Not a lot happening on the farm so this week is about the ongoing technical struggles. But first a few announcements:
Our 3M drop site hosts are moving so we need to find another location. In looking at our customers who pick up there we seem to have them located on both sides of 94 so being near 3M would be best. Anyone like to volunteer? Some parts of Woodbury are pretty close. I can fill you in on the details if you are interested. The effort is pretty trivial.
I am in the process of finalizing this year’s seed order. If there is anything you want us to grow now is the time to let me know. If I don’t hear from anyone I’m thinking of growing mostly kale this year. It really fills the space nicely.
We are still taking orders for the 2022 season! We’ve had a great start to sales this year but we’d always like to be sold out as soon as possible so we can focus on other things. If you haven’t yet signed up please consider doing so soon. If you think there are other people you know who could benefit from eating locally grown, delicious vegetables send them our way. We will credit your account $25 for every new member who is referred to us by you. Thanks for the support!
Technical News
This section used to be called “Farm News” but since there is so little farm news in the winter I switched it to “Technical News” which seems to be ongoing. Feel free to skip if you don’t care about my technical problems though you may learn something new if you read it!
The main problem I am tying to resolve (though in some ways I’m not all that bothered) is accessing Facebook/Instagram’s content delivery network (CDN). Why do I want to do such a thing? Because when you log into Facebook (or Instagram), Facebook accesses their CDN to provide image and video content. What’s Facebook without the faces, right? Or Instagram without the grams? No cat videos for you!
As I continued my investigation into the issue I had Centurylink send out a technician to see if it was somehow resolvable by switching equipment or moving some wires around. I was not optimistic and was not surprised by the results. The first thing we tried was a new modem. No difference. Then he swapped some wires in the big box on the side of he road. No difference. Then he suggested calling a different ISP because Centurylink wasn’t going to fix it. So far that’s the most help I’ve received from them to date! But unfortunately we are pretty limited to just Centurylink here, unless we only needed a few gigs of data each month — No Netflix for you!
He did have another suggestion though. Apparently I am on some old network which Centurylink isn’t going to update, which is why he mentioned that my problem will probably never be fixed. He suggested I could update to the new network but would require the purchase of a new modem. Ok fine, a couple of $100 to fix the problem. But when I looked into upgrading I would be limited to 3 mbs! That’s less than what I get now. How is this even an upgrade? And when they say 3mbs do they really mean a maximum of 3mbs kind of like my current service being 5 mbs but I usually only get 4 mbs? No videos of potato diggers for you!
I guess the reason for the lower speed on the newer network is the signal is weaker and doesn’t travel as far. Seems like a dumb approach to me. We are about 1.5 miles from the box which seems to be the outer limit of the newer service. However the technician said that others using the newer technology are getting 9-10 mbs. I asked if I could get that speed. He didn’t know and the only way to find out was to purchase the service. And of course Centurylink is only “guaranteeing” the lower 3 mbs. So I am in a Let’s Make a Deal scenario. Do I stick with the 4-5 mbs service I currently have that limits my access to Facebook images? Or do I trade it in — along with a couple $100 — to upgrade to a new service that may be faster or slower than what I have today but will provide access to Facebook images. And of course this new service may not be fast enough to stream. Plus there is no going back to the old system. Living in the country is harder than I thought! No easy decision for you!
I think back to October when all was right with the world. What changed and why won’t it change back? It just seems really odd that I am the only person in the whole world that has this problem. You’d think there would be another person nearby who cares more about accessing Facebook and Instagram than I do who’d be willing to put in the effort to get Centurylink to fix it for themselves and as a side-effect for me too. But so far no such luck. I keep trying every week to see if it resolves somehow but so far it is still unresolved. I thought about contacting Centurylink again but going through customer support is hopeless, take forever and they like to drop the call when they realize they don’t have an answer. The problem I have has to be fixed far beyond what customer support is capable of. What a strange place to find myself. If I knew this was going to happen I’m not sure I would have gotten into farming in the first place. No veggie for you!
Other than technical problems there is not much else to report. So here is this week’s joke:
Why do bees hum?
Because they don’t know the words.
Here is a non-farm joke but I LOLed when I read it:
What did the fish say when he swam into a wall?
Dam!
As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, suggestions, ideas, jokes or other interesting things to keep warm.