No Worries

For those people who could careless about the tribulations of attempting to get internet in the boonies of the Northwoods and only tune in for pretty pictures of the North. Here are your pics first. Taken at the corner of Bayview looking at the lake Peacefulness of the lake... no worries about strange electrical fields from the 20, 30's and 40's... just peaceful lake that has not changed in all the years Boats flipped up as they have always been waiting for winter.. no worries about what is going on, on Facebook, what work is emailing.... no worries The only worry in this picture is what will happen at New Years with a few drinks will someone decide to take a trip down the new slide. Will it be too big a temptation.... No worries about bids on Ebay, or what is going on in the news on the internet But alas we all know the stress of not being connected to the world while in the Northwoods. A few people tell me that they love being disconnected from the world, but the vast majority get the shakes at the mere mention of being forced to go cold turkey from email and the internet. Slowly over time we have changed with the world. First having a plug in at the top of the beach steps for guests to plug in for dial up internet. That was huge and made the few internet junkies happy 10 years ago. Next came one wireless router with a Verizon air card using the cell phone towers at our house that covered the playground and Birchwood. That made even more happy and I wondered how much more could we do. 4 years ago a 2nd router using the cell phone towers went in down at Holiday covering Holiday, Norway and Restawhile. Also moving our home router to cover not just Birchwood but also Muskie and Wigwam. All was right in the world until....... this summer. About mid June the Northwoods was descended upon by more cell phones and smart phones than our local towers could handle and our system of 2 routers struggled to even connect to the internet and when it did it was so painfully slow it caused more stress to be connected than it was worth Now the new age of internet has started at the resort. In August we installed this satellite dish through Dish Network. Thus began the drama of getting everything to work properly. Little did we know about settling satellite dishes that sink and throw off their alignment, old electrical lines that would throw off top of the line routers, and walls and trees that like to act like Green Bay line backers in disrupting signal Through it all JR our local internet router guru has kept a smile on his face as he has come up with solutions around the unique problems we seem to have getting internet signal through the resort. Hats off to JR for not throwing up the white flag and to Troy for all the digging he has done behind JR and his many feet of buried cable We now have a main Cysco Router which is backed up by a few smaller routers in our new office area, our home, a 3rd one in Kaubashine, a booster in Shamrock, and a 2nd antenna at Bayview. All of this works together to have really good reception for our house, playground, new office, Shamrock, Kaubashine, Birchwood, Muskie, Wigwam and Bayview. In the future when the ground unfreezes another direct cable may feed Wildflower and Restawhile but that is in the spring and up the good graces of Troy and his agreement to dig lines from the office to those cabins. January 15th my unlimited plan router in Holiday is be dropped by Verizon and they are forcing us to choose a limited plan. I may keep this router going I have to look into how much they want to charge us for overages and how much use it had in the summer. Depending on prices the worse case senerio is everyone in Wildflower, Restawhile, Holiday and Norway come down to the new sitting area in the office to use internet. Eagles Nest, Bear Den and Red Pine have no choice if they want internet they will definitely becoming to the office area or playground. Good news is the internet is now faster than the old router system that was through the cell phone towers. Our high speed service on the dish is limited per month so I just have to remind everyone to not use it for downloading movies, youtube and live streaming but it is great for browsing the internet and emails. After 3 months of playing around with routers and boosters this is the best we can do. I hope everyone likes it and has no worries New antenna at Bayview. We tried to daisy chain another antenna down the driveway but could not get enough power to it through the cable and had to abandon that idea. For now this is the end of the line for satellite internet. Restawhile, Holiday and Norway still have the old Verizon system and Wildflower is the lone hold out at this end of the resort with no internet until a line is buried This picture is for Craig in Arizona showing Steve finishing Holiday's roof without him. Don't worry, Steve did the Black family tried and true test to make sure the roof did not leak. Paul will know what that test involved but I am not sharing