So before I get too far into this post, I should note that I found the 10PM weather report from Tuesday night’s newscast (click the link). In it (about half way through) is the mention of the 8.5″ in Donnelly.
Oddly enough, in today’s Morris paper, there was also the mention of 8.5″ by the NWS. So my question as to ‘who’s the NWS representative in Donnelly’ still stands.
Today was one of those weird days. For starters, there was 8 inches of snow through which one needed navigate to get to work. That wasn’t too bad, actually. But to be nice (it’d have been a real pain in the ass for Beth to try digging her own car out), I made a path down the driveway with my pickup, then cleaned off her car and backed it out of the driveway, turned it around, and backed it up to the house (so she could drive straight out when she came to town in the morning). So that took an extra half-hour of my morning up right there. I’m not complaining, but it’s something I should’ve done on Tuesday evening as opposed to Wednesday morning.
Kirstin’s birth announcement was in today’s paper as well (finally). It only took two calls (and an email) to get that business straightened out. It turns out that somewhere between point A and B (being the hospital and newspaper office, respectively) the lines got crossed and the information became lost in the shuffle. Since I took care of it on Monday, it was well within time for Wednesday’s deadline and now the world (or at least a portion thereof) knows. 🙂
Anyway, returning back to the rest of the day. My drive in to town this morning was less than fun. Under that 8″ snowfall was at least a half-inch of ice and compacted snow. It made for a slow drive (but wasn’t terrible — I’ve driven in far worse before). But I can believe that yesterday and last night had the warning (see previous post about stuff from MN/DOT) about no travel advised. On the bright side, by the time I managed to come home, road conditions were significantly improved. There were/are still spots, but at least it’s not the whole road anymore.
So now we’ll hopefully get a slow and gradual melt/thaw of this freshly fallen snow. That would be a Good Thing.
In other news, I’m considering sending a bitchy email to the HughesNet folks. Maybe I’m more tuned into it than I used to be (it’s possible, because I am actually using the Internet more often in the last month or so than I used to), but I have noticed with increasing frequency slight problems with the Internet service here. They don’t tend to last long (generally things are straightened out within an hour), but they’re related to something with their network operations center. Specifically, something with the web proxying business that speeds up content delivery (they call it Web Acceleration).
See, the problem I’ve been having (or noticing) is related to this functionality. The signal is still good; everything is in working order (and in many cases other non-web/http functionality continues to work (e.g. email transmission)), but if that Web Acceleration is disabled or not operating properly, loading http content is worse than the slowest analog modem connection that I can ever remember. NOTHING goes through.
Don’t get me wrong, I actually like HughesNet’s service by and large. When it works, it works pretty well and consistently. It’s horrible for some things (FTP is a real nightmare at times, and direct terminal (SSH) connections have the latency problem due to the satellite link), and I could do without the $60 monthly bill for said service (I think it’s a rip-off, but it’s my only reasonable option), but it works…and works pretty well for 90+% of what I need. But lately the downtime has always taken place (so it seems) when I’m in the middle of something. And since it’s not due to signal problems, which are out of anyone’s control, I am a little less patient for a solution to come around.
I’m not in the right mood to complain about it right now, but if it continues to happen much more, I’m going to do some complaining. It won’t likely do much good, but it always makes me feel better. 🙂
Anyway, that’s about all I can think of to ramble about, so I’ll leave it at that and bid thee farewell, for now.
Until next time…
–MZ