She's back - MAYBE!

I just can not believe how rotten our 'net connection has been. We've had nothing but headaches since we "upgraded" our satellite. Robert finally had a block of time last Sunday and he called Hughes. Spent about 3 hours on the phone, but in the end, Hughes finally said the problem was on their end. Robert had been saying that he thought we needed to move the dish off the roof. But maybe we'll avoid that hassle. Anyway, Hughes said they would have to kick our case up to level 3 support (isn't it nice to be "special?") They said they had 3 business days to get the info to L3. They may be able to fix it without bothering us, or they may have to call and go through a zillion check-this's and unplug-that's. And since Mr. Wonderful is busy with business, I get the honor of being raked over the high-tech coals if they have to call. It will be worth it to get this mess cleared up and get back online. Or maybe since I'm actually online right now, maybe, maybe, maybe, just maybe they've got it working now? I've got my fingers crossed that I'll get the call by tomorrow saying "We think we fixed it, does it work?" And I'll say "Yes! Yes! Yes!" Well, that's my fantasy.......
I sure would not recommend Hughes to anyone. We previously had Earthlink. Of course, we're so far out in the wilds that our only option is 'llite. So we have 2 dishes on the roof, one for TV, one for 'net. We were not thrilled with Earthlink, but dial up from way out here is beyond p-a-i-n-f-u-l. And with Robert needing to telecommute so much, we simply had to have a high speed connection. But Earthlink did not have VPN. So the minute Robert found out Direcway had VPN, we had to switch. And it seemed like a great idea at the time. But alas, we did not know Direcway (which immediately became Hughes) has one nifty little feature - FAP. Fair Access Plan. French for "we're too sorry to have enough capacity to actually serve our customers." So if you "overuse" the service, they cut you off. Period. You are offline for about 4 hours. Then when you finally get the service back, you go through a period of slow service. This is to discourage overusage. Ok, I"m "discouraged" - Happy now? At this point, we're just waiting for DSL. We're getting a new subdivision across the street. 38 new houses. We have tons of new houses going up all around us so we're just hoping that with such growth, DSL will soon be available.

I've set aside some time today to scrapbook with the girls. Still working on pics from our DisneyWorld trip. The kids are having a great time telling their memories. Scrapbooking is a wonderful family activity. Now if I could just find the time to learn to use my Wishblade. More about that later.