Weekly Recap: With the new internet

Hey, I'm excited! I can finally access the internet at a normal speed! Since late November we've been having internet trouble, it was becoming slower and slower, we had a hard time streaming movies (which we don't do very often, but when we want to watch twice a month and can't it's frustrating!) I'm posting the story below this week's update so if you want to read it you can!

School for the week:

• History - We began the unit about the Mormon Pioneers moving west, starting with being forced to leave Nauvoo, and moving to Winter Quarters.
• Literature - Another Amos Fortune lesson. We talked about character traits. My husband says he really enjoys listening to our read-aloud time and wants to read the entire book.
• Science - We learned about the immune system. 
• Geography - We talked about population, and created population maps for South America.
• Music - Our second lesson on percussion. We watched a lot of fun videos and learned that there are many unconventional percussion instruments. 

Other highlights:

We had to call the furnace repairman again. This time he determined it was a part inside that wasn't working, and he replaced it. Fortunately this seems to have solved the problem of it not turning on when it needs to!

J played his first church basketball game. M had physical therapy and was asked if she'd be willing to have photos taken of her to include in a brochure. My husband had a day off in the middle of the week and had some basic maintenance done on our van. He discovered that we'll need new tires in the next couple of months, unless the weather gets snowy... then we should get them right away. Speaking of the weather, it feels like April!

We had a short school day so we could watch President Monson's funeral on TV. Then we helped clean our church building Friday night.

The old and new internet:

Starting in late November, my husband had repeatedly called our ISP, asking why we were getting 0.3-4.0 Mbps download speeds when we should be getting closer to 15.0. We did the basic fixes, they did whatever they do on their end, and told us they'd put in a notice for the senior tech people to look at it. When they told us that for about three weeks in a row but nothing changed or happened, my husband was beginning to get upset. He started asking to speak to a supervisor, or to have the two guys in charge call and help, anything to get past this phone tech who obviously couldn't help. Still nothing. Mid December we got a new computer. It took me a few days to get files transferred over but when I did, I started the cloud backup service on the new computer. I have the cloud backup throttled through the software - it only uses a certain amount of bandwidth and only uploads a certain amount per day.

Well, once the phone tech found out that we were using a cloud service, he blamed all our problems on that. Nevermind that that is uploading, he blamed the downloading on that for various reasons that any person could have seen straight through. No logic involved, just dumb excuses. Even when the backup was disabled, and the connection didn't improve, he said the cloud backup must be causing the problem. Okaaay.... I finally talked to them on the phone, since I am the one with more technical knowledge. I was a bit astounded by the excuses... surely he'd have a better career as a fiction writer! All my requests were ignored, he could only put in a note for the senior guys to look over our account. They never offered to have someone come out and look over things.

Well, after 6 weeks of this we felt we had been overly patient, and we picked a new internet company. The day they came out to install, the gentleman said to me, "Wow, you must not be getting any internet connection. The cable connection was badly damaged up on the roof. I went ahead and replaced that."

I explained we were getting a very slow connection, and he was surprised that the numbers were as high as they were. Wow is right. The original company refused for 6 weeks to have a tech work on the problem, and as a result they lost our business. Plus, word travels and some friends of ours have been staying updated on the situation because they also have this company. I know at least one of them is switching now. So the moral of the story is, you can't trust TXOX. They had been helpful in the past, but we have had too many times that the connection dropped. And this last problem was just out of control. So there is my review of that service. Let's hope the new company is better!