Frustrating Internet Connectivity

Argghhhh.... I am getting frustrated with my current ISP Xtratyme. They
are very nice people but seem too busy to follow through with supporting my account.



I live in Kingston,
MN which is in rural central Minnesota about
an hour west of the Twin
Cities. There is no cable or DSL to my community. (You can get DSL north or south
of me a couple of miles away.) My local phone carrier is Sprint/Embarq who
has no interest in providing any advanced services other than basic dial tone.
I can get ISDN to
my house but Embarq will not provide any services like Internet on top of the ISDN service.
(I would prefer one provider.)



I am right on the fringe coverage area of two wireless ISPs:

Xtratyme and BroadBand-MN. 



With Xtratyme using
a 512k account I am seeing 450/120.
Upload speeds are brutal often in the 30-50k range.
It makes general web activity pretty rough let alone working over a VPN, uploading
content to my web site, or any decent VOIP activity.



I maybe forced to hunt for another ISP or other connectivity options if we can't get
this resolved ASAP.

Raingutter Regatta - Pack 253

Pack 253 held their
annual Raingutter
Regatta in mid August. Here is a link to
some of the pictures.

Hoaglun Home - Kingston, Mn - Summer 2006

Some friends had been asking about pictures of the new house. After a year in the
new house I have finally posted
some pictures online.

New Photo Gallery

After much wasted time and energy I have killed the old photo galleries and I am starting
a new one.
The problem was that nGallery was no longer supported as a stand alone tool.



I am experimenting with Magic
Gallery. So far the tool looks pretty good once I spent a little bit of time hacking
the templates.



I will post a couple more galleries as time permits and then probably by Magic Gallery.
I like it because I can build the content my laptop and work out the details locally
and then upload static content.

Little Kids, Big Hills, and some Bikes

Yesterday we took the boys and their bikes to Maple Plain to work of some of their spare energy.



The City of Maple Plain has a nice area near their Fire Department where they have
laid out a small BMX course for the public to use.



Jacob and Ben had a good time jumping their bikes. Ben needs to learn to land on his
back tire before he learns about end'os the hard way. Jacob seems a little timid about
the whole thing... you can see it on his face. Joe was happy to play in the dirt as
it not quite old enough for this yet.



I will try to post pictures once I get back to Minnesota.

(I am typing this via my 3G card sitting @ O'Hare headed to STL.)

Big timbers

We bought 10 used railroad ties. They are a bit heavy to work with unless you have a tractor with a bucket.



We are getting ready to plant 25 Red Twig Dogwood bushes. They should arrive
in the next 2 weeks some time.



I will try to post some pictures when I get back to Minnesota.


(I am typing this via my 3G card from O'Hare airport on my way to STL.) 

Landscaping the great plains

Spring is in full swing.




Last week we tilled up the yard three times, dragged with a 9 foot I-Beam, 4 foot
piece of angle iron, and then seeded the yard. 150 pounds of grass seed later... I
think that we could have used more seed.

The yard looks great with it's flowing hills. Let's hope that the grass seed turns
green in 14-21 days.

Embedded MCU with Ethernet

I
am looking at some embedded processors and I want something with built-in ethernet.
I am looking at things like the Tini400, Rabbit, HCS12,
and the PIC.



Today I found this interesting
gem.




“Compact SBC for 44 pin PIC with Ethernet, RS232
interface and TCP/IP stack, Revision 2 board. Fully assembled with PIC18F452 CPU and
24LC256 EEPROM included. PIC Port B is used to address the Ethernet chip.” 

PS…. Here is an article talking about a Basic
Stamp with ethernet.>>

Return of the rant

Ok… I am a complete and total slacker. My blog has not had any new posts in
almost a year.




Excesses:

We had to fix up our previous house to put it up for sale.

We sold our old house.

We built a new house a LONG ways away.

I spent 12+ weeks on the road last year for work. (Big Project)

I spent a LOT of time working on the new house. (No yard… lots of landscaping)

I blew up the engine on one of my tractors which impacted all of my projects.

We started working on finishing the basement of the new house.

I am all consumed by work…. another big project for this year.

I drive 110 miles a day round trip to work.

I rebuilt the laptop that had my favorite blog software installed.



Ok… it is pretty obvious that I have some time management issues to deal with.



End of the test posting. I think that software is working properly again.

GMail Down Again

I have been noticing that Gmail has been throwing errors again lately.