Internet Blues

This blog post was written especially for all of you who are whining that your internet service isn’t fast enough. All things are relative my friends.

I live high in the Italian alps where we just got off dial-up a few years ago. Those connection speeds of the past were an astonishing 14 KPS. That right! KPS, not MPS. We have since graduated to wireless connections. However, they rarely exceed 3 MPS here in the mountain tops. Sounds like BS, right? I whole heartedly agree!

After the dial-up disaster we had a chiavetta, a USB receiver that employed a SIM card. It proved to be kind of like the nursery rhyme: When it was good it was very, very good but when it was bad it was horrid. The service was adequate but the transmitter signal varied and often dropped all together in the midst of a Skype call or important email. We cursed, we struggled, we moved forward.

Last year, we brought our Windows 10 machine to Italy and found that the chiavetta was not compatible with it. (Is anything compatible with Windows 10?) I went to our local “computer expert” and learned that the chiavetta had become obsolete in our 8 month absence. Say what? We were then told that we needed to buy a Wi-Fi hot spot which is basically the same damned thing only that it broadcasts Wi-Fi within our house. Okay, it seemed logical. That way we could use the computer and my wife’s tablet at the same time. And of course, it was 4G. Wow! Sold!

Wait a tick! Like all things in Italy, it turned-out to be a truffa (rip-off). It turns out that the new system uses roughly twice the data as the old chiavetta but like the old system, it only works half of the time. And of course, during the month of August there is so much online traffic from the thousands of tourists that infest our area that we must do our internet business at 2 A.M. I politely inquired as to a solution. Then came the familiar Italian answer: “Bo!” This roughly translates as “I don’t know and I don’t give a shit.”

We are two years on with our crippled hot spot and as frustrated as ever. So my dear readers I leave you with following ditty: Internet Blues (E flat please!)

🎵Woke up this morning in a cold sweat,

Turned on my machine – No internet.

The hot spot was lit. The lights were green.

Why can’t I get something on my screen.

 

Oh baby, I got the internet blues.

Can’t get no connection.

Feels like I’ve been screwed.

Oh baby, I got the internet blues.🎵

(As Jerry Jeff Walker once sang in “Gettin’ By,” – “Well, it’s not really a monster track….”)🙄

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