When you live far enough away from town that you have to cart your trash to the dumpsters a couple miles down the highway and it’s almost a mile to your mailbox, communications technology can be a challenge.  So today, instead of the usual house projects and gratuitous pictures from my deck, I’ll be talking about communications tech.

Our top priority after buying the house was Internet connectivity.  There are a few options: satellite, fixed wireless, and cable.  The satellite company is Hughs.net which has terrible reviews; the cable is Frontier which I had in Elk Grove and despised; so that left Red Spectrum fixed wireless.  Here is the giant antenna attached beneath the deck.  It brings us 25 Mbps of happiness.

When we moved, we decided to break free from the landline and just use our cell phones (how millennial of us).  Unfortunately, there were only two spots in the house where we could make and receive calls.  Minor movements like sitting, standing, or breathing would drop a call.  The solution to this problem is a cell signal booster which entails a few pieces of equipment and some really fat cables (so much for wireless).  Now we can happily make calls from anywhere in the house and not worry about moving about too much.

Outdoor donor antenna

Amplifier – connects the donor antenna and the indoor broadcast antennas

This is not the indoor antenna’s permanent location. It will be mounted on a wall once we figure out the best spot.

Today’s addition to contraptions mounted under the deck is an HD TV antenna.  This is supposed to deliver us free HD TV channels such as the major networks and PBS.  So far, all we have are two PBS channels.  We need to do a bit more adjusting to get the antenna aligned with the broadcasting towers.  We have survived without TV for a month, so another day shouldn’t be too rough.

These next two pieces of technology aren’t communications related, but they are kind of cool.  You may have noticed the Litter-Robot in a previous post.  It happily sits in the laundry room and makes our life with cats that much sweeter.  Unlike our previous automated litter box, this one does not entail washing and drying plastic cat litter pellets and all the headaches that go with plumbing.  The Litter-Robot waits until the cat has exited and slowly spins to sift the clumps, dropping them into a concealed compartment.  Sophie likes to watch it like TV.

Since we are reflooring the whole house in vinyl, I decided to research robotic vacuums.  After tracking in all the lovely Idaho dirt all day, it will be nice to have the floors swept daily.  My bobSweep is on order, but I am looking forward to his arrival.

After all that technology, you probably want to see a calming, scenic photo or two, so who am I to deny your needs…

Morning

Afternoon

Morning

Afternoon

Morning