Back from town - light posting

Got back in from town an hour ago and our manager and van were back from the Friday shopping run so I helped unload and priced and stocked the bread. The people we get the seeds from also showed up to deliver our order so it was a wonderful chaos in the store. What with El Ni�o and the PDO, it has been a significantly warmer winter than usual and the plants are about a month ahead of schedule and even though El Ni�o is growing cooler, the PDO is just starting to warm up after a five year cold cycle. The Cherry trees in Bellingham have blossoms on them... Anyway, I am down to 76% capacity at WildBlue -- I have to get down below 70% before the PFM happens and the switch gets thrown and I get back to the spotty service with huge packet loss that I have come to know and love over the last four years. HOLY SHIT! Just for the hell of it, I Googled T1 and up came an add for service from Speakeasy for a full T-1 line for $279/month including free hardware (about $600). I dug in a bit and they also offer this service: About three times the bandwidth of a T-1 for $380/month. I used Speakeasy for my own broadband in Seattle for a long time and was very happy with them. There are about 20 neighbors within line of sight -- possibly more. Time to see if the service is available and to start knocking on doors... The access points are a bit pricey ($200 each) but if I keep the monthly rate at a decent value ($40/month), I can get enough subscribers to float the whole thing. WildBlue, you pushed me too far and I am going to document this and release it to the public domain...