Honey Doing

Starlink Junior, my slow version of Starlink, has worked out so well, I have dumped my old Internet provider.

I suppose I would have had the courage to make the break sooner had Starlink felt like including real instructions and some kind of user support. I didn’t know how to install the dish. I didn’t know how to rout the cable. I didn’t know how to tell if the dish was pointed the right way or located where it should be. Starlink gives you cartoon instructions and a terse app, but you have to figure a lot out by yourself.

Starlink is one of those companies that causes its customers to work harder by trying to shut them out of the technical side of things. It’s a bad approach. Real black boxes that do everything perfectly the second you pop them out of the UPS package are rare. My feeling is that Elon Musk thinks he has done all the thinking for us already, and frankly, he’s not that good. There are a lot of things he and his team have not thought of.

I had a Dish Network dish on my roof, so I put the Starlink dish on it, and I added an 8-foot pole from Ace Hardware. Starlink insisted I needed extremely clear horizons, so I thought I was going to have to get the dish as high as possible. My roof is irregular, and I’m surrounded by trees.

Today I took the pole out of the system and left the Starlink dish in the Dish dish mount, and it seems to work about the same. I don’t know what to make of it, but stabilizing the long pole will take some metalworking and carpentry, and I don’t want to continue working on these things if they’re a waste of time.

I decided to order a new J-mount (this is what you call a thing that holds a dish or antenna) and put it on my topmost roof section. Because of the geometry of my roof, this is actually a very easy place to install a J-mount. I don’t want to use the old J-mount because I would have to move it, and removing it could tear up the roof.

The new mount will go on the roof next to the edge. The cable will go over the edge and through a hole in the wall below the soffit, into the attic, unless I decide to put it through the roof. Going through the roof could be a problem, because I would have to seal the new hole, and it would see a lot of rain. A hole in the wall under the eave would never get wet, so caulk and a coax grommet should fix it easily.

I was not very familiar with the part of my attic where the cable will go, so I took a look. I had put it off because I was afraid of what I would see. Roof rot? A horrible space to work in? Dead roaches and rats? It turned out to be in great shape, well organized, with hardwired lighting and a convenient switch.

When my new mount comes, I’ll have to go up in there, work my way 30 feet to the south, grab the cable, and feed it to the location where the router will go.

My house has ethernet cables, but I have never used them. I have been able to get along without them, and also, I had my wireless router in a place where there was no port. Now that situation is changing. I want to connect my TV’s and computers to the wiring, and I want to revive the long-destroyed Cat5 wire to the workshop. I have a computer there, but I have to use my phone as a hotspot in order to get a connection.

I have to find out where the ethernet cables originally joined. There had to be a router somewhere. Then I can use an adaptor (I will resist “adapter” until people start writing, ‘rapter,’ ‘capter,’ ‘recepter,’ and ‘intercepter.”) to hook my dish up to the house wiring. This will give me the best possible speeds.

I don’t have to have perfection. If I could get 20 Mbps down and 10 real Mbps up every minute of the day, I’d be the happiest person on Earth.

Right now, speed tests say I get 6-120 Mbps down, but when I actually download things, the best I see is about 1.6. I suspect Musk is secretly throttling me because I’m not one of the cool kids in a real Starlink coverage area. If the router can get 100 Mbps, I ought to be able to do a lot better than 1.6 when I download a file. I don’t think the connection is the problem.

Starlink told me it wouldn’t have satellites set up for my area until next year, but apparently, that’s deceptive. They made it sound like they couldn’t give me high speeds without new satellites, but it looks like they can give me lots of speed, and they just don’t want to. Maybe speeding me up will slow the cool kids down.

Starlink isn’t the only thing I’m working on here. I’m getting a ton of stuff done. Jobs that used to intimidate me are falling like dominoes. I started out by fixing my shop, but now order is spreading to the house, as I almost didn’t dare hope it would.

I got my keychain rack made, and it’s a much bigger help than you would think. I cleaned out the freezer where ginger ale exploded. I put my bedroom in order. I started moving things from the dining room workshop to the real workshop. I blasted the house, including all the attics I can get to, with pesticide. For a long time, I couldn’t get the filters out of the range hood, and they were getting nasty, but yesterday, they came right out, and they went in the dishwasher. The laundry room and its closet are nearly in order. I got the burglar alarm upgraded to 4G. I’m getting flu and shingles vaccines tomorrow. Today I mixed salt and garlic into 5 pounds of ground chuck and turned it into patties, so now I have lunch waiting for me for the next 12 days.

I’ve taken a lot of annoying things to the dump. I started converting my storage room fluorescents to LED’s. I got a wireless printer.

I can’t remember all the other things I’ve done, but I can sure tell when I walk around the house.

Disorder bothers me now. I take pleasure in straightening things sitting on tables and counters, even though it doesn’t matter.

A few days ago, I was praying, and I heard, “Order my life,” over and over. I asked for it, of course. I’ve been praying prayers similar to that for years. It looks like the words came from God, because I can’t stop ordering this place.

My mother went through something similar when she was several years younger than I am. She started telling me how great it was to have everything in its place. She organized things for the first time in her life. Then she learned she had cancer, and she died.

The ordering I’m doing makes me wonder if God is preparing what I have for my wife’s arrival or for my departure. In April, I’ll be as old as my mother was when she died.

It’s wonderful to find out that things you think you heard from God really came from Him. It means you can trust what you hear in the future. It also helps you to be unified with Him.

In June, my wife had two visions, and one came true when Queen Elizabeth died. In the other vision, she saw Russia bombing Japan. I wonder if it will happen. A quick Google says Japan just expelled Russia’s ambassador, and relations are at a new low. Russia and Japan are still hashing out World War Two, and Russia has just abandoned peace talks. I don’t know much about Russia’s relationship with Japan, but things sound bad.

I love having order in my life. It’s not completely pleasant, finding yourself compelled to do things you used to put off luxuriously, but overall, it’s exciting. I hope it continues. I always say good habits are like slaves. They get things done for you, and they don’t cost anything.

Speaking of habits, I also heard, “Your habits are important.” I think about that when I’m about to put something off or do it badly. I feel that if I give in and let things slide, I’m spitting on something God gave me; a treasure. How many people get express advice from God? That’s not something to take for granted. Elon Musk and Bill Gates don’t get it. The president of the United States doesn’t get it. Famous musicians and Hollywood stars don’t get it. Nobel prize winners don’t get it. I get something only a tiny percentage of people get, and it’s something you can’t buy. If you could, the price would be astronomical. I have to take it seriously.

I believe whether I can hold onto my gifts and receive more depends a lot on how much my actions show how much I value them.

Tomorrow another big load goes to the dump, and I’m sure I’ll find several other fossilized obligations to move out of my own way.

Because I keep getting bogged down in things Rhodah could do if she were here, what I’m going through reminds me how good God’s plan for marriages is. The man handles certain things, and the woman handles others. I can take care of the shop and grounds, but I keep getting pulled backward by problems in the house. If Rhodah were here, she would deal with those things, and I would get my own work done much better, in much less time. She can’t wait to get here to run the house.

Feminism is filthy. It destroys our potential as couples and families. The benefits we get from women pursuing careers is trivial compared to what we lose by having God’s order in our homes destroyed. Thank God my wife has no interest in feminism. I look forward to the day when I don’t have to concern myself with housewife responsibilities.