October 24, 2002

I'm back, folks.

And the reason why I was MIA from my own website is actually multifaceted.

First - I've moved.

No more being a slave to the traffic light. No more sour faces and obscene gesturing on the always congested freeway. No more longingly staring at real estate ads. No more heavy sighing at the sight of Sonoma County housing prices. Adieu throbbing sea of noise and exhaust - howdy remote and wild Central Oregon!

Can you really blame me?

Second - getting internet access 30 miles outside of Bend has proven to be somewhat of a challenge.
Ok, that's the Understatement of the Century. It's damn near impossible.

DSL? Not a chance. Maybe in a year or so. And only if Qwest (the one and only local phone company around here) decides in a flurry of sudden customer concern to update their phone lines so that human beings can actually harness the power of this novel innovation and *hear* eachother talk on the phone. (I've had an annoying buzz in the line for 3 months now.) Not likely though. Not with *that* customer service record.

Cable then maybe? Ha! Never mind the fact that I have cable running less than 200 feet from my house - I just can't find anybody who is willing to deliver service to it.

Dial-up possibly? Yes, but the prospect is bleak. The ISPs who were willing to even talk to me told me in hushed voices full of pity that if I was lucky, I might be able to expect a 28k connection. I felt like a patient who had gone to the doctor for a nagging headache and was told that it really was an alien virus eating my brain instead and I could expect maybe another 2 weeks of sanity. Hurray.

Then finally a dim light in the dark. Satellite! Yes! Direcway said: "You can get internet access anywhere in the world with this new and wonderful technology - as long as you have clear sight of the Southern sky." (I do! I do!) They promised 500k speed, unlimited hours, always-on connection.

My cheerful giddyness quickly overruled the painful stab of the price tag ($579 for hardware and installation, plus $59/month; or payments of $99/month for a year, then $59/month), but as there was no other alternative I happily bit the bullet.

Needless to say - my experience up to now has been far from the fairy tale they sold me on. But as I've actually been continually connected today for a total length of over 7 hours, I'm refusing to jinx it and reserve the "Toothsweateningly scary tale of yet another tech support adventure" for another blog entry in the near future.

And finally - and to no small part - my return to blogging has been sparked by a surprising number of strangers emailing me about my "Computer Hell" tale from a few months ago.

So alrighty then. I get the message.