Phoney day

Unfortunatly I spent a large portion of today waiting for a phone repair man who never showed up. This is the sixth time a repairman called for the trouble on my line has neglected to actually visit the site of the problem (this guy seems to have gotten lost); it's all massively incompetant, and a collassal pain. Thank you Sprint for the dozens of lost hours, and the raised blood pressure. I am eagerly awating some future day when I drop POTS service completly.

Last night I researched alernatives. I don't think cable reaches out here, really, but I sent them a ping. DSL is right out while the telephone line sound resembles a CB radio on a crouded channel. Besides, the CO is probably 5 miles away. Interestingly, satellite providers seem to support linux these days, but on the other hand at least one of them is rumored to be going under, and there are tons of horror stories of it ending up slower than dialup, and of obscene usage caps and similar problems. There is no cell phone reception here due to topographic issues. The nearest WISP is at least 15 miles away, and I have never picked them up closer than 10 miles from here. Hm, not many options. OTOH, I regularly see maximum speeds of 700 bps down (up has no real problems), so I have to do something.

Chainsawing is not as satisfying as using an axe as a way to work off excess aggression after another bout with the telco, but at least I got half of the big logs sawed into smaller logs. Dinner was a reasonable stir fry. Most of the snow has melted off and I guess it will be a warm night, mid 30's (F), so I'm not bothering with a fire after all that chainsawing. Sigh, I had meant to go out hiking in the snowy woods while it lasted, but beta2 and the telco have eaten all my time lately.