WE ARE BACK ! - 10/25
WHEW!
We like living in the boonies in Mexico all right but NOT being disconnected from the rest of our fellow earthlings. Being off-line without an Internet connection for the past three and a half months has been awful. We appologize for disappearing from sight and not keeping up our blogs and answering mail. The only way we have to connect to the Internet here is via our own satellite dish. There are no phone lines where we live to have a regular dial-up Internet connection. Our equipment just quit and we had not a clue if the problem was the satellite's modem or it's power supply or the transmitter on the boom of the dish itself. This equipment is sold in Mexico but is three times as expensive as in the states -- beyond our modest budget. Trying to have a friend buy a system on eBay and send it to us failed and the shipping was an extra $300 to get it here. UGH.
So it was the calvary to the rescue. John Calypso bought us a used system on eBay and just brought it down here to us. It was both our power supply and our transmitter which were blown, and we replaced them yesterday. AND HERE WE ARE.
We are sobered by the vulnerablility of electronic equipment in Mexico run on the not always reliable grid power. And by the difficulty of obtaining replacement equipment here OR getting anything shipped from the U.S. without going in the poor house. There is also some fierce thunderstorms here at times. Perhaps it was lightening that hit our dish. We just don't know but will take extra special steps to ground the dish better this time. We will also set up the four solar electrical panels we brought with us and run the satellite's modem and power supply (and our computer) with that power via batteries and an inverter not the grid.
I guess we live a contraditction here, trying to live a simple, natural life yet finding outselves addicted to highly sophisticated and vulnerable electronic gadgets from another world entirely. It's here in paradise we shall stay, however, and we will just have to suffer the conseqences of our addiction. :)
- jim and mindy
