Broadcasting to you from the semi-high (7- 8000 ft or so) mountains of Southeastern New Mexico.
The net situation here is not so dire as I thought it would be. Mom's actually got a pretty decent rig. It's no T1 pipeline, but it'll let me get on and game with little or no lag. The only dicey part came in the setup. I'm alllllll the way at the other end of the house from the router and mom wasn't enthusiastic about me stringing 100 ft of network cable to the router (though I think she'd have let me if it came to no other option). But apparently that lightning strike from about a year and a half ago that fried my power supply and video card ALSO fried any way to get online wirelessly via the usual wireless method of an attachment directly to the motherboard via PCI card. I just hadn't -noticed- it in all this time because I'd never attempted to use wireless before. But one USB wireless adapter port later (thank god for having 8 USB ports scattered around the tower) and a little judicious jiggery pokery with positioning to get a good signal (4 out of 5 bars) and I'm cooking with gas.
(Of course I am now doomed to be the in-house tech support. But it was like that with my dad, so this is nothing new.)
Thanks also to Drogen for letting me crash at his place for a night. It made the rest of the trip a lot easier.
For now arrangements are being made with my brother who assures me he'll be extra careful storing the stuff I had to leave behind. He knows how important some of it is to me, even if he doesn't share my interests. He'll actually be carrying some of the essentials up here himself later (since he was going to visit Mom himself sometime this summer).
In the midst of all the upheaval I did take a moment to be amused by something.
I was passing a Toyota dealership on my trip and I noticed that they had one of those inflatable displays - you know the type. Usually looking a lot like a cartoony version of Godzilla or King Kong.
Well this was Roswell New Mexico so naturally it was a giant inflatable green Alien of the "Close Encounters" type. Complete with gold "Flash Gordon" type tights and a red cape.
I did get a picture of it with my cell phone, but I've yet to figure out how to get it from the phone to my computer or post it. So take my word for it, it looked every bit as kitschy and "Route 66 Awesome" as it sounds. Heh. Roswell is INUNDATED with this kind of imagery. When I was a small child going on trips up to the mountains I never noticed anything like this. I think sometime in the 80s-90s the inhabitants of Roswell decided en masse to embrace the UFO phenomenon and milk it (and the tourists) for all it was worth.
Ah Roswell. ^_^
One other positive about this - the weather. It's about to get VERY hot in Texas. And I'll be dodging it in the nice relatively cool mountains. The weather is great up here. Though I'm still getting acclimated to the altitude. (WHEEZE WHEEZE...)
So my forced relocation isn't ALL bad.
The net situation here is not so dire as I thought it would be. Mom's actually got a pretty decent rig. It's no T1 pipeline, but it'll let me get on and game with little or no lag. The only dicey part came in the setup. I'm alllllll the way at the other end of the house from the router and mom wasn't enthusiastic about me stringing 100 ft of network cable to the router (though I think she'd have let me if it came to no other option). But apparently that lightning strike from about a year and a half ago that fried my power supply and video card ALSO fried any way to get online wirelessly via the usual wireless method of an attachment directly to the motherboard via PCI card. I just hadn't -noticed- it in all this time because I'd never attempted to use wireless before. But one USB wireless adapter port later (thank god for having 8 USB ports scattered around the tower) and a little judicious jiggery pokery with positioning to get a good signal (4 out of 5 bars) and I'm cooking with gas.
(Of course I am now doomed to be the in-house tech support. But it was like that with my dad, so this is nothing new.)
Thanks also to Drogen for letting me crash at his place for a night. It made the rest of the trip a lot easier.
For now arrangements are being made with my brother who assures me he'll be extra careful storing the stuff I had to leave behind. He knows how important some of it is to me, even if he doesn't share my interests. He'll actually be carrying some of the essentials up here himself later (since he was going to visit Mom himself sometime this summer).
In the midst of all the upheaval I did take a moment to be amused by something.
I was passing a Toyota dealership on my trip and I noticed that they had one of those inflatable displays - you know the type. Usually looking a lot like a cartoony version of Godzilla or King Kong.
Well this was Roswell New Mexico so naturally it was a giant inflatable green Alien of the "Close Encounters" type. Complete with gold "Flash Gordon" type tights and a red cape.
I did get a picture of it with my cell phone, but I've yet to figure out how to get it from the phone to my computer or post it. So take my word for it, it looked every bit as kitschy and "Route 66 Awesome" as it sounds. Heh. Roswell is INUNDATED with this kind of imagery. When I was a small child going on trips up to the mountains I never noticed anything like this. I think sometime in the 80s-90s the inhabitants of Roswell decided en masse to embrace the UFO phenomenon and milk it (and the tourists) for all it was worth.
Ah Roswell. ^_^
One other positive about this - the weather. It's about to get VERY hot in Texas. And I'll be dodging it in the nice relatively cool mountains. The weather is great up here. Though I'm still getting acclimated to the altitude. (WHEEZE WHEEZE...)
So my forced relocation isn't ALL bad.