Internet

As I don’t like wearing the muzzle

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As I don’t like wearing the muzzle… 😷

It’s kind of rare for me to go down to the library to work on my laptop but I did for 45 minutes or so this afternoon – I wanted to download some data plus I just wanted to get out of my apartment for a while this afternoon. It also was a chance to get a few more steps in.

If muzzles weren’t required I’d probably go to the library more but these days I find I can do most things with my phone – and I have hot spot service too. I probably could get home internet but it’s expensive, uses a lot of electricity and I like the walk. 

Still choose not to have internet access at home 🖥

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Still choose NOT to have internet access at home 🖥

Probably the biggest time suck is the internet, just browsing social media and random websites. Not only is it time consuming – it’s expensive with the $50 plus a month for the cable or FIOS service, to say nothing of the electricity consumed and the constant supply of gadgets like modems and routers that you use for a few years and throw in the garbage when they fail or become obsolete.

For years, a resisted even having a smartphone until they finally became inexpensive and it seemed like a growing necessity to have access to email for work. But nowadays it seems like you can virtually do everything on your smartphone – no computer needed.

Bandwidth caps keep increasing and with more powerful smartphone apps you don’t really need computers for much except for the most processing intensive things like GIS work. And heck, it seems like most new phones are including Hotspot capabilities and providers are allowing you to use part of your monthly bandwidth for hot spot allowing you to get your desktop computer online for basic, occasional use.

I just like having my internet access limited at home and not using my laptop, which uses far more electricity than my smartphone. When I need an occasional dataset or to do something best done on the computer, I can use the hotspot mode to briefly connect. And I can get connected wherever.

For bigger files and downloads, I can always swing by a public Wi-Fi network at a local library or other location. My office has WI-FI and that’s where I normally grab software updates, podcasts, YouTube videos that I download and so forth. I like how my internet access is controlled and limited to set time periods at the library or similar other locations.

Even when I own my own land, I really doubt I’ll ever have home internet. It seems like a lot of equipment to buy, services to subscribe to, electricity to consume and equipment to discard. I get that smart homes are very trendy these days but I don’t want to live a life where everything I do offline is monitored and sold for marketing purposes. My smartphone is really just enough.

My growing need for distraction 🙄

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My growing need for distraction 🙄

With the craziness of the world and maybe my own anxiety, I often feel it necessary to head up to the wilderness for a few days, away from cell service. While I used to crave camping places where I could stay connected, especially on long winter nights, nowadays after a year of remote work, sometimes from camp, I have a much stronger craving to get away from it all.

Guerrilla Wi-Fi Comes to New York – The New York Times

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‘Welcome to the Mesh, Brother’: Guerrilla Wi-Fi Comes to New York – The New York Times

Mr. Heredia is a 19-year-old volunteer with NYC Mesh, a nonprofit community Wi-Fi initiative, and he was there to install a router that would bring inexpensive Wi-Fi to the building. Mr. Cambridge’s family said they had become fed up with the take-it-or-leave-it pricing for spotty service that internet providers seem to get away with in this part of Brooklyn.

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Mr. Heredia crouched to affix the router to a plumbing vent, positioning it so the Wi-Fi signal could avoid the tree down the block. An app on his phone beeped to indicate the strength of the connection. Higher in pitch and more rapid was good. Mr. Cambridge whipped out his phone to search for NYC Mesh among the available networks. “It just came up!”

NPR

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Falun Gong, Steve Bannon, And The Battle Over Internet Freedom Under Trump : NPR

Of all the disruptions unleashed by the Trump White House on how the federal government typically works, the saga of one small project, called the Open Technology Fund, stands out.

The fantastical tale incorporates the spiritual movement Falun Gong, former White House strategist Steve Bannon, the daughter of a late liberal Congressman, and a zealous appointee of former President Donald Trump.

And specifically, it involves a fierce, months-long battle over whether the U.S. Agency for Global Media and the U.S. State Department should subsidize software developed by adherents of Falun Gong. The decision to prioritize this software stripped money intended for critical apps from a federal fund designed to bolster technology vital to dissidents overseas, officials say. On top of that, once approved for funding, over a six-month period the software served a grand total of four people. That's right, four.

A year of remote work without home internet 💻

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I was thinking this afternoon when the work day came to a close, it’s been one year of remote work, since the start of the pandemic. While in autumn, there was a few work days in office, there wasn’t a lot. Most everything was remote, often in my case, from quite remote country. I’ve survived a year without ever having to get permanent Internet at home, by a mix of having a work laptop with mobile broadband (always keeping a watchful eye on data meter), my cellphone, and later upgrading my phone to a hotspot plan and using that with my laptop. And lots of hours spent at the Town Library and Town Park, Five Rivers, the laundromat, along with numerous other places with free Wi-Fi. For a while, I really got into bird watching while I worked from truck. Eight hours a day looking out the windshield at the birds can do that.

Maybe I am just stubborn about refusing to get my apartment wired for the Internet. After all well over 80% of Americans do have home internet, and probably in my fairly well-off suburban neighborhood, the percentage is much higher. For a suburbanite household where the primary resident is under 65 percent, probably Home Internet is close to 95% percent. I will be the first to admit it kind of sucks at times on particularly hot, cold or rainy days to be working down at the library from the cab of my truck, although these days with my phone set up as hotspot or Zoom on my phone I can usually work from home when things are particularly inclement. I probably could afford it, although I’d have to find money somewhere in the budget, and I always keep a tight budget with little money left in non-interesting bearing account at the end of week.

From time to time I get advertisements for Verizon Fiber and Time Warner Cable, although after all these years, they’ve kind of given up on me. I may be just a bit too stubborn about not having Internet at home, although I have to say since I upgraded to the 20 GB a month hotspot plan for my phone and unlimited mobile phone data, I’ve been far less careful about my internet use at home, and I certainly use it more for recreational purposes then I wish. It used to be I didn’t do internet at all from home. It was something that was a special trip to the library. But it’s not as convenient to go down to the library anymore, as they don’t allow use from indoors until the pandemic is over. That means if I want to use the library WI-FI, I have to drive down there and sit outside in the cold or heat. Although more recently, since the worse of the virus has slowed, I have walked down there and sat on the bench or park table — I’m not so worried about touching things any more based on what we now know about the virus.

For sure, there where some awful hot summer days working down at the library last summer, sweating like a dog. Other very cold days in December, shivering in my truck with the windows fogged up from my breath. There were times I was staring at the power gauge, wondering if I would make it to five o’clock with the battery under-voltage meter not tripping out again. Or that rainy day my laptop camera fogged up on the Zoom meeting. But then again, there were some fun days hanging out in Green Mountain National Forest in a hammock writing reports for work, or sitting at the Lake Pleasant Beach with my laptop answering emails. Then there was the time I was on a phone with a client, and a float plane splashed down on the lake drowning out the call briefly. Or that time answering client calls from the side of Lows Ledge outside of Horseshoe Lake outside of Tupper Lake. I can’t think of the countless hours doing Zoom meetings or sending text messages from the Speculator Library. I almost lived there for a while from the cab of my truck.

Last spring through the autumn, I used over 50 kWh generated by the solar panel alone on my truck, from all the time I spent charging my laptop off the solar panel. To say nothing of power generated by the alternator. It was 63 night camping out in the wilderness last year, several weeks just working out of the woods or a lot of the time spent up in Speculator. I spent enough time out by Lake Pleasant Park, I almost was became a permanent resident. I got to know the Mason Lake – Speculator Tree Farm – Perkins Clearing easement really well, maybe too well.

I am the first to admit things are probably coming to end at some point in the but it’s been fun and crazy too. Eventually I will be going back to working downtown, and I will end my hotspot plan. I don’t really want unlimited Internet at home. I like the walk to the library. And no more days writing reports or answering emails from the hammock or taking phone calls and writing memos from the shores of Lake Pleasant. No more playing on my computer at home, or being able to watch random Youtube videos from my bed in the evening. I liked having my Internet limited to the time period spent at the library or park. But regardless, it really was a pretty crazy year in a good kind of way.