Ohhh, That Need for Speed...

So where'd ya go this time Jen??
     Of all my online doings, this blog is probably the thing I've missed the most. Although it was not my intention to literally drop out of site (again), it became an unfortunate side-effect of our ISP woes. Living in a somewhat rural area, our choices [years ago] were very limited when it came to internet service. Because we wanted a land line without the added expense of cable, we've been pretty much stuck with CenturyLink (and yep, I'm namin' names people). 
     Back in the day, their service was pretty darn good. I'd click on a page and it loaded just like it was supposed to. As the internet became more and more graphics intensive, however, we began to experience a definite reduction in speed. By the time of last year's post, it was taking an insane amount of time just to type a post (the preview window would hang up, my cursor would get stuck in one spot or disappear altogether, yadda-yadda). Uploading photos was awful. One by one, I gave up trying to accomplish things online in defeat. 
Fast Forward to a couple of weeks ago
      It occurred to me as I attempted to reply to an email at home (which took two hours and many repentable words to type and send one doggone message) that I had not revisited the land line/ISP conundrum for a couple of years. Habitual ruts do have their disadvantages, don't they? 
      Verizon's Hot Spot was still too limited (and pricey), however, TimeWarner (TWC) had started including a land line phone service in with some of their bundles. Hmmmm. Although it included cable, the price for all three services was only slightly higher than we were paying now for just two. One really, if you considered the utter uselessness of our internet. The big question was: Could we get it in our area? Yes, we could. *DingDingDingDing* Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! Now I just had to convince DH (whose "ducttapeoughttadoit" mentality is: It doesn't effect me directly therefore it probably isn't really broken, so why would we need to fix it?) It took three days, four verbal dissertations, two heartfelt pleas and one rant (should've just started there, in retrospect ;o) to get him to finally agree to the change. (for some odd reason, the Twelve Days of Christmas song has suddenly popped into my mind - go figure). I am, therefore, proud to announce:

We have real Internet!

Some Perspective

     To give you an idea of just how bad it was, the state with the highest internet speed in the U.S. in 2014 was Virginia at 13.7mbps (I found a neat map here). Alaska came in dead last at 7mbps. My internet? Ha. It was supposed to be 6mbps; we were told to expect a minimum of 3mbps, but what we actually got was a pathetic 1.8mbps (when it wasn't raining, that is). Pages were loading in extreme slow-mo, and typing anything was a sight to [eventually] behold. I'd bang out a sentence, the cursor would disappear and after several seconds of waiting, the words would come up one letter at time. Made me crazed. 
      YouTube gave me frownie faces half the time when I tried to watch my crafting tutorials; we're talking regular videos here - anything HD wasn't happening at all. Adding insult to injury, my new[ish] computer was slowly hiccuping along as a result of our lousy connection. Windows updates (gotta love those, right?) took hours to download; sometimes days. Most programs now connect to the internet in the background, so if you have a poor connection your software will be adversely effected right along with your temper. Although TWC advertised speeds of 30mbps, I viewed that as an absolute impossibility. Shoot, I was having fantasies about 20mbps. 10, even. Do I hear 5? I am still reeling from the actuality: Would you believe we are getting a whopping 34mbps? Pages load  almost instantaneously (HD videos and everything!) and words actually appear as I type them. It's phenomenal. Colossal. Stupendous! 
Anyhoo, what now?
     Went on a bit more than intended here - this was supposed to be a coming soon paragraph - but I'm just SO excited to be back! *SQUEEEE* I have SO much to tell you guys! 

I am going to try really hard to get back into the swing of things over the next month or so. We're coming to the end of the school year which should, hopefully, free up some extra time for me (time seems to be in perpetually short supply, doesn't it?) I'm probably going to need a refresher course on which thing does what both here and on our site, but I'm hoping to get back into the swing of regular posts without hurting myself (and visiting everybody too - I've missed you!) Hopefully, I can give the blog a much-needed face lift and then try to tackle our sadly neglected website. My biggest challenge is probably going to be re-establishing the habit; not that I would ever forget anything, right? *facepalm*

As always, thanks for reading this far and have a blessed day!