Adonis Cria
Congratulations to Rebecca Wood on the arrival of Ebby’s new Adonis girl.
Category Archives: News
It has been a bad week for our HughesNet Broadband. Our system has experienced slow response on and off for the past several days. HughesNet even sent a technician to the house to address the issue. Once he arrived (two days later) the inital hardware problem had corrected itself, but the system was still experiencing very slow download speeds–approaching dial up speeds. The technican call Hughesnet and they told him to have me take the issue up with the Hughesnet call center.
The Hughesnet call center is located in one of the mega call centers in India. What I have learned after spending nearly six hours on the phone is that their only objective is to find some way to get your system to pass a “web responsiveness test” with a time lower than 13 seconds so that they can get you off the phone, close the ticket and move on to the next complaint. They don’t really try to fix your slow speed issues. In fact I was told by the call center person that speeds below dial up were acceptable because they do not guarantee download speeds!! One trick they will use is to keep passing you to a new person to help diagnose your problem. Eventually they will ask you to start making changes to the setup of your browser network setting that force your system to access their site through a “proxy server”. Once you use the proxy server I have found that magically your system will pass their test. However, when you reset your settings to the recommended values (no proxy server) things degrade again. In other words this is just an approach they use to get you out of their hair so they can close the ticket.
The bottom line is I am becoming very dissatisfied with the Hughesnet service and I am particularly dissatisfied with their India based technical support. The technical support is worthless. You might as well just wait for the problem to self correct or use dial up! It is interesting that they never ask one to fill out a customer survey. I am sure they already know what answer they will get. Some searching on the web has turned up some class action law suits against Hughesnet. Perhaps their house of cards will begin to crumble.
I am told that Comcast may be coming to our area soon. I will switch in a flash.
Well enough ranting for now.
Fred
Yellow Wood Male Barn
Our male llamas have there own barn and are divided into a number of runs which are connected to their barn stalls. Some of our males (Inspot, PPF Pablo Cruz and Smokin’ Gun) have there own runs and stalls, so that we can keep them separated from each other and the younger boys.
The other day Laura went into the barn and didn’t see Inspot in his run. When she started looking for him, she found him in the fenced in area that is between his run and a large fenced in area that houses several of our younger males. He was enjoying the fresh grass that had grown up in this area during the nice spring weather we have had this past week.
Incspot’s run is surrounded by a 6 foot high chain link fence with a 2″ x 6″ wooden top rail. At first, Laura thought he might have jumped the fence but on closer inspection she discovered he had actually crawled under the fence! He had pushed his nose under a 3 foot by 4 inch gap that had been eroded during the winter. After he had managed to get his head under the fence he must have realized that he could not pull it back out because the chain link fence was just like a Chinese handcuff (remember playing with these as a kid?). With only one option left, he managed to push his entire body under the fence. When Laura found him, he was having a grand old time devouring all of the new grown grass and intimidating the younger males on the other side of this area.
Who would have thought a 375 lb llama could slip his entire body under a 4 inch gap in a chain link fence! So Laura opened the gate and lead him back into his own run thinking it was just a fluke. Well to make a long story short, the next day he was back in the forbidden area! Since Incspot had learned a new trick I was forced to take action. So, I spent a couple of hours yesterday installing a second 4″ x 6″ wooden rail across the bottom of the fence. While I was sawing, drilling and screwing the new bottom rail in place, Incspot spent the time watching me crawling around in the mud with a bit of a smirk on his face. When it was done he made several passes up and down the fence before he realized I had blocked the path to his new found freedom. Believe it or not you could see the smirk turn to an expression of disgust! Then he laid down in his dust pile, put his ears back and had a good sulk. Now what will be his next trick!