We're Entering the 21st Century!

You're never going to believe this ....

We're going to get set up with high speed internet at the house.

They better buy winter jackets down below, is all I'm saying.

No, the wonderful optical cable they laid right past our front door is not live. And although we are digital call capable (whatever that means) they can't (won't?) pipe internet through there. In the end, we went with an affordable thingy through our phone company. At least, it's as or more affordable than satellite we've looked into in the past. And yes, satellite is not nearly as awesome or fast as optical cable, but it's going to be a lot faster than anything we have at home at the moment.

I'm sure I'll still hop on down to the library to use the Wifi there. I love the library, and the connection will be faster than it is at home. The big difference will be that I'll be able to post blog entries from home (yay! -- we still haven't figured out what the problem is with the sign-in from home, boo) which means I'll be posting more often. And when I finish a project at home, I won't have to wait until the library is open, or cave and go to my favorite Wifi-enabled pub and eat eat eat for four hours while I get my stuff done.

Once we're live I'll get a wifi router and ... I can hardly contain my excitement ... I won't have to relocate when I'm ready to publish a book or send out an email with a big attachment (or make the attachment so tiny it's useless.) This will modestly increase my productivity, and lower gas and eating-out expenditures. Hard to say whether we'll come out ahead yet, but we'll see.

Redecorating my software

The Jasmine mini-me is dead, long live Lark!

Actually, I've been calling the laptop Lark from the beginning, but now it's definitely come into its own.  Which means I'll be calling Easystreet again.  I was sadly disappointed to find that their set up page for email is still woefully blank.  I know they're busy.  But dang!

Just as well.  I like talking to the techs.  Especially on Sundays.  The tech says it's odd for him to get more than four phone calls for his Sunday shift.  But I'll be calling on a Friday, so I may have to wait for a little bit.  I'll see if I can get him to email me the set up so I can print it out and put it in my binder of all things netty.  I tend to write down the protocols only spottily while the tech is directing me around, because I'm busy typing and I handwrite slowly.  And then, inevitably, I lose the paper I wrote on.  Maybe this time I'll get smart and just open a Word doc and type it out on the confuter itself.

It occurs to me that the page may be void of relevant data because it would just make it that much easier for hackers.  So maybe it's deliberate.  But then they shouldn't tease us poor users with a setup link!

In the meantime I'm stuck on webmail.  Bleh.  At least it's lightning quick for sending and receiving email, even ones with big attachments.  It's almost like I'm not on dialup.  It even uploads my attachments super-fast.  Weird.  But good.

Tomorrow, I'll give myself time to play between paying bills and helping with programming to put up a new desktop image and all that.  But I won't spend too much time on it.  Have to budget time for writing too, and housework, and gardening.  It's that time of year to get all the duckies in a row, because it's no fun clearing out the garden or taking trash to the dump in cold, wet rain.

Stressy!

Stressed.  Aggravated.  I may end up spending money today and I didn't want to do that.  Maybe I'll do okay surrounded by all the shiny new fun products because I'll be a reluctant customer.  When I'm an eager customer I often want the biggest, brightest and newest and then settle for something that's a step down.  Not today.  Boy, definitely not today.

Jasmine is having DVD/CD drive issues.  Hopefully it's something simple, something easy.  Regardless, I think it's under warrantee still (I may extend the warrantee today!) so that's fine.  It's just that I'm in the middle of several projects and not having the big machine for them is going to set me back.  Also, I'll lose email contact with my beloved.  Well, I guess I can borrow someone's machine or use one in the library.  Anyway.  It's a bother and my back's up, never a good sign.  After breakfast and bill paying I'll feel better.

Wait, I never feel better after bill paying!

Actually, in this case I will.  I'll have that credit card back to zero and I won't have that unconscious, well, semi-conscious feeling that I'm going to spend the household into oblivion and we'll lose everything because of me.

No pressure.

--

And in the middle of this he calls and the whole world is better!  I know I'm not shouldering anything alone but sometimes I get caught up and end up with tunnel vision.

So I'm going to go get the computer fixed and keep an open mind and maybe come home with a new computer.  If not, I'll have talked to him today and it'll only be two or three days without home computing.  I doubt I'll blog in that time, even if I make it down to the library or to a friend's house, but you never know.  

The Return

Well, it looks like it's official. The Nanopubye blog is dead, toast, gone, entirely inaccessible, even possibly deleted. I've emailed the webmaster for the site and maybe, just maybe, it got archived, but she said on the front page that she archived the *forums*, saying nothing of the dozen or so blogs that were reasonably active there.

Too bad, I guess.

Which means I'll have to employ brand new skills and increasing levels of craftiness in order to do what I love the most--create illustrated and entertaining full color posts on a very outdated computer--on this blog. It'll be a challenge. Sometimes I can access some of the pic-sites, sometimes I can't. We're talking one day I can access site X and do whatever and the next I can't, which brings to mind an image of a MIB-style operative smiling as he sees that I've logged online and holding his finger over two keys, one saying grant access, the other saying deny access, and the finger waggles between the two like a weird caterpiller. Hey, I might even be able to post movies, or links to them, eventually, as I get this all figured out. If so, y'all definitely got to see the puppies playing in the snow when they were tiny.

Tiny no more. The puppies have grown into seven month olds, aka white horses.

But I digress.

So this is the officially semi-new full time Kami blog, which may be a yay or a boo depending on your POV. Catch ya later!