I'd just like to take this time to point out that I had nothing whatsoever to do with Anna's most recent prank on Scholl. I was not in the area at the time of the mailing, I did not examine the powerpoint before it was sent, and I in no way influenced the sender. Neither did I have anything to do with the pictures; it was not my malevolent roaming spirit which caused those pictures to be taken, nor did I have any operational mind-control satellites in orbit. I have not touched the infamous Judge since the last time Scholl hit me on the head with it. All pranksters incur wrath on their own heads, and there is no precedent for visiting the sins of the prankster on the heads of her friends.
Having said that, it sure was a funny powerpoint. Good job, Anna.
And now it's time for your regular Broadband For Ardith update. For a couple of weeks now, I have been hanging on tenterhooks while things move slowly towards us having something like a decent internet connection. Just about all that's available here in the middle of nowhere is something the incredibly intelligent people at our ISP call 'wireless'. It seems to have some sort of line-of-sight requirement concerning the tower they put up in a farm near the closest town. They put a receiver on your roof, and then shunt the connection down to your computer via USB. Not the most elegant solution, but it's supposed to work. I've never actually talked to CNS about this, so it's all word of mouth from my dad. But given that they decided limiting people's bandwidth was going to be too 'time-consuming', I'm willing to bet that they don't know all that much about it either.
It seems the guys from the ISP did actually come out to our place. However, they check line-of-sight by (1) Using their handy-dandy little GPS locator to determine our exact position and (2) Sending the coordinates on to somebody else who will supposedly get back with them in a day or two and tell them whether there are any hills in the way. Or something like that. Once again, I am amazed by their incredible sense of efficiency. I assume all this outsourcing is good for the economy, because otherwise there is no reason for this behaviour at all.
It's now been a week since this happened, and we're still waiting to see whether or not we among the Blessed. The Blessed being those who, unfettered by hills and other annoying topographical landmarks, have access to 2 T1 lines' worth of unpartitioned bandwidth. It's all very annoying, to be sure.
As it is now 11:00pm, I must be off to bed. My your sleep be comfortable, unless you work for CNS Internet, in which case the Curse of a Disgruntled Geek applies:
May your Internet connection always be slow and choppy, and may your dropped packets be plentiful. May your firewall have many gaping holes, and may those holes be found by enterprising young script-kiddies and black-hats alike. May your Windows boxes all show the BSOD, and the kernels of any Linux boxes immediately dump core. May your CPU fan(s) die, your harddrive heads crash, and your power supplies explode. May lightning strike your house and kill your UPS, modem, and anything else withing range. May God have mercy on your soul.
Posted by Ardith at June 19, 2003 11:11 PM