The Trials and Tribulations of Internet Access

 Ah, this rural life. For almost five years, we had no internet connection out here.

The tower-and-receiver-based service we were using when we first moved in became extremely unreliable, as the racist, sexist, bigoted, ignorant old hillbilly who provided it decided that an Xbox, UNPLUGGED FROM THE WALL, was somehow using too much bandwidth. He was able to remotely view exactly what we were looking at (and did it often; and told us what perverted things our neighbors were looking at, so I know this is something he spent a great deal of time doing), but was convinced we were circumventing his system, somehow. We were not. And we made sure to look up as much of the most disturbing porn we could just to piss him off before he disconnected us. Good riddance. He kept trying to sell us broken equipment anyway, and claimed we were somehow allowing it to get damaged within an hour of him installing it. Nope. Come get your crap, we're done here.

He never did come to get it, and we've left it on the roof, as our house is very tall, and on a high hill. Each time he comes to the neighborhood for another customer, I hope it fills his heart with joy to see the extra-large tripod he convinced us to install at the very end of our relationship, but we refused to pay for until it gave us results. It never did. But it's still there if he wants it. Along with the last receiver he said was "new." It's probably weathered a bit in five years, but with no visible damage to the roof, so it stays a bit longer.

Thus, five years without internet at home, and only checking in about once a month at libraries.

 Well, that is one thing that has changed. Satellite technology finally caught up to the fact that not everyone lives in an area with DSL lines, so NOW services are offered that work completely off the satellite receiver (as opposed to receiving through satellite, and sending through DSL. Now the signal goes both ways). SO rural customers can now get an internet connection without either relying on cell service (which is also bad in most rural locations!) or investing in military-grade equipment. Hurrah!

After being almost 100% offline for five years, Google decided to lock my account two years ago. I tried everything to get back in. Changed passwords. Contacted them with many different "trouble shooting" forms. Nothing helped. Everything lead back to an infinite loop. Until this week. I was in a waiting room with a sick kid for two hours (another joy of rural life: the walk-in clinic), and out of desperation, decided to create a Google Play account on my phone. What's this??? My Google account is magically accessible again!?  Well go figure! All it took was access to massive amounts of private real-time information and the potential to bill me for in-game purchases. You corporate pig sons of bitches.

So. Again, I blog.

Comments Enabled

Whoops, it seems to have escaped my memory that the embedded comment feature does not work with pyzam layouts.  Now, to comment, you will click a link to take you to a separate page for that purpose, and it should work just fine.  My bad!

Introduction Post

I wasn't going to make a formal introduction post, but as much fun as it is to generalize 'city folk' and 'country folk' there are really so many differences within the two groups that i can't accurately claim any sort of expertise on rural living if i don't narrow down the field a bit--at least this way you can do your own research about anything i claim, or argue if you know someone who knows better.

So here's a bit about me: I'm a married, stay-at-home mom of three.  I homeschool my kids, but not for religious purposes (around here that's weird and definitely worth mentioning).  I was born, raised, and continue to live in southwest Missouri.  I used to live in a 'city' of 4000, but i currently reside near a town with no official population data available (i'm going to estimate there are around 300 people living between the 'entering' and 'exiting' signs, and perhaps up to 1000 in the outlying area, generously counting anyone who gets mail from our post office, and all of the undocumented types that live in RVs, tents, caves, etc. nearby).  I'm 'city' enough to be frustrated when utilities don't work, but 'country' enough not to be surprised.

I'm not going to get too personal here.  I will probably post pictures of myself and my family on occasion, and while it would be simple to put names to faces by matching up posts on my other blogs, i'm going to assume that my readers won't be nearly that bored or desperate for entertainment.  I won't use the names of my town, neighbors, or kids, just to lower the amount of google hits by creepy types.  If they still make it here, we'll get to the posts about my guns soon enough (he he).  But i'm not going to be particularly paranoid either.  I'm not exactly worried about losing a job offer based on my internet presence or anything like that.

You may be wondering what the purpose of this blog is.  As the title suggests, i would like to discuss life on the geographic fringes of American society.  I want to talk about the weird things we see every day, and the wonderful things that people in cities often miss.  I'd like to know how others cope with some of the issues that arise 'out here' and offer support for the same.  I'll share a bit about my life, and hope that others will comment or even contribute about theirs as well.