Monday, January 26, 2009

Internet Connection In The Country


Not a pretty picture for a Monday morning blog post. Not hardly! But with a sense of humor, thought it was fitting to tell about how we deal with weather out here, and internet satellite. Nothing new to some of you, in fact, many of you!

I remember the day when I had a black and white TV, no cable, no satellite, and I could still get 4 major channels tuned in on the old set. Never did I think I would live in a house in the country with two satellite dishes on the back of the house. Do you ever look at those things and think they make a house look like some sort of strange receiving station?

The guys wanted to put the dishes on the front of the house. Gulp. No way. I do not live in a mansion, but I thought it just was not a good idea!

We live "out there" but not so out there. DSL is 1/4 of a mile away. The report to us was, "No, never will be strung down your road." Okay...fine. We have a great high speed internet. I am very happy with it, however, when the clouds get heavy, guess what? No signal. The TV signal is a strong one. Normally we are under a tornado watch type of situation before we lose that puppy.

The forecast for the next several days includes heavy snow and possibly ice, through Wednesday A.M. . I looked at tonight's forecast online a bit ago, "Thickening and lowering clouds... ." Uh huh...that means no signal.

Dial up is another story. I can receive email, which means I stay in touch. When I receive an order, I can fill it, but there is not enough speed for the blog, website updates, or anything beyond email. So...we shall see.

Living in the country comes with its joys, and a few sacrifices, but I am very happy!

Today we are going to pick up some hay, grain, and a few other supplies, and then bunker in. I figure we will see warmer days in about 4 weeks, and I will definitely have that in mind! Spring is right around the bend! Perhaps I will get some more seed catalogs in the mail today!

6 comments:

Joanna@BooneDocksWilcox said...

glad y'all can work from home Mary especially in bad weather. I hope the internet holds.

I was watching YouTube last night, like 101 SoapMaking class. Takes a lot more supplies than I thought. I just want to do it for fun, maybe sell some at the Farmers Market, but looks like I have to make an $$$ investment.

What soapmaking technique do you use?

Anonymous said...

Oh, I know very well how that is Mary, LOL! We were finally able to get DSL in our area not too long ago either and our DSL is hooked up to our router though and we were finally able to find a phone company that said we were able to get DSL in our area and they didn't even have to come out to hook it up either, you just called them at the certain date and hook the DSL filters to your phone lines that you use the most and no busy lines now either since we got rid of our 2nd line. We only can get sattelite TV in our area though.

Mary Humphrey said...

Joanna, I use the CP soap making method. On my site map page there is a section called soap and bath products informational library, in that section are the sub titles soap making methods and ingredient library. You might find both of those helpful. The address to the site map is: http://www.anniesgoathill.com/sitemap.html . I wish we could link from comments!

Amy, Verizon does that type of hook up in our area, but not on our street. They can switch over without coming to the house, but not here. LOL.

Anonymous said...

LOL Mary, that's life in the country, see they won't deliver mail on our lane and the only we can have a mail box of course is on the other side of the road but we live on a Dangerous Intersection after all so we go and get our mail at the post office and we just recently opened up a box at the post office 3 miles down the road.

KathyB. said...

Mary, your situation ( and Amy's ) is pretty familiar to us too. It was only the last year when High speed internet was available to us. The blessings and pleasures of living in the boondocks far outweigh the disadvantages though and I can tell you wouldn't trade your life for anything!

Hunkering down for snow and cold weather....how goes the kidding around your place?

Mary Humphrey said...

Kathy, the boers have not started kidding yet. I see the beginnings of udders, but nothing that spells out immediate labor yet. I have a feeling they will go all at once. I am sure you have been in those shoes, several does in labor at once. One year I had 3 in labor, one needed a little bit of a pull. As I helped, I looked over and saw Annie shoot out 2 bucklings. She had been in labor too. :)