Less Traveled

A pleasant and less traveled trail along a east running ravine at my place.

I’ve been on that ‘road less traveled. for a little more than a year. It’s been rough and rewarding. It’s been a good while since I’ve subjected unsuspecting web crawlers to my self-absorbed drivel. It looks like their luck may have taken a turn for the worse.

Now that I’ve got the electrons working (mostly) the way the developers intended (vice the way the hackers and other sundry villains had devised), I’ll soon be exercising the keyboard once again. I say mostly working because I’m still constrained by my satellite dependent ISP whose speed can quite literally be measured as a baud rate.

After more than 2 years of phone messaging and unanswered emails to Loretto Telecom, they called me out of the blue 3 weeks ago and said they were laying fiber optic cable and asked if I would I be interested. They have three plans 250, 500 and 1,000 Mbps (both ways). the 250 is $55 monthly and I’d owe another 20 bucks for phone service. I’m over 100 monthly with Hughes.net now and the last time I checked the speed it was 1 Mbps. And, oh bye the way, it doesn’t work in the rain.

At first I thought that installation charges were going to eat me up as they will need to run the fiber underground from the edge of my property to the cabin: 2300 feet. They said that it cost 85 cents a foot for every foot over 400 from the property line. After a few exchanges we agreed on 600 free feet if my daughter and SIL signup as well. I don’t know how they can dig a trench, run the fiber and fill it back in for 85 cents a foot but they assured me that was the installed price. Once in, we will owe for 1700 feet (2300-600) times 85 cents divided between me and the SIL. That’s a little more than $700 each. Sign me up!

Along the bank of Second Creek (the first creek east of Wilson Dam).

Anyway, I’ll soon be back from the road less traveled and be able to post with reasonable certainty that the site won’t ‘time-out’ before my electrons work their magic.

2 Replies to “Less Traveled”

  1. Welcome back Gary, I’ve missed your ramblings & photos. Nice story about your travails Re: Internet fiasco, I can relate. I too am somewhat “off grid”. My lectric is supplied by Solar panels, Grid power was roughly $60,000 all said and done, solar came in at $14,000 for 2 systems, one for house & one for well 680 ft away. Internet is a wee slo and is provide by “majic”. But like I perceive your sanctuary to be – Quiet and peaceful, with ability to let the insane world pass you by, grabbing only what you perceive as necessary and worthwhile.

    1. You seem to have made it out a little further from the lunatics than I was able to get. If the grid goes down, I’m down along with it. Thanks for the kind words.

      Garry

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