Living on (the) EDGE

In the past few days, I've learned a lot about living with a slower Internet connection. Although it's not just that I've got a slower connection. The biggest problem with EDGE is the latency, and the fact that it seems to be ridiculously difficult to maintain a connection long enough to make sure a blog post is scheduled for the right time.

With luck, these issues will clear up in the next few days, or hours -- but if that doesn't work, I may just have to post all of the  blog entries from my trip retroactively, when I get back to Arizona.

Another possibility I've considered is that I'm not sitting in the right place, but that makes very little sense because on the first night, I was able to get a decent connection with two/three bars while I was laying down in the sun room, but the next two days the connection there got progressively worse.

Right now, it seems like the only place inside Grandma's house to get any connection at all is right next to the window where she keeps the radio she listens to. Right here, I've managed to get one bar with the green EDGE flag, and actually have some web pages load. I can sign into AIM, but I don't think I'll be able to get onto Google talk until I get home to Arizona. I thought I might be able to even upload a picture or two, but I don't think that'll happen.

My grandmother keeps talking about Arizona as though it's on the edge of civilization, and that nothing good could ever possibly happen there -- but I've got to admit, everyone I know in Arizona has DSL, even my mom in two of the places we lived in Golden Valley, and my dad all the way out in Valle Vista.

EDGE seems to work well enough at Aunt Darla's house, so I may just need to use it there rather than here. Of course, another weirdness is that the iPhone seems to be able to get 3 bars + EDGE wherever I am, but when I switch to the PCMCIA card in the laptop, I get no signal, am told that there's no service, and experience massive lag.