Snowed in!

[Grandpa Shooter]

 

Got home from the Valley on Monday to light snow.  Made it to our appts in the next burg over on Tuesday.  It has been snowing ever since.  Light, then heavy, light then sun, then snow.  The grader went through yesterday and plowed us in.  Plenty of food, water, meds, pet food.  No worries, no reason to go out.

I have to go out periodically and brush the snow off the satellite dish so we can stay on the 'net, but mostly we just watch the dogs playing out in the snow and coming in for treats.  Life is good!

[Balog]

Nice! I've been disappointed in the lack of snow here in the Puget Sound area this year.

On an unrelated note, how do you like that satellite internet? I wonder how it compares to cable?

[Tallpine]

Nice excuse 

I bet the camo jeep can climb right over the snow bank.

But why try?

[grampster]

Enjoy the snow and cold.  Swmbo and I are climbing on a plane at 6AM Saturday for our yearly 3 week jaunt to Key West.  Sunshine, warm, pool, Tiki bar, good food, good friends, and all the other joyful reasons to wallow in American self indulgence.

[Desertdog]

Right now, in the UPPer Mojave desert it is snowing.  The first snowfall I have seen here in years.  It is already stcking.  Don't expect much, but we can say it is snowing.

A day to take pictures to record history.

[Brad Johnson]

  Plenty of food, water, meds, pet food.

 I suppose pet food keeps longer than your run-of-the-mill human rations.  Are those the Emergency emergency rations?  But what happens if you run out of pet food (and then run out of pets?) :D

Brad

[Grandpa Shooter]

I suppose pet food keeps longer than your run-of-the-mill human rations.  Are those the Emergency emergency rations?  But what happens if you run out of pet food (and then run out of pets?) :D

Brad

The wife keeps us stocked for about 3 months minimum.  No milk mind you, but plenty of everthing else.  We always have an extra 40 pound bag of dog food.  We could go without for awhile with the weight we gained during the Holidays.

[BlueStarLizzard]

trade you! 

were gonna get ice tonight, and i'd much rather have snow, even though the reminants of our christmas snow hasn't all melted yet.

[mgdavis]

Nice! I've been disappointed in the lack of snow here in the Puget Sound area this year.

On an unrelated note, how do you like that satellite internet? I wonder how it compares to cable?

I bought a full set of chains back in November, so it probably isn't going to snow at all for at least a couple years. 

[Desertdog]

The wife keeps us stocked for about 3 months minimum.  No milk mind you, but plenty of everthing else.

When we buy milk we buy two gallons, it's cheaper, and freeze one.
We thaw them out on auto defrost in the microwave.

[Lennyjoe]

That's cool.  We drove up to Sedona from Tucson today.  Was raining cats and dogs out.  Plenty of snow just above us in Flagstaff though.  Rivers are running fast out this way.  Flood warnings all over this area.  Daughter is getting married here on Saturday so hopefully the weather calms down a bit.

Enjoy your day.

[coppertales]

Been there, done that.  I hope you have enough beer and chips to get you through until spring.  I, on the other hand, moved from the UP to Texas and no longer concern myself with this issue.....chris3

[Grandpa Shooter]

Been there, done that.  I hope you have enough beer and chips to get you through until spring.  I, on the other hand, moved from the UP to Texas and no longer concern myself with this issue.....chris3

It has been awhile since we had a good snowfall.  I don't necessarily care for it, but our water table is so low that the State needs it.  We were starting to lose some trees due to drought conditions again, so I can bear with it.  Lady Shooter is from the non snow West Coast and has never been through this kind of weather before and is loving it.

It rained during the evening and snowed all night, and is still snowing now.  The only concern I have is possibly running out of propane.  I doubt it, but the possibility is there.  I think it is time to pull out the thermals and turn the heat down.  SWMBO is still sleeping so I know she is warm.

[Tallpine]

We're supposed to have a blizzard here this weekend. 

The last two weeks have been mild (days into the forties) which has turned the whole area into one damn sheet of ice 

[AZRedhawk44]

Nice! I've been disappointed in the lack of snow here in the Puget Sound area this year.

On an unrelated note, how do you like that satellite internet? I wonder how it compares to cable?

Oh!  Oh!

Very interested in mountain internet latency.

Can you do me a favor, Gpa Shooter?

Click on Start - Run and type the word "cmd" and hit enter.

It'll bring up a black command box.

Type "ping -t -l 1000 www.yahoo.com" (that's a dash and a lowercase L)

This will send a 1000 byte packet, to yahoo, until you hit ctrl-C to stop it.

Let it do this for a minute or so and then tell me what your min/max response time is in milliseconds, and if you have any dropped packets?

Very interested in rural satellite internet access, but I hate high latency.  I've heard satellite connections have high latency.

[Marnoot]

I believe satellite internet connections essentially use a dial-up connection for the upstream data, and the dish only for downstream; which results in the poor latency.

[41magsnub]

I believe satellite internet connections essentially use a dial-up connection for the upstream data, and the dish only for downstream; which results in the poor latency.

There is 2 way satellite now.  I can't speak to the latency though, I've never had to use it.

[Marnoot]

There is 2 way satellite now.  I can't speak to the latency though, I've never had to use it.

Ah, I'm curious about the latency as well then.

[Grandpa Shooter]

Oh!  Oh!

Very interested in mountain internet latency.

Can you do me a favor, Gpa Shooter?

Click on Start - Run and type the word "cmd" and hit enter.

It'll bring up a black command box.

Type "ping -t -l 1000 www.yahoo.com" (that's a dash and a lowercase L)

This will send a 1000 byte packet, to yahoo, until you hit ctrl-C to stop it.

Let it do this for a minute or so and then tell me what your min/max response time is in milliseconds, and if you have any dropped packets?

Very interested in rural satellite internet access, but I hate high latency.  I've heard satellite connections have high latency.

Tried your request. Came up saying it is not a valid command. What now?

[Stevie-Ray]

Hmmm....that'll be me in the not too distant future. I dislike the snow and the cold and wanted to move to southern Kentucky or the like. So where do I buy my next house? Why, 200 miles north of me, of course. Oh, well, that's where SWMBO wanted to be. Guess I'll have to get used to snowmobiles. We get a lot of lake effect snow there, as well as the normal 12 inch snowfalls.   At least up there there's virgin snow, trees and wildlife to look at, not like the nasty, ugly, salt-encrusted roads of metro-Detroit.  I'll be spending a lot of time with the cable system, sure. At least until I get my man-cave built.

[Gewehr98]

Very interested in rural satellite internet access, but I hate high latency.  I've heard satellite connections have high latency.

'Tis true.

Your packets go up 22,000 miles to the bird in geostationary orbit, then bounce back down 22,000 miles to the dish on the other end before connecting to whichever server you're pulling data from.

Granted, 600-1800ms ping rates are ok if you're downloading CNN to read, not so good if you're playing WarCrack or using Vonage as your phone provider. 

[Grandpa Shooter]

If one of you wants to check it out, contact Wild Blue and see what they have to say.  Its is not like DSL in the city, but we also don't have all the garbage to deal with the city dwellers have to.  We worked out a package deal where we have sat dishes here and out on the property so all we have to do is take the modem with us and we still have internet.  Only costs $39.95 a month.  Cheapest way to go for us and our circumstances.

[Brad Johnson]

Mom and Dad have DirecTV sat service.  It's definitely faster than dial up, but slow compared to even a basic DSL connection.  They don't do much more than check the weather and email so it doesn't bother them.

Brad