oh so THIS is broadband!

For those who don't know how these things are defined, apparently the regulatory body incharge of such things defines a broadband connection as being over 400kpbs for download and upload. My connection speed all these many months has been about 200 for download and as low as 27 for upload. Not technically broadband, but better than the 19.2kbps I was getting on dial up so I was not complaining.....not too much anyway. OK I was complaining, but complaining about my internet is just what I do. It's my *thing*. Everyone has a thing, I'm sure you do to if you think about it. There are worse things to complain about than your internet connection I am sure. But back to the matter at hand. We now have a blight on our landscape in the form of a 50ft pole and assorted guide ropes that results in me surfing at 557kbps download and 463kbps upload. DAMN! I'm surfing the DET contest gallery and pages are loading at incredible speed! Of course I am also perched on an upended milk crate in my badly lit junk room with my laptop on a wonky table, but I have 557kbps! And then there is the whole blight issue.... it's not a blight to 99.8% of the area. It's obscured from the road by trees and the curvy dipping nautre of the road. The house on our side of the street to our right might be seeing it, but maybe not, hard to tell given the distance. The folks who built the new log cabin across the road can certainly see it and it does sort of dominate that area of the yard from our perspective, especially as you come up the drieway but is mostly hidden from our veiw when we are in the 'play area' of our yard. If this weren't the country I am sure something would be said about it. Something may still be said about it by the folks in the new cabin, but maybe not. The think just *looks* like a radio tower, a short one, but still. I'm thinking since cell coverage sucks around here I might contact Cingular or Verizon & offer to rent them space on my pole for $100 a month (which is damn cheap BTW). It's up high enough to provide a decent range to an extender. :)

DH has gone into the office to get the proper equipment to make the pole official. The right bolts, weatherproof boxes, stronger rope and enough cable that I can move out of the junk room and back to my desk in the living room. So life is good at the moment. They are predicting thunderstorms off & on the next 48 hours. We'll see what have the antenna up above those pesky trees does about signal loss during storms. This one is supposed to be better at not icing up than the one on our short pole. I hope so, because I could reach it on the short pole to knock the ice off. I can't to that with the new one.