Saturday, July 25, 2009

On-Line Again

One of the joys of living in a rural paradise is getting away from all the many ills and problems associated with our modern society. Unfortunately, you also are far from all the modern conveniences urban dwellers take for granted.

Almost three weeks ago, my Lovely Bride was trying to connect to the Internet using our usual dial up connection. She was unable to get past a chronically "busy" message, and told me I needed to call and investigate. After quietly checking to make sure I had remembered to pay the bill, I gave the ISP a call. The short version of their tale was that the company they had obtained access to most of the smaller hill country towns through had suddenly, and without any warning, gone out of business and no replacement was available.

A few calls and a check of the local yellow pages revealed few options for Internet service in our neck of the woods. The only way to have any sort of broadband access out where we reside is via satellite. Several neighbors reported having good luck with WildBlue, and so a visit was made to their local installer to review what would be needed to get connected to the rest of the world once again. Equipment was ordered and after a week, a couple of "professional installers" appeared and got us hooked up. If you are interested in how professional these installers were, you need to visit with the L.B.. I'm not sure she was terribly impressed, but everything seems to work okay. Not the fastest connection I've used, but a lot faster than our old dial up.

We managed to keep our old email address, so nobody has to learn anything new or make any changes to address books. It's good to be back.

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