| Same Old Story... What Goes Around.... |
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| Saturday, 15 May 2004 00:00 | |||
 For someone who lives on the road, the ability to easily communicate with friends and family is imperative to me. When we embarked on this journey, having ready access to the Internet was my chief concern. After a great deal of research, we settled on the Datastorm system. It is a costly system, requiring a huge folding satellite dish attached to the roof, crazy wiring, two modem boxes, a receiver and a computer server. Ours is a wireless system from the server to our two computers so there is a "linksys" transmitter as well. It is a little complicated but the advantage of this system over any other one is the monthly cost and the ability to have access virtually anywhere that there is an unobstructed signal. For the most part we have been very satisfied with the system however there have been some issues that have caused great irritation.
The first problem occurred in Milton, when we were parked near some power lines that were interfering with the signal. The next time was in Indiana when we were parked beside a large tree and there was no clear view for the dish to acquire the signal. Then in one park in Texas, their wireless system was so strong; ours kept getting "bumped" off. On Thursday night, I went online briefly to check my email and oddly there was none but I was too tired to look a little deeper and I just turned off the computer and went to bed. Friday morning, when I tried to get on line there were two text messages on my screen indicating that there was a modem problem. Sure enough, the modems were dead...no power going to them at all.
I immediately contacted Scott, at Techmobile Solutions in Lindsay, where we purchased our system to determine the cause of the problem. After a few different tests, we think we determined that the power pack for the modems has died. When I tried to get a contact here in Vancouver to replace the power pack, I learned that there is no one here, or at least no one they want to recommend. I am now waiting patiently to have a new power pack shipped to me so for now; I load my stories from Karley's computer. I have no email access; evidently my server Direcway doesn't offer a way to check it from a remote location. Am I a happy customer? NO. On Saturday, I spoke with Dawn, the supervisor at Techmobile Solutions and I have to say her helpfulness was lacking. In fact she was pretty abrupt with me and her attitude requires some serious adjusting. Considering the money we spent to have this system installed, I expected more kindness, however, you have heard me say before...what goes around comes around!
In the meantime, I will continue to post on this site and when I can, I will read my email again getting back to everyone as soon as possible.
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