On the first of the month, the Army changed ISP’s for where I am staying. It went from Charter (a commercial firm), which provided crappy tech support and not very good bandwidth, to something through the Army’s Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) folks.
The first thing I noted, when I got back from my weekend on the Dragon, was that sites were being filtered. Most critical? I could not get to North American Motoring, my Mini hang out. Other sites were blocked, too.
The second thing I noticed was that the filtering / blocking was really, really slowing down web surfing. Tons of things were timing out — clicking on something as basic as Wikipedia might not even work, because the filters were slowing things down that much.
It sucked, in other words.
When I got back from class yesterday, I had no connectivity. No email, no web browsing, seemingly nothing.
OK, fine. I headed off to Columbia for dinner with the M2C2 folks. When I got back last night, still nothing. Hmm. Odd.
I get up this morning, and still nothing. So, I grab a bagel and call tech support. The guy speaks Mac — a good sign. Charter had once, on a call to tech support, suggested that my connectivity problem with them might have been caused by my using a Mac. Oh, yes — they were that good.
So, this guy walked me through some trouble shooting procedures. What we found was that yes, I had connectivity from my computer to the first piece of their hardware, but nothing more from there. Their equipment was the problem. I also asked who I needed to contact about the filters, and I mentioned how they were slowing things down. His response? Filters? We don’t use filters.
A couple of hours later, maybe two at most, all was better. Key word here is all. Filters are gone.
Life is good again.
Oh, and last night.
I headed up to Columbia for pizza and some beer with M2C2 — Mini Motoring Club of the Carolinas. Based out of Columbia, SC, but I’ve been working with some other Mini owners to open a chapter here in / around Augusta, GA. The folks in Columbia do something every month, and last night was pizza and beer.
Dinner was at Brixx in Sandhill (map). Maybe 10 or 12 Minis, of all kinds. Even had a brand-new, 2009 JCW — almost 210 bhp, a real rocketship. And, as always, great people.
Best part?
Yep — three guys named Art. Art on the left, aka Doc, has not one, not two, but three Minis. He actually offered me a loaner if I needed one. Art on the right is on his second Mini — his solid gold (paint) Mini went head to head with a truck, and he walked away with a scratch when the driver of the truck walked away with an injured should and some other non-life-threatening stuff far worse than a scratch.
Oh, and the meal. The special was a new wheat dough that they had just started using this week. So, I ordered a baked chicken caprese on wheat, and had a couple of IPA’s to go with it. I was one of the first to order, though, and the last to get my pizza.
Not long there after, the waitress (who was awesome) started talking about the wheat pizzas all being comp’d, that there’d been something wrong with the wheat dough.
I, of course, think food poisoning.
No, no, she says. They just didn’t have enough prepped, so some – like mine – took longer to make than they wanted, so all of our wheat pizzas would be free. Oh, and tiramisu for everyone, to help make amends for the problem with the wheat dough.
Dinner for me? $7. And then a $13 tip. Oh, and the wheat dough was awesome. Great pizza.
