Back on Track

Okay, so I've never really been 'off-track' just off the grid.

Right after that last post we got hit with thunderstorms and rain. Lots of rain! Rain every day for 17 days straight, with very few breaks. I couldn't get out in the garden to put anything in the ground, while some people who planted early had all their hard work washed away.

When the rain finally stopped, it turned incredibly HOT and HUMID. Man, I've haven't known such humidity in June and July since I moved out of Baton Rouge years ago. It was horrid! You didn't want to be away from an air conditioner for more than five minutes.

Okay, you're thinking - 'What does humidity and heat have to do with being on-line? I wondered the same thing. But I could not stay on-line for more than ten minutes. Mind you, my HughesNet modem and my NetGear Wireless router are in the office downstairs. My dehumidifier runs 24/7 and we have central air. Heat SHOULDN'T have been an issue. And at the on-set, I didn't know it was. Multiple calls to HughesNet tech support were driving me crazy. I couldn't make them understand that I didn't want a temporary fix. I wanted to get to the root of the problem so it would STOP!

One night I finally bypassed the technician and requested a supervisor who spoke English. I don't have a problem with other nationalities, but I do believe they should be able to understand you and vice versa.

What we determined - mind you, I'd been battling this for most of two months - was that my Hughes Net modem needed to rest. Heck, no one told me to unplug everything at night! I was leaving everything running 24/7. So I started shutting down at night. For the first couple days I was good to go and tried getting everything caught up. Then it did it again! I finally determined the modem was good for about 10 minutes. Then it would overheat and shut down, kicking me off-line. So I made the trip into WM for a $10 desk fan. Voila! I've not had a problem since. Mind you, it took me to the middle of July to remedy this. From then, it's been a massive catch-up.

In the midst of it, I found a full-time writing gig as a columnist for our local paper. I love it being a reporter and a columnist. And a weekly by-line doesn't hurt the resume either.

So this brings me to finally being caught up enough to get back to regular blogging :: crossing fingers here :::

And because I want it to stand alone, I'm going to offer up today's post separately.

So here we go....