Monthly Archives: January 2013

Update on Hughesnet

Posted on by January 23, 2013

We have been using HughesNet for our internet access for several years.  I had been hoping that Comcast or ATT would upgrade their systems in our area, but I guess those of us that live in rural areas will be the last to get high speed internet from ATT or Comcast.

Our HughesNet system’s performance has had its ups and downs as you can surmise by reviewing some of my past posts.  However, our HughesNet connection has been reasonably stable and reliable for the past couple of years.  I have therefore been reluctant to upgrade to their Gen4 service because I have been concerned about having to live through another learning curve.  However, I have tried out the Gen4 service at my Cousins house and it seems pretty good.

Therefore, I have decided to take the plunge and signup for the Gen4 service.  The installation is supposed to be this Friday.   I’ll post my experiences once it is installed; assuming I can still access the internet.  I am certainly keeping my fingers crossed.

Fred

 

Goodbye to a Friend

Posted on by January 24, 2013
LW Captain Curry

LW Captain Curry

Yesterday started out like any other day, but as we all know life can change on a dime.  After a morning check of the llamas, Laura and I decided to go to Bloomington for breakfast and shopping. We got home around lunchtime and decided to feed the llamas early and spend the rest of the day snuggled up inside around the wood burning stove, surrounded by our cats and books.  Unfortunately, we spent the afternoon in the barn saying our final goodbyes to Curry (LW Captain Curry).  Curry had been fine in the morning, but when we went out to feed the llamas after lunch he was very distressed. He was laboring to breath and obviously very uncomfortable.  We immediately called our vet and they dropped what they were doing and were at Curry’s side in less than a half hour.  The verdict was not good.  Curry was in congestive heart failure and the prognosis for recovery was grim.  We had the make the decision every pet owner hates to face, but in this case there were few options.  Curry took his last breath around 3:00 pm  which ended his 18 years with us.

CurryCurry enjoyed life.  His favorite activities were: eating, watching over his herd of girls and warmly greeting all of the farm visitors (especially the little ones!).  He usually could convince them to give him a few handfuls of grain.  Curry will continue to live on in our hearts.  We had many good years with Curry. Curry touched our lives in many ways but the more than anything else he was a good friend that was always glad to see us.

Fred

Happiness is a barn full of alfalfa – LW Captain Curry

Moving to a new server

Posted on by January 22, 2013

After several years of frustration with my previous Hosting Service (Verio.com) I finally reached the last straw last weekend when I could not find a way to backup my website using Verio’s latests control panel.  Thinking that I must be overlooking the option in their sparse control panel,  I contacted their Technical Support to have them point me to the backup option; which is listed in the help file for their control panel.  The technical support person did not know the options on their control panel so I was put on hold while he researched the problem.  After about 5 minutes he came back and told me they do not provide a site backup option.  I was told the only way I could backup my website would be to use FTP to download the entire site file-by-file.  I realized then they are still living in the twentieth century.  I had no choice but to use ftp to download the entire site file-by-file. Using my my Hughesnet connection this took several attempts and over 4 hours to complete!!!

I have now migrated the site to a new hostsnappying service–HostGator.com.  So far they have been fantastic.  The first thing that I discovered while migrating the WordPress database was that Verio was using a very old version of MySQL.  When I tried to import the database which I had downloaded from the Verio website, the newer version of MySQL on the HostGator server coughed up a big hairball.  After about 10 minutes on the phone with a very knowledgable HostGator technician, he pointed out that one of the MySQL keywords used in the SQL dump had been depricated in newer versions of MySQL.  After I fired up my editor and did a search and replace of the obsolete keyword the database imported with no problems.

Thirty minutes later I had a development version of the website running on the HostGator server; which by the way is wind powered.  Bravo HostGator!!

If you are reading this post you are accessing our site from the new server.

Fred