I like to think that so far I've kept the few things that I written on here relatively positive. The world just doesn't need more people moaning about how bad everything is all the time. Sure some things around are pretty bad; we all know that, but you can't swing a proverbial "cat" on the proverbial "internet" without hitting a proverbial "blogger" complaining about their Helio Ocean, or iPhone, or Amazon Kindle, or EV-DO not working exactly like they think it should (all products that don't work in Montana by the way, except for EV-DO, which just won't work within 60 miles of my home.)
But I am still a blogger myself, now matter how half-heartedly I go about it. And sooner or later the afore-mentioned cat will swing around and hit me. Therefore it is my turn to bitch about something. This is the first of what will likely be a very long and irritating string of post about the companies that have managed to piss me off over the years (I'm looking at you Yahoo!, your next on the list.)
When Ruth and I moved out to our ranch house we knew we would need to find some way of replacing our beloved DSL service that we enjoyed while living in Fort Benton. The only options available to us were Hughes and Wildblue. Wildblue had a cross promotion with Dish so we chose them. For everyone who doesn't know satellite internet has a short lag time, due to the distance needed for the signal to travel to a geostationary satellite and back, and that silly little limitation that has so vexed sci-fi fans such as myself for so long, the speed of light. We can live with the lag, even though it prevents the use of VoIP services like Skype that Ruth used to use a lot, but that is a relatively small price to pay for broadband in the middle of nowhere. Doesn't sound too bad, does it? At least not until we run across the nasty little bugger called the Fair Access Policy (FAP for those of us too busy or to hip not to use acronyms.) This horrid part of the User Agreement tells us that we aren't allowed to use more than seventeen gigabits of bandwidth per thirty day period. Although this may not seem too restrictive, after all if all you want to do is check your MySpace or Facebook friends to see if their lives are more interesting than yours, or go to barackobama.com to lend your support, then seventeen gigs is plenty. But if you're like us and want to do those things, and download hi definition video podcasts to your AppleTV, listen to a number of audio podcasts, buy music online, and so much more. Those seventeen gigs begin to feel akin to trying to eat a prime rib dinner through a straw, technically possible yet supremely unsatisfying.
Of course Wildblue pours salt in the wound by telling its customers that law-abiding internet users will never need to worry about the limit because only people downloading illegal content could ever use up that much bandwidth. I find this offensive, without pirating anything, I can easily find more than enough content that is legal, and often, free, to fill my limit. It is like selling a car that only goes twenty mph because only bank robbers and other criminals would want to go faster. But because Wildblue are such great people they only restrict your speed when you cross the limit. The first time. If you do it more within a few months, they don't quite say how often, or in how many months. If you want to buy more bandwidth, your SOL there as well.
Why don't they just limit at peak hours? Damn good question. I know satellites are expensive, and I don't mind my connection slowing when everyone else is online, but slowing or being cut off just because I'm using the service I'm paying for is very irritating. So here I am whining about this because there is a new update for my beloved AppleTV which I can't download because my accursed Wildblue is within a hairs breadth of going over its limit. Hopefully my thirty-day average will drop in the next day or two so that I can go back to being the usual happy go lucky blogger that hardly any readers have come to know and love.
Until then: Curse you Wildblue! May you and your crappy hardware soon be replaced in my home with something that doesn't suck.