Good morning!!!!

[Peter 315]

They will ream you!

Soft music and blow into your ear ?

 

[toppop52]

Soft music and blow into your ear ?

Yeah sure, we’ll go with that.

 

[jbrumberg]

I'll venture over there only if I get a box of chocolates first and a promise of flowers afterwards.:wink:

 

[RedNeckGeek]

An upside of the rural village layout in Europe is that at least for WISPs it pays to build the link. Our top speed is 12Mbps down / 1Mbps up, but it sure beats the satellite internet I suffered with working on a farm in TN ages ago. RNG, would the WISP not be willing to add infrastructure if you sign some X-year contract?

I offered to let them put an antenna at the top of the hill on my property, but that wouldn't have addressed the line-of-sight problem. Then I offered to pay for a relay, and they turned that down, too. Not sure what else to do, other than start my own WiMax company.:confused2:

<RANT>PJ's right, if you have any other choice for internet, except perhaps a 28.8 modem, use it. I could almost put up with constantly buffering video streams and outages during heavy rain/snow, but the absolute BS that comes out of the offshore support personnel is just despicable. They'll say anything they can just to get you off the phone so they can maintain their call quota, even if nothing's done to resolve your issue. The previous administration had a strong initiative to expand high speed internet coverage to rural areas, and their answer was subsidized satellite connections for everyone. What a cruel joke. The internet/cell phone networks of today should be managed like the benevolent monopoly AT&T had when the land line telephone system was being developed. Now we have numerous providers each deploying duplicate networks, and it's no wonder we have some of the highest connectivity charges in the world! For what all of this cost, we could have had a solid fiber optic network nationwide, even to dead end rural shacks like this one.</RANT>

Unfortunately for kids, the figure skating style skates are all in very girly colors. I guess young boys aren't supposed to aspire to figure skating.

Well, there's always black boot dye...

 

[daugen]

Filled the UTV with a load of sticks but thankfully nothing big came down. Lot more still to be picked up.
Pleased with my install of the electric fence charger, it all worked, and started working right away.
I have a 2x3 foot roof surface, need to order a solar panel/charger now.\
Used a three inch piece of garden hose as a wall insulator, then put two rubber grommets inside it.
One rubber grommet for ground, mostly to keep the bugs out.

first of the potatoes are popping their heads up, likely to get frozen at some point, but they come back.
Variety of daffodils blooming.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Looks like your tulips are sprouting as well, Drew! Spring must be right around the corner.

Any idea what you'll do to protect the outside of the new shed? Cedar shakes would take a little more work, but are fun to install and are pretty much zero maintenance...

 

[hawkeye08]

I offered to let them put an antenna at the top of the hill on my property, but that wouldn't have addressed the line-of-sight problem. Then I offered to pay for a relay, and they turned that down, too. Not sure what else to do, other than start my own WiMax company.:confused2:......

It was so nice when we were finally able to get off the microwave internet (Motorola canopy system) that was over the 10 mile line of sight (11.3 miles). We had 512k service, lots of outages due to weather on the top of the mountain. We have WISP now, with relay a couple miles away. We seldom have an outage and get 10mb down, 4 up for $59/month. I was going to increase my speed to 20mb, but they eliminated that plan before I could. Next step is 15mb download, 5 up for $100/month. They are having to upgrade their whole network due to greatly increased traffic and start enforcing usage threshold. If I go over 600GB per month, I get billed extra, and at 1TB in a month, they notify me that I need to change plans.

Keep asking about new services, you will find one eventually that is big improvement. Do you have line of sight to another residence that does have a good internet service? Wireless can go 5 miles easy enough with the right equipment.

 

[daugen]

Looks like your tulips are sprouting as well, Drew! Spring must be right around the corner.

Any idea what you'll do to protect the outside of the new shed? Cedar shakes would take a little more work, but are fun to install and are pretty much zero maintenance...

it's almost 100 percent treated wood, was going to let it go gray actually. Though I do need to fix some openings in the roof with some spray foam insulation.

before I make it look "pretty" I'm going to replace the hinges and other hardware with stuff about three times heavier, these could have been used on a doll house...

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Keep asking about new services, you will find one eventually that is big improvement. Do you have line of sight to another residence that does have a good internet service? Wireless can go 5 miles easy enough with the right equipment.

There are two or three homes across the canyon from here, but the last thing I want to be is dependant on some third party for my Internet access. They move, have a bad day, there's a fire, or whatever, and there goes my access. I also believe there are restrictions imposed by whatever upstream cable/wifi provider might be chosen against sharing the signal to an off site location. To get around that, what do you do, pay for two drops at the same house? Sure wouldn't want to share my home network with a third party, either.

 

[freedomlives]

RNG-- you could indeed pay for a second drop, sign an agreement with those people letting you put a post on their property with the antenna and the hardware in a locked box for some nominal fee... Ultimately, we're all dependent on third parties!

From the time that the FreeDSL provider went under (cca 2000, 2001-- e.g. dotcom bust), my mother got Earthlink DSL and for some reason it just wasn't able to work. A neighbor about 200 yards away in her subdivision ran a server out of his house and had a T1 line, so for about 7 years there was an antenna on the roof of our house connected to a bridge, and a waterproof plywood box in a pine tree at his house with another bridge there.

But then he moved away, so now my mother's on ATT DSL. At least when she has problems, she may get lucky and end up talking to my friend, another American who married a Slovak and works at the ATT call center in Kosice. He tells me how often the people calling tell him things like "thank God I finally got through to an American"!