Post Tax Day Flood

The tax day flood was a biggie.  We had more water come down on us over one night than we ever have in the 11 years we've been living out here.  I don't know the complete total for sure but it was at least 7 inches.  Unfortunately, the rain gauge won't measure any more water once it's filled to the brim.

Our driveway which was half washed away was beautifully repaired by Colorado County a week later but it seemed to set off a downward spiral of issues.  Our power being out for about 14 hours and our phones being out for 4 days were certainly caused by the storm.  The other issues all happened at the same time but I don't think there is any cause and effect here.  No magical group of threes.  No waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Just a nexus of issues.

Somehow gasoline was put into both tanks on the mower.  I don't know where the error was or who made it - either in the filling of gas cans or filling of the tanks - but error there was.  That required hauling the mower to the dealer to be repaired.  Our Kawasaki mule worked perfectly right up until it stopped dead.  You turn the key and there is silence.  It will need to be pulled/pushed onto the trailer and hauled to the dealer for repair.

The worst issue since the storm has been internet connectivity issues.  We have continued to get email throughout each day but couldn't log on to a website for nearly three weeks.  Part of it was a Hughes.net problem, part of it was a user ability issue.  That would be Ron and me.  We are both semi-capable which really means we know just enough to get ourselves in real trouble.

Hughes.net came out, worked for several hours and asked us to trim some tree limbs which Ron did.  In the end they were confident they had fixed our problems but suggested we get and install a new router.  Ron ordered it and installed it, I checked the installation, he uninstalled and reinstalled it but none of that allowed us to get back online.  Larry, from Bits 'n Bytes in Katy, TX came out the end of last week and worked for several hours.  He spent nearly an hour and a half on the phone with Hughes.net.  He dropped out packet loss almost to zero.  He added WiFi to my studio.  He deleted and re-instituted our local area network and corrected our router installation.  We love Larry. Hughes.net is supposed to contact us this week and work on getting our speed back up to where it should be.

I'm thrilled to be able to post to this blog, update our website and get back online for all those things I do online.