I haven’t blogged today mainly because I’m so tired from getting things done that needed doing. The best is that after much struggle and endless calls, being on hold, and trying to explain what we want, we got rural internet installed so maybe I can actually Zoom successfully and, oh, maybe, watch something streaming???
There’s the thing that communicates with the cell tower.
Even once Josh the installer guy got here it wasn’t easy. We really are NOT near any good cell towers (as I knew). Josh wandered around looking for them, since this is line-of-sight rural broadband.
Where is that tower?
After he finally found a tower and put up whatever that is at the top of this post, Josh drilled a big hole in my house (eek) and used a cool glow-in-the-dark stick to pull cable in. Voila!
What’s that guy doing?
You’d think I’d be all set, but of course I had to run into a snag. The software to register the modem was all messed up, plus it wouldn’t accept my magical code. I had to get through three calls with three helpful but confusing people, then suddenly a different page displayed and I got in. No idea what happened but I’ll accept it.
Thanks, Josh.
There’s more. But I’ll save it for tomorrow. I have to get ready for my riding lesson tomorrow.
What a day! Halfway through the lovely morning, the monthly allotment of my hotspot was reached. Insert sad music here, because I got this message:
AT&T Free Msg: You have used 100% of your 30GB of mobile hotspot high-speed data for this bill period. Mobile hotspot data will be slowed to a max speed of 128Kbps until 03/24/2021. Go to http://www.att.com/myATTUsage to track your data use.
Text to me from the phone people
Uh. That speed meant I could sort of load a Facebook page. But I could not Zoom, I couldn’t load my kanban cards, I couldn’t do much of anything.
So, the first part of the rest of the day was spent on the phone trying to get me some gigabytes! We had to figure out how our devices worked and what we had. That was complicated. The phone lady said we really needed to go to a physical store.
Glad I’m vaccinated, because we had to go to a store! But it was a good one, still limiting people in it. After more figuring stuff out, we ended up getting Precious Internet Device.
That’s the box it came in. The flowers show my true love.
Since PID also means pelvic inflammatory disease, I’m calling Precious Internet Device “Piddy.” I love Piddy.
Happily internetting away.
It took no time at all to get it working. Now we have the ability to go online, Zoom, and do work. I’m so relieved. It’s like a huge weight off my shoulders. I don’t think I realized how much my wonky online access was stressing me out until it no longer was!
Of course, this is my life, so a new issue HAD to arise immediately. I’d mentioned that my phone screen was cracked. The phone store guy (who was so much like us that it made shopping okay) said he thought only the plastic protector was damaged.
I took off the case, and could not remove the plastic, so the guy tried it. He took one look at my phone and said, “You seem to have a damaged phone here.”
Sure enough, with the case off, the phone began to expand! Eek! The case was separating!
Those metal things should be inside the case. And the phone should be thinner.
It appears that the battery is expanding. I’m waiting for it to go boom now. Thank goodness I can now connect the phone to WiFi overnight and get it all backed up in time to transfer my stuff over to the new phone that’s coming tomorrow.
I’m glad I got the phone insurance! They even discounted it because we’d paid so much in. Now, however, I’m ready for my technological issues to take a hiatus.
The Hermits' Rest 