Month: June 2013

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The Best Morning In Quite a While

I cannot believe how cold it was last night. I should have just plugged in the electrical blanket, low batteries be damned. Neelix spent the night under one layer of blankets huddled against my spine. I can’t believe it’s early June!

Neelix did something last night that made me a little sad. He kneaded my back before settling in for the night. He’s never done that before, but Tabitha did it all the time and it’s probably what I miss most about her. Cats who were weaned too soon usually knead. It means that they see you as a parent figure. I miss my girl.

It’s still cold this morning, but there is SUN. Now, my property sucks for boondocking of the solar variety (trees plus hills means very little direct sunshine), so I’ve conceded that power needs to happen soon rather than later (and would likely be cheaper than getting a generator). But I’m getting a charge, albeit a small one. Truth be told, I’m sick of boondocking and look forward to running water and power.

As for the internet, it is WORKING. I had another huge job waiting in my folder this morning, broken into three parts. I downloaded the smallest file while I made coffee, then started working on it while the other two downloaded. The big one just finished. No frustration, no rebooting the Mifi 50 billion times, no running outside to adjust the antenna. I just turned on all my equipment and got to work. I am so pleased.

Sun, good coffee, working internet, and loads of work. Sounds like a perfect morning to me.

I don’t want to finish at 11PM again today, so I’m hunkering down to type.

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I Feel Like Jinxing Myself

I don’t think I’ve ever written explicitly about how much I hate getting online in the U.S. with my Verizon phone. In fact, I think that will shock some of you since I have always expressed satisfaction with internet in the U.S. Well, the fact is that the Mac version of VZ access manager, the app that lets you dial the phone and establish a connection to the net, is the demon spawn of the dude who wrote the coding for Windows 95. I have never seen such a buggy piece of software. In fact, it is so bad, that it truly crashes Mac in that it freezes everything and requires such a hard reboot that it breaks the hard drive. I can normally go months without having to repair my hard drive, but I need to do it once a day in the States because of VZ access manager. It is just a crappy piece of software and the developer is unreachable. Verizon can’t do much about that. More sophisticated Mac users have come up with roundabout ways of connecting without using the software. I plan to read up on the methods and try a different route next year.

All that was to say that dealing with VZ access manager was better than the internet connection I’ve had here for the last few weeks… until today. I’m hoping that’s clear enough context to illustrate my frustration. I could deal with the VZ access manager mess because it was predictable and I knew how to fix it and that I’d be back online shortly. Not so here.

Once I got online this morning after bringing the antenna down closer to ground level, I had only one major drop all day and one very minor drop. By major, I mean the internet, being sentient, shut down once I realized it needed to if I was to get any work done and came back at exactly the moment I was honestly do for a break. If that’s not proof of sentience, I don’t know what is. And then the Mifi went dormant a few minutes ago, but the connection started immediately after I rebooted. I was even able to seamlessly stream an episode on Netflix during a raging downpour! In other words, this has been my least frustrating day on internet since Dallas, where I was using Ms. Cinnamon’s connection. Things are looking up!

I’m taking bets that I’ll be posting from the hill tomorrow morning. 😀

And with that, I’m off to bed. It has been a very long and cold transcription day and my finger joints hurt.

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Like an Onion

Montana just sent ‘extreme southern Saskatchewan’ nasty cold rain. It is FREEZING out there. This is what a frozen transcriptionist looks like:

frozen transcriptionist

She is wearing two pairs of socks, leggings, a long heavy skirt, a long-sleeved tee-shirt, a fleece hoodie, a sweatshirt hoodie, and fingerless gloves! This is acceptable, even expected, attire for boondocking beween, say, November and May. It is NOT acceptable for the beginning of June!

(no, I do not normally dress to match the decor of my office)

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Rather Counter-Intuitive

Not only was there no internet this morning, I couldn’t even connect to the Mifi, which told me I was having Mifi problems more than internet problems. I yanked the battery from it and restarted about 10 times and then I could connect to it. But still no internet. So I went up the hill, and good thing I did because I just made the deadline to pick up a nice amount of work for today.

Back home, I again tried to connect. The weather is crappy yet again (could we please have some heat if not sun?), lots of thick clouds, so I was going to give up. Then I had an epiphany.

My signal strength has always been more decent lower to the ground than higher! I had a generally more decent signal with the stubby antenna stuck on the truck roof than I ever did with the big antenna as high up as it can go.

So I brought the antenna to almost ground level. It’s stuck to the top step of my magnetic step ladder. And I am online. It’s not a great connection, so no picture of the setup, but I may be able to send my project to the client without having to get back into the truck. And that’s enough to make me less cranky today.

I’m wondering if the power line could be causing some interference? Or maybe the line of sight is downwards?

In unrelated news, I got home from the hill to find a ginormous bright yellow bag on one of the chairs by the door. Inside, was deliciousness: a kazillion stalks of fresh rhubarb. I’m finishing this assignment, them I’m off to make compote!

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I’m a Chump

Bell Mobility set a trap for me and I fell for it. They lured me back because of their large mobile bandwidth package and now I’m stuck dealing with them for two years. The money isn’t the issue and neither is the technical service. Their ‘customer service’ is. I cannot believe it is still this bad almost 10 years after I stopped dealing with them.

It has taken all morning, but I am finally able to log on and see my account. And SURPRISE. Even though the account data on the Mifi is set for a 1st to 1st billing cycle, the billing cycle is actually 13th to 13th. So I thought I had reset to 0 yesterday and I am actually 9.5GB into the billing cycle with 11 days to go. Now, I know that 4GB will get me through the next week and a half as long as I block Netflix, but what if I hadn’t noticed that? I would have had overages.

Next, the chat rep I got the second time around (who was fine and quite helpful) insists that my current bill is due the 13th, not tomorrow, no matter what the website claims. He says that it says the 3rd so that people will pay by then and guarantee the payment lands on the 13th. We’ll see if he’s right.

The only good news is that I didn’t get charged the activation fee. I was told that I would likely be charged it and have to pay, then wait for another invoice or two to get a credit.

I’m so tired of their bullshit.