it's alive!

My Internet service, that is.

Last week I told my landlord about my Internet access problem, and that I thought the weeping cherry tree in the yard was the likely offender. He said he'd check into getting it taken care of, and to remind him if he didn't do so.

A few days ago I sent him an email, from my remote access point at the Cruso Community Center, to remind him and fill him in on some neighborhood news; today he showed up to cut the grass. He called a fellow he referred to as a "squirrel" who climbed the tree and trimmed some limbs with a chainsaw tied to his waist.

At first, he was taking out limbs too low on the tree to have any effect. I stood by the door with my laptop, browser open to the modem's status page, updating the page repeatedly. After a while I went out to the dish and did a line-of-sight check; I showed him which limbs I had been suspecting all along. He cut them, and the modem eventually came most of the way up. Signal strength was triple what it had been, and all red flags on the status page had been cleared. Signal-to-noise ratios rose to satisfactory levels.

The only remaining problem was the modem's Turbo function, which was not functioning. It wasn't red-flagged, but was "idle".

I rebooted my computer and. when it came back up, my Internet was fully functional. No, not like Commander Data! Get your mind out of the gutter. But I did have full and uninterrupted access.

Suddenly I am connected to the world again. It's been a quiet month or so, but I've been working a lot anyway. 50 hours each for the last two weeks, and they both come in one check. I'll be broke again just as quickly but I'll be closer to caught up.