Daily Archives: 27 July, 2008

HughesNet Update (July 2008)

Posted on by July 27, 2008

I have been closely monitoring the performance of our Hughes Net satellite internet system over the past several months.  I’ve noticed a significant drop in signal strength since the leaves came out on the trees.  Apparently the dish was not shooting over the large poplar tree on the far side of our pond as the installer thought.  Even with the reduced signal strength I did not see a degradation in the speed.  However, for the past several months I have measured a significant drop in download speeds (as low as 250 kb/s) each evening.  I assume this was due to overloading that was occurring as their customers all got on the web each evening.

However, I have noticed a significant improvement in the evening download speeds over the past three weeks.  Perhaps, Hughes Net is finally starting to move a significant number of their customers off of their overcrowded satellite to the new satellite they launched earlier this year.

Overall, I continued to be satisfied with the service since it is so much better than the ISDN speeds (128kb/s) we were getting before I installed the satellite system.  I’ll continue to provide updates when I can.

Fred

New Kittens in the barn

Posted on by January 22, 2013

New KittensA couple of months ago we had a beautiful silver tabby cat take up residence in our barn.  She started showing up at feeding time and gradually took up permanent residence.  I guess she figured out that Hutu (pronounced Who.Two) our barn cat got fed at the same time as the llamas.  Everyday she would show up and Hutu would graciously step back and let the little lady have the first chance at the food dish. Several weeks ago, we decided she was either gaining a lot of weight on our cat food, or she was pregnant.  Well, guess what.  She was pregnant and blessed us with 4 little kittens a couple of weeks ago.

I can tell Laura is already getting attached to the new additions to the barn because I’ve caught her picking them up and snuggling them.  It appears there are three girls and one boy.  As soon as they get a little older, mom and her kittens will get to visit Country Critters (our vet) for their shots, spay and neutering.

I guess the word has gotten around to all of the cats in our neighborhood that the llama farm has good food, shelter and a great medical plan!  They know if they can just limp in, life will be wonderful.