the dish is on. Joe knocks on their door, fortunately they were awake, and asks what happened. They knew someone on the other side was sharing a dish, but they didn't know which house. Ends up they wanted to switch to Dish Network. Joe explained that DirectTV is the only way he can get his Ravens games, we'll be moving around May, would this guy mind another dish in his yard until then? Fortunately our neighbor understood and agreed to that. Unfortunately, DirectTV doesn't have any openings until Wednesday afternoon...when I'll be recovering from surgery, so we'll have to use the next available time, Friday afternoon. I am truly curious to see how Joe handles no cable for 5 days. So, yet another reason to avoid satellite--your dish can get removed at any time by neighbors =(