Greetings and welcome!
We had a little rain this week but it was not enough to be meaningful. At that point the fire danger remains very high, and the rivers and wetlands are very low.
My grass is mostly dead and brown now, and only drought hardy weeds are growing. I am also starting to see some of the ferns and other underbrush plants dying back a little like they would in fall. This is not well timed for the black raspberry production either.
There is a chance of more meaningful rain next week. It would take a lot to turn around our little dry spell though.
We are in for a warm and rain-free weekend. The forecast at the moment is for sunny skies and low to mid-80s for temperatures.
I don’t have much for events this weekend. There is a big deal off-road race down in Lena Saturday, and Friday the racers will be in town showing off cars, signing autographs, and selling swag. Here are the links.
https://www.ocontocounty.org/events/?i=thunder-on-main-dirt-city-duel-2022-07-29&d=2022-07&view=l
https://www.ocontocounty.org/events/?i=dirt-city-duel-off-road-races-2022-07-30&d=2022-07&view=l
On the personal side I finally got Starlink internet this week. I had been signed up with money down since March of last year. Apparently they opened up our area and a lot of people around here started receiving their kits. Mine took less than a week to get here and about 5 minutes to set up.
For the short term I just have it sitting in the clearest spot in the side yard and a cable coming in through the window. Considering my obstructions from trees it works incredibly well. My initial download speed was about 65Mb/sec and I have gone over 130Mb/sec in some of my testing. I am consistently getting over 60Mb/s, and can watch hi def TV or YouTube without interruption.
I had Hughesnet before and they were a flaming hot mess. Half the time it didn’t work at all, a lot of times it would load partial pages, and trying to watch a low resolution YouTube had it starting and stopping about every 5 seconds if I didn’t pre-load or buffer the video. I ran out of data in 10 days every month because it uses up it’s own data to phone home. Once I establish Starlink as reliable I will be pulling the plug on the Hughesnet. I’d tell you how I really feel about Hugesnet, but not only is it not family rated, it would make a coal miner’s bartender blush. Good riddance to a terrible company and their terrible dial-up speed internet service for $85 a month.
The next best option was Centurylink DSL, but they wouldn’t hook me up because I was on the wrong side of the road. My neighbor across the street has it but they said that my side of the street is on a different box and that the box is full. Having dealt with them at a business 200′ away from their main station in Wausaukee I am not sad that I missed out on that. Starlink is sooo much better that the wait was worth it.
That’s news from here. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB