Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
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Dog Canyon Sunset, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM, January 7, 2009
We had a nice long talk
I had a nice long talk with a Verizon tech support guy who worked with me diagnose my lack of Verizon Broadband Access access. As a rule if I have any reception at all on my cell phone (also Verizon) I have access to the internet via my Broadband Access account using my USB720 card plugged into my KR-1 router, boosted by my Wilson antenna and amplifier, at least at dial-up speed. It's been a good setup.
Since I arrived here yesterday I've had no internet access at all except for a few fleeting connections. All the while I've had 2 or 3 EV and 1X bars on my cell phone, and an excellent connection for this call to the service tech. I've never experienced this situation before and looked in vain for hardware and software glitches in my setup. Everything seems fine - but it won't connect.
The very helpful tech guy confirmed what he could about my setup and finally went into his system looking for trouble tickets in my area that might indicate a network problem and found there are 60 open tickets for the Alamogordo area. Suspecting network problems we left it that he would call Alamogordo when the office opens (I called him about 7 am local time) and get back to me.
He didn't call back.
Now what?
I'm going to have to make some decisions soon. I've got a couple of bills to pay online this week and really really need internet access. If I can't get online soon I'll have to go into town and find a way to get on line. Or I might move to another location if I could be sure my setup is working and the problem here is a network glitch.
Night camp
Site 7 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - very good signal and access speed ( I have to qualify this - during my January 2008 visit the signal and access speed was excellent - in January 2009 it was practically non-existent during the day and slow at night with unpredictable short periods of excellent access)
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park website
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park on my Nightcamps map
- Check the weather here
Alex Can Think
Animal researchers are finally beginning to catch up to the little old ladies in tennis shoes who say Fifi the poodle can think. The fights are always between a big group of experts who think animals don't have a lot of feelings or aren't very smart, and a much smaller group of researchers who think there's a lot more going on inside an animal's head than we know. The really nasty fights always seem to go one way: it's always the animal "debunkers" who are on the attack. At least, I don't remember a single big academic fight where someone got fired or lost their funding for doing a study where the animal turned out to be dumber than people thought, and lots of studies like that have been done. Claiming that an animal can't do something isn't considered blasphemous.