I want some coffee!

Pretty much as expected, the AT&T service was easy-peasey and worked well. That is to say it worked as advertised. The box from Millenicom containing the router arrived about 2:30 Monday (note to Millenicom: a package isn't shipped till you actually get it shipped!). It was up and running by 2:32. I opened the box, found & installed the SIM card, plugged in the router's power adapter to the outlet and without doing a single thing it was connected to AT&T. Beginning to end was about 2 minutes. Setup effort was zero. Nada. So... 3 cheers for Millenicom and AT&T!! And most important we made it through two 51-minute episodes of Poirot without buffering one time. It just... worked!   Which wasn't a surprise as I had run Speedtest a few times to confirm all was well- Latency = 70 msec Download = > 20 MBps Upload = 1.1 MBps (terrible! may be a router-location issue) Next test will be to find a safe location on the Vegas and see how it does outside the park. An...

I loved the Skyroam concept but the implementation fell short of the miracle (!) it promised. So on 30 Apr I asked Millenicom, the Oregon-based service that re-sells Skyroam's world-wide internet access, to cancel the subscription before we hit another 30 day cycle.  Our experience was that we would be disconnected regularly- about 5 pm on Wednesday. Seemed to be the weekly anniversary of when we first activated the service. I'd call Millenicom and they would call Skyroam, then Skyroam would reconnect us. My sense of it was that Skyroam felt they were doing us a favor by reconnecting our router. Enough. And the support tech mentioned we weren't the only ones that had suffered regular disconnects. Our park-provided internet access here in Benson is still limited in bandwidth even with the significant drop in snowbirds who have left for their summer homes... whatever we're watching will have to buffer a few times before the episode/video is over. So I have now signed up f...

For the first time since we activated our service with Millenicom we were able to stream without interruption on a Wednesday evening. It wasn't till Thursday evening I realized we'd hit that milestone. So having missed the 'Rabbit! Rabbit!' moment on Wednesday evening I felt obliged to immortalize the event here.   And for the select few ignorant of a valued superstition Wikipedia has an article to save you from yourself! Update: less than an hour after posting this I discovered our Millenicom/Skyroam wireless internet service had crapped itself. Again. Well... at least I know they're reading my blog!

Three Wednesdays in a row the wireless connection from our 3-network mobile WiFi died. I jumped to the conclusion it has something to do with the day of the week. So... I called Millenicom's support folks and was told that I had been disconnected by 'the provider' but the tech reset the connection and I was good to go. Unfortunately that didn't tell me why the connection was dropped. Cuz it's a regular Wednesday thing? because we hit our (current) 100GB limit? or maybe 'the provider' (I had the feeling they weren't talking about AT&T who we were connected thru at the time) had some issue... ?? This morning I received an eMail from Millenicom saying they had just gotten the info this morning and that - since today is the first day of April - data usage was zero. Crap. Doesn't tell me anything about my usage and whether I need to increase the plan from 100GB/mo to 200GB/mo or if we're good with what we have. The Speedtest results (below) aren...

... but no cigar!" We have used the Skyroam Solis Lite 3-network router here at our RV park for a couple weeks now and the results have been less than stellar. The first few nights it worked with no issue, but then it seemed to not find any suitable network. I rebooted the router over and over in hopes of getting it to a working connection but no joy. We finished the evening using the park's WiFi (yeah, that was embarrassing). My plan was to call Millenicom the next day (no techies around at that late hour) and see what was the issue.  And I forgot! As the appointed hour for viewing approached I did an 'oh crap!' head slap and took a quick look at the router. Odd... it seemed to not be dead as I expected and had 'normal' indicator lights. I had left it Off (powered off but plugged into a charger).  I went to my laptop and did a speed test which looked something like this app from HonorLock : If you're familiar with this sort of internet connection (often c...

I can imagine this is a common question around the country as things wind down after dinner and it's time to get in a couple hours with your favorite whatever before heading off to bed. We have Dish but frankly, other than The Admiral watching PBS News Hour before dinner or maybe a couple episodes of Fixer Upper on the Magnolia Channel earlier in the afternoon, we spend the time streaming something from Netflix, Amazon Prime/Brit Box/Acorn Ltd or YouTube. The park has a WiFi system for connecting to the internet and that's what we use. Well... *used* to use. The park is pretty busy right now as the snow birds start drifting back east and north toward more comfortable summer climates than Arizona can offer at lower elevations. It's not uncommon for us to see every available site in our park's rental pool in use and dry camping (no power, water or sewer- just a numbered space on not-so-level ground) is pretty much full. The rush starts about the last 10 days of February a...

 ... is the itch you can't scratch. Our friends from Key West, collectively "conchscooter", are newly retired and free to roam as the mood strikes. They left the Benson area on the eve of the new year. They crossed the border at Naco, AZ/Naco, MEX and headed straight to the parking lot of a Sonoran winery for the night (!). Then they were off to the north end of the Sea of Cortez. But that area of the gulf of Baja is seriously cold so there was no chance for a swim in warm water. That forced a migration south till they finally found coastal water where they could swim without calling it a Polar Bear Party! So here they are in the south-of-the-border-Margaritaville enjoying the comfort of warm 90°F days and who knows how warm Pacific ocean water... about 1200 miles south of the border. Benson, AZ to Tenacatita, Jalisco, Mexico- 1,226 miles according to Google Yeah... a margarita. Jimmy Buffett would approve! The margarita & food were delivered to them on the beach- som...