As I had posted last January, Stacy and I attended the 100th anniversary reenactment of the founding of our adopted County. While we were there freezing it was told of a commemorative Troy Ounce coin to be issued and the orders started that day. I got a sign up order form and the following Monday I ordered and paid for the coin. It had an initial run lower cost so I was glad to jump on it and save a bit as well as get the coin.
Well, as you can see above the coin was available for pickup yesterday afternoon, (05/19/15) so I walked over and got the one in the photo above. It is actually larger than I thought it might be with the large Kennedy half dollar coin fitting inside the center ring of the design. It is also fairly thick and came in its own protective case as you can see. I like it! A piece of the 'new' history of our little area of the world!
The three designs in the center of the coin are small renditions of the three art deco panels on the front of the County Courthouse and were created in the 1930s when the Courthouse was built.
There have been tourists in town just to see those designs on the building!
Spring and travel
Well, not for us quite yet but for the area in general.
The somewhat early spring and already late spring temps, have made sightings of RVs, motorcycles and travelers an already daily sight. I still enjoy seeing the travelers passing through. Often they make the short detour and drive the 5 minutes to take a look at a small north Idaho town on their way East, West, North or South as all those directions pass through the area on just two highways, highway 95 for the North and South and 2 for the East and West.
And from "Three Mile Junction" 3 miles North of town, get it? 3 Mile?...........never mind, anyway, that point is where 95 and 2 meet and stay as one road until you get down to Sandpoint where Highway 2 splits off towards Spokane, Washington and all the way to the coast above Seattle. Go East on Highway 2 and you could wind up in Chicago or someplace else on the right side of the country.
Highway 95 goes from the Canadian Border all the way down to Mexico and goes through the Las Vegas area among other areas along the way. Before moving here we had ridden as well as driven the route from Las Vegas to Boundary County. In central and Southern Idaho the route passes by many historic areas and beautiful scenery. For a time it follows the Snake River which is another beautiful drive as well as a hot spot of river rafting during the summer.
But seeing the bikes and RVs are what I like to see!
SPEED, we need DATA speed!
And it looks like we're finally going to get it!
In 2012 our HughesNet sat Internet died and after about a week of haggling with the customer service from India, a VERY long time with no Internet!, only to find out that no matter what they offered there at the time, was no North Idaho service company to help us, we dropped them and went with one of the 2 local Wimax or WiFi Internet Service Providers. That was a GREAT move! Since July of 2012 we've enjoyed unlimited downloading and uploading with no daily cap as we'd had with HughesNet, and for the longest time we'd enjoyed a steady speed of 1 MB upload and download speed for our $70.00 per month. So, we were now paying less for more!
HughesNet was costing $80.00 a month for 10 GB, which sounds good.....BUT, one could only download about 300 MB per day or they'd slow you down to dial up speed if you went over. And forget about streaming anything! That's just the limitations of satellite Internet, signal goes up to the Satellite then down to your house, then back and forth and so on and so on. Even with the advances in the technology, I still read reviews and that aspect of satellite Internet continues to be a sore point for many.
In the August of 2013 while we were at the local fair we saw flyers for new rates and data speeds, since our local company was being bought out by a larger 'regional' carrier. I called and asked when they started and found out that all those flyers were not supposed to be set out yet.
Now, here it is Spring of 2015 and I call up again asking about better rate and speed plans as with popularity and growth of their business in this area, we now have to often wait for sometimes endless buffering and inability to view or stream much of anything at "peak" hours, just like the big cities.
I had been taking a look at the main company's website and those great speed and lower prices were now posted on the rates page.
So I had emailed them asking about our area and did these speeds work up here yet? About 2 weeks later I got a call from our local company to whom my email had been routed around and finally forwarded to. She told me that we too could soon get a new less expensive rate as well as higher speeds.
I needed to agree to be their customer for 2 more years and wait about a month for their system upgrades in our area to be completed and a tech to come and install an upgraded receiver to handle the higher speeds.
I said no problem, and minutes later sent the requested email stating we're theirs for 2 more years and she immediately reduced our bill to the lower rate.
Oh, but what will we be getting? For the new cost of $59.00 a month we'll soon be getting 3 MB up and download speed. With that speed we'll be able to stream programs more regularly than we currently can. On both the Apple TV, iPads and Roku 3, some 'channels' like Hulu and Netflix work pretty well with our 1 MB speed, but many others do not and just aren't worth the constant buffering to try and see them.
For this area this is a great deal! I know many areas of the Country pay considerably less for considerably more speed, but you gotta go with what you can!
They also were aware of the complaints about service during peak hours, turned out, they, the provider themselves, were being slowed down for too much usage by the main company down in Coeur d' Alene! That's why they have to upgrade their own system before generally opening up to the new rates. But FINALLY for us, 21st century speeds with a less expensive rate!
Till next time
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