Never (Never! Never!) write a blog post bragging of how hi-tech you are, and then walk smugly away assuming all will henceforth be well. For Nemesis follows Hubris. Every. Single. Time.
On the other hand…
I notice that TUAK pageviews have actually increased since I’ve been locked out of the Internet, as if to reward me for staying gone. Doesn’t matter! I’ve been jonesing so much I actually have a backlog of pre-written blog posts.
Thanks to Landlady, this post is brought to you by virtue of a Verizon hotspot – apparently extensively discussed in the comments from the long-time post below. Glad you guys stayed busy while I was gone. I just took it up in the loft, set it a place on the dresser next to the upper window facing the nearest town, and damned if it doesn’t work just fine without resort to a booster antenna. So far it’s substantially faster than the satellite modem was on a good day. AND! I’ve got a vastly higher bandwidth limit for the same monthly fee, because technology marches on. That photo that sat at the top of the blog for so long – and on which I blame my troubles – is obsolete. The space is much less cluttered now, as I have hauled out the modem, the wi-fi router, a whole bunch of cabling, then I went outside and ripped the satellite dish right the hell off the wall.
Also: Private to Zelda, I actually did crawl the length of the Lair’s crawlspace searching for the spot at which a rat had gnawed through the coax between the modem and the dish. And was rather shocked to learn that wasn’t the problem.
Never did learn what the problem was, but the modem behaved substantially differently with the cable disconnected which leads me to believe the problem was internal to the dish. Either way, Wildblue let it be known as politely as possible that they’d rather I go down the road for my Internet needs. Now with Landlady’s help I have done precisely that.
So, yeah! We’re back. And thanks for all the well-wishes. (I haven’t even checked my email queue yet. Be patient.)
Speaking of emails! Let this be the first notice that when I lost Wildblue I also lost my personal email addy and I obviously haven’t had a chance to set up a new one. So if you sent anything to the Wildblue account, I never received it. I’ll have a new one up before the end of the weekend, and will inform those I can think to inform.
Also! Care packages! Got’em and will report on’em, but those posts are time-consuming. I’ll be back.
“I sincerely hope,” he muttered, glancing fearfully about him…
Welcome back Joel! That hotspot will likely take less juice than the dish/modem. Speaking of, can we expect that at least one of those back posts will tell us about your new & improved PV power system?
Glad to hear you’ve got your friends backed up with posts. I need something to read.
Welcome back, amigo.
YAY!!! I’ve had a gulch shaped hole in my morning the last week or so and am very glad to have it filled again. 🙂 And yes, technology just keeps coming at us. We’re waiting for whoever owns it to decide what to do with the fiber optics they put down the streets around here last year. DSL was such an improvement over the dialup. I can’t imagine what the fiber deal might be like, but I’m willing to find out… as long as it isn’t too expensive. 🙂
And, sometimes the new technology leaves you holding the bag… I found a whole box of nice cassette tapes while cleaning my office closet. It had been many long years since I used any of them… because I got too deaf to really hear the music.
I used to have a tape player – but it broke. I don’t even think they are available anymore. I have a hundred or more CD disks of classical music, but can only play them on the computer now. All the multiple disk CD players I found on line are “refurbished.” And expensive. I suspect those two old technologies are about to join the buggy whips. sigh
And then I found a big box of small floppy disks! Don’t think anything reads them anymore. The trash pickup people will probably wonder what in the world those might be…
Glad to see you back man.
WooHoo! Glad you’re back! I was getting soooo tired of looking at the dust. I do blame the dust for all the problems you know.
Glad to see you back, Sir.
Did you carefully inspect the dish for one or more dead rats?
And BTW did you get the dead rat(s) out of the Jeep’s wiper system so it works again?
So glad to hear you took the time to crawl under the Lair, hoping you left a string of baited traps behind as you crawled out. You can never have too many baited rat traps.
Good to have you back. Morning hasn’t been as much fun.
I’m glad to see that you are back. I was missing my morning fix.