Oh Happy Day !!!!
The Horse Waterers are getting installed, just in time before we have to put the hoses away each day. After two winters, I am glad to be moving past that trouble. Last winter was especially "interesting" - dragging 200 feet of hoses from the garage through 2 feet of snow a couple times a week wasn't too bad. However draining the hoses after use and putting them away was a mess.
We are installing two Nelson Waterers. One is in the shed so it will be positioned between two stalls should we decide we need a stall in the future. The other is outside on the heavy use pad, located so that if we enlarge the shed length-wise it too will be between two stalls.
The heavy use pad we started before the first snow storm last winter has been enlarged and improved by one of our neighbors, who is a general contractor and also put in our septic system when we built the house. I love it, it is much better than what we had last winter, most importantly it has finer, stone dust on top so it makes it easier to clean.
Not sure what happened with this - it was suppose to have posted last winter! Ahh well, lack of attention on my part, I guess.
Monday, July 4, 2011
hiatus over - internet frustrations abound
It's been some time since I last posted. Life got a bit busy...or I got a bit lazy. Or both.
Or my internet connection just frustrated me.
Minor rant -- It is crazy to live within 30 minutes of the White House and not have a high speed internet connection. Verizon's vaunted Fios service ends at the road before ours, less than a quarter mile between intersections. I could walk through the woods and fields about 20 minutes on foot (or less than 5 minutes around by car) and reach the Fios cable and touch high speed connectivity. But when questioned, Verizon does not know when they will run Fios the last quarter mile from that road to ours.
Without putting in a satellite dish and committing $$ and signing a new contract, we make due with a cell company air card -- e.g. we get our internet the same way most people get cell phone calls. Which means we also experience a LOT of drop outs when people are at home making calls.....which is, of course, about the same time we are home and want to use the internet.
We've had the air card a couple years now and might have better connectivity with a newer card. But the new card contracts will greatly limit the amount of bandwidth we can get for our money. And as our sole source of connection to the world, bandwidth/dollar IS important.
Also it is again crazy that, within 30 minutes of the White House, we also experience as many power outages as we do. But we are truly stuck with Pepco - one of the lowest rated power companies in the USA. We can get our electricity from another source, but we still have the failure-prone Pepco delivering that electricity to us. Can't say that deregulation of the electric companies has been beneficial for this area. Pepco has many well-publicized "improvements" planned or in progress, which of course the Public Service Commission is allowing Pepco to charge to the customers to recover their costs while maintaining their excellent earnings.
Wish off-grid was a viable option, but with a mostly electric house, the cost for solar and/or wind is prohibitive.
Or my internet connection just frustrated me.
Minor rant -- It is crazy to live within 30 minutes of the White House and not have a high speed internet connection. Verizon's vaunted Fios service ends at the road before ours, less than a quarter mile between intersections. I could walk through the woods and fields about 20 minutes on foot (or less than 5 minutes around by car) and reach the Fios cable and touch high speed connectivity. But when questioned, Verizon does not know when they will run Fios the last quarter mile from that road to ours.
Without putting in a satellite dish and committing $$ and signing a new contract, we make due with a cell company air card -- e.g. we get our internet the same way most people get cell phone calls. Which means we also experience a LOT of drop outs when people are at home making calls.....which is, of course, about the same time we are home and want to use the internet.
We've had the air card a couple years now and might have better connectivity with a newer card. But the new card contracts will greatly limit the amount of bandwidth we can get for our money. And as our sole source of connection to the world, bandwidth/dollar IS important.
Also it is again crazy that, within 30 minutes of the White House, we also experience as many power outages as we do. But we are truly stuck with Pepco - one of the lowest rated power companies in the USA. We can get our electricity from another source, but we still have the failure-prone Pepco delivering that electricity to us. Can't say that deregulation of the electric companies has been beneficial for this area. Pepco has many well-publicized "improvements" planned or in progress, which of course the Public Service Commission is allowing Pepco to charge to the customers to recover their costs while maintaining their excellent earnings.
Wish off-grid was a viable option, but with a mostly electric house, the cost for solar and/or wind is prohibitive.
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