I'm at home downloading hundreds of megabytes of stuff. This is the first time I've been in position of "at home" + "reasonably fast internet" since I moved here in 2012. It's weird!

While I was renting here, I didn't mind dialup much. In a way it helps to focus the mind and build interesting stuff. But since I bought the house, the prospect of only dialup at home ongoing became more painful.

While I hope to get on the fiber line that's only a few miles away eventually, I have not convinced that ISP to build out to me yet. Not enough neighbors. So, satellite internet for now.

Dish seems well aligned, speed varies a lot, but is easily hundreds of times faster than dialup. Latency is 2x dialup.

The equipment uses more power than my laptop, so with the current solar panels, I anticipate using it only 6-9 months of the year. So I may be back to dialup most days come winter, until I get around to adding more PV capacity.

It seems very cool that my house can capture sunlight and use it to beam signals 20 thousand miles into space. Who knows, perhaps there will even be running water one day.