On Satellites and Cosmic(?) Karma
I live on a dirt road a few miles outside Nowhere, WV. Nearest neighbor is about a quarter mile away, etc. I have to drive about 5 or 6 miles for groceries and/or beer.
My chunk of ridge is beautiful regardless of the season. Wild animals galore with hunting and fishing on my patch. Gardening is doable with a little care, we have adequate sun and rainfall, etc. About 30 acres for hay and/or livestock… about 40 acres is woods. We have a private natural gas well.
It’s important to understand the pastoral nature of my lifestyle for perspective.
We have frequent power outages so we have two backup generators. We have 4 sources for water, and 3 sources for heating/cooking. Our land-line telephones are pretty dependable, but we also have marginally effective cell service. We have satellite TV and a few off–air channels.
And we have satellite internet! We’re used to outages from rain or snow. Of course the weather is a known quantity.
Yesterday morning THAT satellite turned away from earth AND my dish!
I sat out under the stars last night and pondered the meaning of events. Yesterday I got my truck fixed and got the parts to fix my old riding mower… it should have been a plus day, but I have lingering concerns that karma was telling me something?
The internet problem was fixed this AM, but still somewhere in the cosmos an quark or something changed its state and a satellite got momentarily lost. Was it something I did?
Category: Geezer Alert!
Yeah sure Zero, it’s all about you. Methinks a little bit of cabin fever is creeping in and if that is the case it is going to be along winter.
Oh look “The Shining” is on tv.
That or its that fresh WV country air…..
My suggestion – don’t over think it.
Is your provider Wild Blue?
There was a coronal mass ejection from the Sun. They make people anxious and knock out satellites.
Coronal Mass Ejection…. Does the VA consider that a service connected disability? And can’t you take Viagra to cure it?
Zabdu,
I don’t know about Zero but I only have a limited education, ya gotta keep it simple.
“There was a coronal mass ejection from the Sun. They make people anxious and knock out satellites.”
Iow, the sun farted
2-17AirCav #4: Yep.
Zabdu #5: I knew about the CME. Maybe IT was aimed at me and missed… hitting the satellite? Is that what you’re suggesting?
Well, brother, there you go! Say no more. Your problem I share. I cannot tell you (and don’t have to) how many times I’ve wanted to tear my dish from the house and toss it in the Opequon. Nobody else suffers like Wild Blue users. Nobody! Just google “Wild Blue Sucks” and take a look at the hits. And before someone asks the reasonable question of why we don’t switch providers, the answer is it’s Wild Blue or dial up. There are no other choices in the hinterlands.
No sympathy from this quarter. Don’t you realize the REASON you move away from town is to get OFF the grid, not see if you can take it with you when you go???
Geez, you sound like the Californians who moved about 7 miles outside of town here, to the middle of the Rocky Mountains, and then moved away the next spring because “Pizza Hut wouldn’t deliver where they lived.” Oh, and they got snowed in in the winter. Gee, who’d have thunk it??
PN #10: No. no, no! I know where I live and love it. Hell, I planned it from the beginning.
Thing is… This satellite turned away from me, and then was turned back.
There MUST be a reason? I’m not particularly religious, but I do believe in karma.
Ahhhh, now I understand.
There are two possible meanings. Either it was a technical/mechanical malfunction, or it wasn’t.
If it was, you may safely forget it happened.
If it wasn’t…you will be contacted by emissaries of the mothership shortly.
Now, doesn’t that make you feel better?
PN #12: True, but boring.
Zero and AirCav, can you get HughesNet? Disclaimer, I know nothing about them, other than the ads I see on DirecTV. Nothing about the cost or anything else.
UpNorth #14: Had HughesNet here first. It sucked worse. Both it and Wild Blue have band width usage limitations. They vary, but can be a pain.
OTOH, there is DSL coming via land line. One leg ended about a mile away down one side of the ridge. My leg comes the other way and is to be done “real soon now”. I was told that almost a year ago?? Twice as fast as satellite – no latency – no bandwidth limitations (yet) and no weather outages.
Aside: I’m one of those survival nuts one reads about. I have layers of contingency plans for everything that really matters.
you know Zero, you oughtta find that ass Murphy and beat the snot out of him.
Zero, despite the “spotty” internet, everything else sounds great.
…I’m a bit jealous.
Zero, if you think the arrival of DSL will be your salvation I hate to be the one to break it to you but you will still suffer outages, spotty service and loss of service due to weather also. Maybe not as frequently as satellite but still enough to be annoying. There are days when my service is non existent or drops in and out so much as to be more irritating then just being unavailable all together. And I live in the burbs.
I started with DSL from AT&T which was just the worst. Switched to the service from my cable provider, which while faster and more reliable at times still has me exercising my best drill sergeant impersonation on the poor hapless Peggy customer service person on the other end of the phone.
But such is technology and sometimes I need only think back to that loud scratchy connection sound with the boing, boing sound followed by the cheery “You’ve got mail” greeting to realize how far we have come.
@#15, Yeah, same here, I can look out my picture window and see the line carrying Charter Comm. to my neighbors. Also Verizon, however they won’t come down my dead-end dirt road, because……it’s a dead end road!!!!!
I’m within the area for their service, but they refuse to run a line. It may have to do with me cancelling their land line when the cell towers began popping up around us.
We finally got broadband service out here, so they can stick it.
Karma. Yeah, that’s it…