Just a few days ago we had our anniversary of our full time life here in North Idaho.
We arrived at the end of our last moving trip here on the morning of March 26th, 2006. We had our 5th wheel trailer full of all we could get into it and still have enough room to get in and sleep in it during the two nights it took to get here. We still wound up leaving several things we would have brought of we'd had any ability to bring them or had the time for another trip.
I was driving our Dodge truck, it too filled with what we could fit in it along with the two dogs we'd brought up and kept with us for the last trip. Stacy was driving the GMC truck we'd traded my Mitsubishi 3000GT in on, because I knew I wouldn't drive in with all the snow!
How things change!
Anyway, it was as all the moving trips had been, quite the challenge. That year it was still snowy that March and we had come across a lot of road construction that had been muddy torn up dirt roads when we'd gotten into Idaho. But we finally made it after the last overnight stop due to the weather about two hours away.
And now that we've been here for 8 years, we couldn't have imagined what our lives would have become.
And after that thought, now to the title of this post.
As I'm typing this, April 1st, swiping it actually, we have no Internet connectivity and the entire area of the state didn't have any almost all day. An April Fools day joke? We'll find out in a few days I guess. But nobody was happy today. About 6:30 this morning we suddenly had no connection.
We wake up to a Grace Internet radio every day and that had been fine and then nothing.
We got to work and about 8:45 the Internet drops out at work too. We've had the Internet go out at work or go out at home but never at both places. For a while I didn't have any 4-G data connectivity even on my phone. It was, as we could find out, a general total Internet outage to anyplace north of Sandpoint.
At work the outage lasted until after 4 PM, about 3:25 I received a text message from our home Internet service provider and the message said they had suffered a deliberate attack on their system, with no idea when service might be restored.
There's a lot of stories about 'disconnecting' and taking a break from tech, but it does not work out so well on work days!
And that's one of the downsides of small town America that is so overlooked by all the TV commercials about "constant connection" and "fabulous 4-G speed". You get away from the big cities and all that connectivity goes with the distance!
Our area has only 3 cell towers in the entire County and all near the main town of Bonners Ferry. 4-G is ONLY in the close proximity to the town, between here and Sandpoint, the next closest town of any size, nothing but 2-G or Edge data which is not too much faster than dialup.
And there are a lot of areas still with no connection at all. No Internet, no cell service. At work we have HSPA+ 4-G on our phones, at home it's Edge so we rely on our Wifi to be working at home to do even the basics of checking email.
Now it's the next afternoon, April 2nd, and all is almost back up and running normally.
So tomorrow we will be back to our morning routine, Stacy looking up stuff and checking her calendar for what's up today and me reading the online news and then watching Hulu+ or YouTube while eating breakfast. Then off to work!
Till next time, Tad
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