Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Butterbean was a kind friend, and an internet connection.....

First of all I would like to mention the passing of James Butterbean Carpenter...  He was an avid blog reader and left comments on almost all of our blogs...  He often used vernacular language in those comments, and at first I wondered who in the heck was this fellow......

But then one day he emailed me with a comment and that vernacular was completely gone....  It was kind of a ruse...   But that was OK with me, as I always knew he had a heart as big as the West end of Texas where he lived...

I haven't been able to find out what happened other than a Traffic Accident, but perhaps it is just as well that I don't know...   But what I do know, is that he sent me some very kind and helpful messages at the time of Loyce's passing and was a true internet friend....  I wished I could have met him, but we never went thru his part of Texas since he introduced himself with emails.....

I can only hope that God has a special place up in Heaven for our brother Butterbean, as he has earned it with his wit and kindness here on earth...

I emailed my friend Al today asking if we were going to the Romeo Christmas lunch at a BarBQue over in Belton, Missouri....  I suggested by car.....  And heck yes he is going, but with his scooter....

Seems he has been awarded the Polar Bear award for showing up on his bike when all others have used 4 wheel protected conveyances, and  now needs to maintain that image....

That meant that I needed to get the charger on the Suzuki Burgman and try to get it started...   It only took about 3 hours and the bike popped right off...  Started much better than the cars did...

So I rode over to Al's home just to see how he was getting along...  And of course we got into another philosophical, technical, and religious discussion...  It was mostly dark by the time we came up from his basement office..

And during that discussion, he showed me how fast his internet connection was...  Almost 18 megabits.....  Wow...  I knew mine was slower than sin over here, but we are connected to the same service provider..............?

So I tested my speed tonight and found that I was at 3 mbps...  What?  I messed and messed around....  Couldn't improve it one bit...  I'm going to have to call and give these folks the what for, I reasoned...

But just a few moments ago I happened to look at my wifi connection in the bottom right of the screen...  I only had one bar....  I'm not ten feet from the router but its on the other side of a wall...  Still....  So loading the connection program yielded that I am connected to a distant neighbors open security wifi, rather than my own....  How did that happen...?

Oh well, I'm back up to 10 mbps now and still scratching my head....

Retired Rod

6 comments:

  1. I chuckled when you said you were connected to a neighbor. What do you use to test your speed? It seems to me the internet has been slower the month of Dec. with all the online shopping. Is that possible?

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    1. I use "speedtest.net" I think you can use speedtest.com as well....

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  2. I sure wish we could have met Butterbean also. He was on my list for next Fall when we came back from the East coast. Being connected to Media Com I have a good connection 99% of the time and don't get near as frustrated.

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  3. No neighbors close enough for us to use their wifi! :) Our internet has seemed slower here in December--wonder what the deal is?? I enjoyed Butterbean's comments and his emails--he will be truly missed!

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  4. I don't have the opportunity to slide over to a neighbours wifi, although a few years ago we noticed that perhaps someone was "borrowing" ours? That's when we introduced some security. I mean, once in a while would have been OK, but whoever it was, was using way too much bandwidth.
    When we were in the Netherlands, (the first year of our European stay) I was able to get an emergency signal from one of the neighbours, but it was only if I went up into the room over the garage. That only happened if our regular service tanked, which thankfully wasn't that often. Eventually I figured out that it was a lady who lived across the way.
    My hard wired connection here shows 100 Mbps, but I don't believe it. Wifi from this room is painfully low, and I have no desire to put in a booster, but it sounds like you might be needing such a critter?

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  5. It always amazes me when I check wifi signals in parks where we stay and see all the unsecured connections. That was a funny story though.

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