Whatcha doin????

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by TrustGzus, Aug 16, 2018.

  1. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    So what you need to do is have a removals firm come along and deliver your stuff, in a big metal box on a flatbed trailer pulled by a truck cab, and just forget to take the big metal box away when they leave. Anyone noticing the metal box arriving knows you're moving a load of stuff in.

    Failing that, take your backhoe and dig a big hole. Then have a truck arrive with a crane and the equivalent of a metal shipping container in flat sections. Lower each one in place, bolt them all together, and away you go. That way a flatbed truck shows up, a flatbed truck leaves, and it isn't brazenly obvious that you've had a shipping container delivered (aside from talking about it on a public internet forum, of course)
     
  2. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

    I like the way you think.... hypothetically, that is.
     
  3. teddyv

    teddyv The horse is in the barn. Staff Member

    Nah, go all in... have it delivered by helicopter.
     
  4. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

    Yeah, a stealth helicopter painted black at night.... the yokels will think its a UFO...

    Seriously, all you techies.

    Let's talk cell service.

    Cell service in the wilderness is horrible, but I can get about one bar most of the time. There is NO high speed internet to the property, and won't be for years. DSL only, and it's almost $85 a month with rented equipment. The area is supposed to get 5G wireless within the next year.

    What do you think about this.

    I can get a cell phone booster for about $1000 that will increase the 4G LTE signal by 100 dB and cover the entire house. The speed should then be in excess of 24 mbs download, which will allow me to stream video.
    That will take care of my internet, phone, and TV.

    Only concern will be latency for logging in to the office through the cloud, and I don't have any way of checking that until the system is up and working.
    I'll be checking signal direction and strength at the house this weekend, now that I've learned how to do that.

    Does anyone see a problem with that setup?
     
  5. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    You should see some of the hare-brained ideas for home improvement that emanate from the darker corners of my mind when I let it wander...
     
  6. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    When you say "DSL only" what sort of speed are you talking? I think what we have is DSL and we get 10mbps. The company offers 25mbps and I think up to 45mbps in this area, I just don't want them coming in to overhaul stuff indoors to make it happen. We're in the process of moving to a cable internet company - we're not going to choose a much faster speed for now at least but it will be cheaper. There aren't many times I find 10mbps too slow, although every once in a while I need to download something big and would like a faster speed.

    For cellphone service if you go with Google Fi it will give you coverage over your wifi. Where we live mobile service is patchy at best but at home with a solid wifi signal we can make calls and texts from the cellphone.

    I can't comment on how well the boosters work - I've heard some people say they are great and others say they are expensive paperweights. If it works well and you can get 24mbps that's certainly enough to stream video, it's just a question of data allowances and how fast you burn them up.

    For what it's worth I'd be very hesitant to trust "we should get (service) by (time)" regardless of who is making the claim.
     
  7. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

    Ha, Dixie Cup and a string.

    DSL is 3 mb down, 512K down!
    Granny is slow, but she's old!
     
  8. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    3mb down is pretty slow.... Not sure how well you'd be able to stream video over that if that's your thing. I remember when we first moved into our house and the service was described as "High speed internet", offering a whopping 768kbps download speed. It turned out the upgrade to 10mbps carried no extra cost, they just didn't bother to offer the upgrade until I asked about it.

    Now we're just waiting for the transfer to a local media company, so we don't have to wait on hold for an hour to talk to someone in India who doesn't know anything. It can't come soon enough. The new company offers up to 125mbps download speed but we don't need anything like that.

    DId you consider smoke signals?
     
  9. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

  10. Athanasius

    Athanasius Life is not a problem to be solved Staff Member

    :S I'll hide over here with my 350Mb connection...

    Cell booster should work fine as long as the signal coming in is decent enough, i.e. you can't boost what you don't have. $1,000 is a good chunk of change though, to lie down on a potential.
     
  11. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

    I'm testing signal strength when I'm up there this weekend.

    I've got all the parameters for necessary strength, so I'll find out soon if the booster will work.
     
  12. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    My current provider theoretically offers a cable connection up to 1gbps, they just don't offer it anywhere near where I live. One of the downsides of living in the back end of nowhere I guess...
     
  13. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    Bit of a saga with fixing up this room in my house.

    I salvaged much of the existing baseboard, but needed a little extra to fill all the spaces. One piece was widened with a really nasty addition - it was originally covered by a lower piece of trim but they are manky so I'm not using them, and of course without them the nasty patch job shows. There's also a door I boarded over, so I need a bit more to cover that space.

    I tried finding wood to match but it's almost impossible to find anything locally. I did manage to find some construction grade lumber with a grain pattern that matched, but it's not kiln dried so when I split it to the right length it responded by twisting, warping and bending, all within little over 12 hours. So I can't use that.

    In the end I decided to look in one of the other rooms I ripped apart. That wood is very similar, I just had to scrape and strip it because it was painted. Now it's sitting in the basement with its glorious grain pattern showing, ready to be stained and lacquered.

    Once that's done I can pin the baseboards in place, get the wiring connected and then it's just a matter of a final go over the floor with some finer sandpaper and then I can lacquer that.
     
    Cloudwalker likes this.
  14. RabbiKnife

    RabbiKnife Open the pod bay door, please HAL. Staff Member

    Excellent
     
  15. Cloudwalker

    Cloudwalker The genuine, original, one and only Cloudwalker Staff Member

    Florida is gradually moving toward normalcy. Last week restaurants could open for otjer than drive through and take out (25% of capacity inside 50% starting Monday). Elective surgery allowed (The dentist opened, I have an appointment Wednesday). Barbershops and Beauty Salons open (I needed a trim). Friday the library opened (some restrictions). Monday gyms opening and restaurants going to 50% capacity. Things are looking up.
     
  16. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    The fuhrer has graciously allowed my county to move from "lockdown" to "aggressive mitigation" as of this coming Friday. Apparently it's still far too dangerous to get a haircut but at least now I can buy a pair of sneakers from the local independent store - previously that was considered too dangerous but I could still buy a pair of sneakers from Walmart. Presumably the virus knows better than to go into Walmart.

    Restaurants are still restricted to takeout only. Now it seems the fuhrer has decided he is responsible for the health of 13,000,000 people across the state. I'm not quite sure when he suddenly took on such a responsibility but apparently he did. So it's important that he protect us from the marginal chance of deadly consequences from a virus that may or may not actually be dangerous but apparently he feels no need to protect us from the consequences of drinking too much, eating lots of fatty food and smoking - all three are still perfectly OK with him.
     
  17. Hugo Clanton

    Hugo Clanton Member

    Be careful. Just like today, Americans were desperate during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic quarantine. Restless Americans hoping to get back to normal. They celebrated and came out with vengeance once quarantine was eased. Businesses opened again.People roamed and mingled freely.

    It sounds exactly like what's playing out with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020.

    But what happened 1918? A deadly second wave of the struck. Killing many more than in first phase. Total 50 million souls were lost.

    [​IMG]
     
  18. TristainLL

    TristainLL New Member

    Very interesting. I never knew about the second waves in the past
     
  19. Athanasius

    Athanasius Life is not a problem to be solved Staff Member

    Sounds like over here, except I'm 5 minutes from the city centre, which means I'm out in the boonies.
     
  20. tango

    tango ... and you shall live ... Staff Member

    It's not the boonies if you've got a triple-digit internet speed... pi-in-face
     

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