The Sierra Compass 597 Aircard in Rural Alberta

In a perfect world, everyone could have trouble free high speed internet for $2 a month, and we would all get to pet unicorns whilst fair maidens adorned us with flower wreaths in a beautiful garden that never experiences below freezing weather. Oh yeah, and world peace. And really low calorie beer.

I finally went out and bought a Sierra Compass 597 Aircard from Telus. Hopefully I will at least get to see the elusive high speed unicorn. An aircard may not let me actually pet the darn beast though.

We have been suffering along with all of our crappy internet problems ever since I first bought a computer in ’99. First dialup, and what a betch that was. We struggled along with dialup internet here in our Central Alberta home right up until 2006. That was when I decided to start looking into high speed options.

I already knew that DSL through the phone lines was not an option. Our lines were installed when I was 8, because I remember them going in. There was no fibre optics type cable in our out the way neck of the woods. A quick phonecall to Telus confirmed that telephone line high speed internet wopuld never happen for us, since we live in a real backwater locale down several dirt roads. The phone company will never be upgrading these lines!

Next I looked into wireless internet, where you buy a modem and receive a signal broadcast from the nearest town. Nope, too far away and too many land features such as hills between us and every town. Of course I had to live in the dreaded “internet dead zone”. Just five miles away they have so much internet they can download entire movies, and here we can’t even download a large email without problems.

That was when I stumbled across Xplornet Satellite internet service. Internet anywhere. It seemed like it was the answer to my problem. Within a month I purchased the system and had it hooked up. It functioned… fairly well…

This internet dish is not the same as what you would have for TV. We have that kind of dish as well for all of our satellite tv services and it works great unless it is precipitating really hard outside. For internet you need a larger dish with the capability to upload information back to the satellite and the regular tv dish doesn’t do that.

Our satellite internet is not what anyone but the satellite internet company would call high speed. It is faster than dialup, I’ll give them that. About 3 times faster. When it is working. Cloudy weather, technical difficulties and such can happen. But basically it has hardy worked at all this month. Or it works for five minutes and then boom! nothing. Satellite internet really sucks. And every time you phone the service line, they instruct you to monitor internet speed for a couple weeks before they will try to help much.

I decided to bite the bullet and got this Rogers Rocketstick Wireless USB Air Card. It worked great in town. The service in the store was awesome. It was a pretty red colour and the software was user friendly. Guess what? It didn’t work at my house. Not enough cell phone reception. So I had to take it back. Again, the service from Rogers was great and it didn’t cost me a dime to try it out and return it.

Now I have this Sierra Wireless Compass 597 Aircard from Telus. They made me sign up for a year contract, and I can’t return this one but the USB card itself was free with that contract. It isn’t a pretty red, just plain ‘ole black. However, it does get enough reception to function at my house – barely. I will probably end up getting a booster antenna yet. The plus side is, I can now use my laptop anywhere I can get cell phone reception. Look out world! Now if I could figure out some way to hook it up to our cheap wireless router…

March 29, 2009 | | Tags: , , , , , | 32 Comments »

Could Someone Please Invent Negative Calorie Beer?

I know I speak for a lot of beer lovers when I say that beer shouldn’t make you fat. It is downright unfair.

What we need is beer that actually uses up calories while you drink it. I would love to drink beer like I used to, but I just don’t want to pack around all that extra weight on my middle. It took months to get rid of that extra 40 lbs the first time and I’m not gonna just put it back on by drinking high calorie beer and eating hot wings! Anyone that could give us alternatives that taste great and don’t make us fat would be just rolling in the dough.

There are more than one negative calorie foods diets out there. We need to get scientists working harder on this and inventing some new versions of foods that suck up calories instead of putting on pounds. How about these new snack favourites that they are working on right now?

Workout Hot Wings- eat a 1 lb plate of these babies and the burning combined with the extra bathroom trips means you end up 3 pounds lighter! A special combination of extra hot, ultra aged peppers soaked in Castor Oil will have you begging for more – or maybe just begging for mercy. Serve with a side of Pepto Bismol.

Chunky Chocolate Browser Cookies- made with real internet cookies, all you do is eat these full flavoured delicious browser data chocolate chunks until you are stuffed to the gills. Then simply Clear Private Data and it will be just as if those internet cookies never existed. Who knew it could be so easy?

Styrofoam Peanut Crunch - now, another use for those stupid styrofoam packing peanuts. No longer will these environmental hazards be blowing around landfills. From now on they will be safely trapped in this new dessert fave. Utilizing the ever handy Styrofoam glue, and imported peanut flavouring created in industrial China using leftover toy parts, Styrofoam Peanut Crunch will have your tastebuds crying – hopefully for more! An excellent Christmas Gift for relatives that have already lived too long, I mean, that already have everything.

And last but not least, Reverse Osmosis Blue Beaver Beer. This full flavoured brew tastes just like the world famous Blue Beaver Beer you all know and love. Utilizing the quantum data gathered at the Condor Research Facility and Atom Smasher, scientists have entangled beer molecules with molecules of commonly held stocks and bonds. That means that as the stocks and bonds devalue and shrink, the beer molecules will lose their calories to the economic downturn. Drink up! Finally, physics and the stock market are on your side about something. Now who’s the biggest loser?

I guess these would make a good addition to our highly sought after redneck beer gift baskets. I will be looking into it for future shipments. So remember, when you’re feeling blue, grab a Beaver!

March 27, 2009 | | Tags: , , | 70 Comments »

Site Build It Debacle Has IMers in an Uproar

I was recently over at Lissie’s Passive Income Online site, trying to figure out what was going on with the whole Site Build It Review thing that was mentioned on a couple other blogs out there. I think the whole argument speaks for itself, so I won’t get into the pros and cons or the rudeness of various players in the ‘debate’. Let’s just say things got a little heated, especially when Vic got in there!

I did read all of the comments to the review Lissie put out there. While many of these were downright funny in a pitiful ‘you don’t get it do you’ kind of way, I picked up a couple interesting points that really never clicked for me before. Here is Griz’ comment on Lissie’s blog, as he is attempting to educate an SBI’er:

“Vacuum cleaners… lol.

An oil filter keyword. A term searched by people who don’t know how to define what they are looking for. Once the serp page opens they realize that what is on the page isn’t what they are looking for and type a new query like “how to fix my hoover” and then “who fixes hoover vacuum cleaners in timbuctoo”.

People don’t buy vacuum cleaners online”

This points out exactly what is wrong with some of the sites I have been working on.  Basically, my keywords don’t result in much useful traffic because they aren’t defined enough. I now think back to my own searches online, where I get to the first results window and think, “All of these suck! I’ll just try another search…”

I guess I’m realizing it isn’t enough to get ranking for a keyword or niche. People have to actually get to your site!  Serious income will only be found if you are in a niche where people will buy online, or are willing to click on an ad, and where there is a lot of these motivated people. Or each clickthrough is high priced. Right there I can throw away all 3 of the projects I was about to start this month. My keywords seem to be either not defined enough, or for some obscure thing that hardly anyone will ever search for. I can get all the backlinks I want and it won’t make me more than some coffee money.

Damn it! How can I keep forgetting how to research?

On the positive side tho, Lissie inadvertently saved me all that hard work I was about to put out there for perhaps nothing. So thanks Lissie, and thanks Griz. Eventually some of the info you give away for free at Make Money Online with Grizzly will beat its way through my thick skull.

March 26, 2009 | | Tags: | 23 Comments »

Deskercise To Burn Off Those Greasy Pepperoni Snacks

You may (or may not) recall a little while back we had a listeriosis outbreak at one of our major meat packing plants.  A wide number of different products were recalled at that time.  Among them was a particular brand of pepperoni sticks that I was very fond of (fortunately it did not affect their line of Italian meatballs).

These pepperoni sticks were very, very tasty.  Although they were labeled “hot”, I always found them to be more like medium.  When I chewed them, I could feel and taste the grease oozing out of them in a most delightful way.  Then that accursed listeriosis came along and my favourite comfort food disappeared.  Shortly thereafter, I found a new type of pepperoni called “landjagger sausages” and I decided to give them a go.  There were not quite as good as the other ones, but they were still enjoyably greasy and so made an adequate substitute.

So, you can imagine my joy when I was in the grocery store a couple of weeks back and I found that my favored brand of pepperoni was back on the shelf.  I bought some immediately.  When I got home I noticed that they looked a little bit different now.  Before the ends were cleanly cut off, whereas now they were pinched off.  It didn’t put me off at all because I was certain that it could not possibly affect the flavour.  Boy, was I ever wrong.  Just one bite was enough to tell that something was different.  For one thing they were definitely not as greasy; there was no oozing when I chewed them.  Beyond that I can’t put my finger on exactly what had changed, there was some alteration to the flavour that was just enough to be noticeable.  After eating the whole package (well I couldn’t just waste it, and pepperoni is still pepperoni) I think I figured out what had gone awry.  It’s kind of like when you order Chinese food, you have to ask for extra MSG because that’s where all the flavour is.  Apparently you have to add extra listeriosis to pepperoni sticks in order to make them really good.

Of course, if I’m in the office at The Redneck catching up on my paperwork sometimes I feel a need to burn off a few of the calories that I’ve been eating.  One way to do this is with deskercise. I’ll do curls with my coffee cup (usually three sets of fifteen reps with each arm), then I’ll press my laptop multiple times and naturally I’ll start and end with stretches.  When I’m at home, though, I usually stick to couchercise, it has a much lower impact.

March 10, 2009 | | Tags: , , , , | 37 Comments »