Week Retrospective
Jul. 15th, 2012 07:54 pmI missed posting here yesterday that ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wcg needed Hippie Birdbath wishes. So today it is Hippie Un-Birdbath.
I missed a whole week, in fact, due to connectivity problems here at the Ranch. We use a satellite connection to the Internet these days, because our land-line telephony provider took an excessively long time from a public promise date to actually provide DSL service to our rural area. The promise involved getting permission to raise their rates, overall, back following the '04 hurricane season. Then even when they did provide DSL to the area, the company persisted in insisting to me that they didn't, both via their web site and on service calls to a live person.
It's still somewhat up in the air as a matter of fact, something I'm discovering because with the end of the second year of our two year contract looming on the time-event horizon, I started investigating that DSL availability again.
However, that isn't what affected our connectivity issues here. At first I wondered if it involved that whole bit with the DNS Hackers announcement for Monday the ninth. Now following some trouble shooting I am leaning towards a bit simpler solution, technology. See, over the span of three days right around Monday Ninth July, we experienced a number of severe thunderstorms. During one of those storms across the span of 20 minutes or so we also experienced five interruptions in electrical service. The satellite modem and the wireless router both received their power through a surge protector, however even surge protectors will give it up to a nearby lightning strike.
And Houdini will tell you in no uncertain terms that the Sky Grumblers on that occasion hunted him quite earnestly. Some of those strikes occurred within a kilometer and a half or so.
Taking the router out of the loop restored the ability to connect to secure log-in sites. Things are still a tad slower than I'm used to, so it's possible the modem needs replacing too; I'll call the provider tech support line tomorrow and see about that. Meanwhile, the wireless router is gone, replaced for now with an ethernet switch. We weren't using the wireless anyway since the laptop died.
E-mail via a smartphone is good, so is browsing and reading. Posting via a smartphone isn't quite on the same level, though. So I lurked. A lot.
Getting ready for a photo session tomorrow, and working through pieces to go into Necronomicon this fall. Also time to register for the Williston Peanut Festival in October (not the same weekend as Necro). Session tomorrow will use the D70s, now back from the shop and all tuned up. Should be interesting. More later.
wcg needed Hippie Birdbath wishes. So today it is Hippie Un-Birdbath.I missed a whole week, in fact, due to connectivity problems here at the Ranch. We use a satellite connection to the Internet these days, because our land-line telephony provider took an excessively long time from a public promise date to actually provide DSL service to our rural area. The promise involved getting permission to raise their rates, overall, back following the '04 hurricane season. Then even when they did provide DSL to the area, the company persisted in insisting to me that they didn't, both via their web site and on service calls to a live person.
It's still somewhat up in the air as a matter of fact, something I'm discovering because with the end of the second year of our two year contract looming on the time-event horizon, I started investigating that DSL availability again.
However, that isn't what affected our connectivity issues here. At first I wondered if it involved that whole bit with the DNS Hackers announcement for Monday the ninth. Now following some trouble shooting I am leaning towards a bit simpler solution, technology. See, over the span of three days right around Monday Ninth July, we experienced a number of severe thunderstorms. During one of those storms across the span of 20 minutes or so we also experienced five interruptions in electrical service. The satellite modem and the wireless router both received their power through a surge protector, however even surge protectors will give it up to a nearby lightning strike.
And Houdini will tell you in no uncertain terms that the Sky Grumblers on that occasion hunted him quite earnestly. Some of those strikes occurred within a kilometer and a half or so.
Taking the router out of the loop restored the ability to connect to secure log-in sites. Things are still a tad slower than I'm used to, so it's possible the modem needs replacing too; I'll call the provider tech support line tomorrow and see about that. Meanwhile, the wireless router is gone, replaced for now with an ethernet switch. We weren't using the wireless anyway since the laptop died.
E-mail via a smartphone is good, so is browsing and reading. Posting via a smartphone isn't quite on the same level, though. So I lurked. A lot.
Getting ready for a photo session tomorrow, and working through pieces to go into Necronomicon this fall. Also time to register for the Williston Peanut Festival in October (not the same weekend as Necro). Session tomorrow will use the D70s, now back from the shop and all tuned up. Should be interesting. More later.
