Back in broadband-land

Haha! Humongous Cable Company told me I had to use its cables to get My Internet Provider Whose Address I Have Had For A Decade. Aforementioned Internet Provider initially told me there was no way to connect to the internet from my residence at high speed except by satellite, which I could not do because the dish would disfigure my landlady's nice yard and garden; also, I knew they had to be wrong. In the last week I have had at least five LiveChats with Internet Provider and several phone calls with Cable Company and Internet Provider. We at Acts of Hope are persistent. I knew there had to be a way to keep my ever faithful internet address with Aforementioned Internet Provider AND get a broadband connection, and so there was. In the end it was simple: we moved our DSL account here once we got a telephone land line.

So we're in business. Blogging from home! Woo hoo. Life is good. Also, the Right Rev. and Right Hon. Maya Pavlova and I both got lots of sleep last night, and an afternoon nap to boot.

Kliban cats website is here.

Now I have to get lots and lots and lots of work done, but at least I don't have to go into the office at bizarre hours any more to work online.

Why, you ask, do I work online so much? 'Cause we have these course websites on the college internal system, kind of like blogs really -- we use the open-source program Moodle, which is the same as the program Blackboard in other institutions -- and to simplify life and save paper and enable me to give students quick feedback online, I shifted to having all short assignments uploaded to the Moodle sites for the courses I teach.

Of course when you only have dial-up that messes up your life big-time. In addition to this, we have roaming profiles at work, and we can't get into those from home without high-speed and some kind of special software I didn't need when I was living on campus and plugged into the college network at home. So between that and the other delays occasioned by the Great Tree Disaster, I've been way behind on my work and the students aren't getting the timely feedback they need. (I got low ratings in past years in the "timely feedback" category on the student evaluation forms, so I have to work on this extra hard.)

Also, I am setting up a new blog (closed to the public, sorry) for the theology component of the diocesan deacon formation program, which I start teaching next weekend.

And there's Race, Justice, and Love, the blog for the Anti-Racism Committee, which I have neglected for the last month.

And then there's the Episcopal Café, for which I write regularly, except that I had to skip last month because of the Great Tree Disaster.

At home, though, we are also low-tech: we have no dishwashing machine or microwave and we have lots of books, and though Her Grace loves to press the buttons on the fax machine (which is not yet set up, but we'll get to it), she is a live creature and requires no buttons, beeps, wires, electric current, or ultrasound waves to purr and play.

For which I give thanks to Godde.

[photo of Maya Pavlova coming here soon.]