Chapter 41 - More Wires

            We are well underway to being connected to the high speed internet.  The computer man came this morning.  He said about 10 and he got here in Tico time at about 11.  I smile at the easy going attitude the people have here about business.  At least, they aren’t up tight.  He is sitting parked by the sink, working on the computer to configure it to the router.  We found that the main line went into the house next door, and there is wire strung across the trees in the orchard to reach our house, and we will be feeding off his modem.  That way, we will be able to share the bill for the service.

            I met the man from next door this morning.  His name is John and his wife is Johanna.  He is very personable.  We were extolling the plenty of the fruit here in the orchard and he was explaining some of the special things, like a potato in the back yard.  That will make Melaney happy.  She likes potatoes better than pineapples.

            I wish I could walk better than I do, I would like to be able to wander around the place like Melaney can.  There is a lovely walk down the back of the property, to a river.  John says it gets very turbulent in the rainy season. 

            John just came into the house with a bowl full of ylang ylang from a tree on our property.  It is an aromatic green leaf like plant that is supposed to bring wellness to the home.  I don’t believe in that kind of hocus pocus, but the thought was very nice.  About an hour later it found its place in the garbage. (I wanted to keep it out of respect to the giver—Mel.)

            Eduardo is the name of the computer man.  He worked on the terminal for almost two whole days.  He tried first one thing and then another.  Finally at the end of the second day, between Melaney and Eduardo, they figured it out.  Mel gave me the Cole’s Notes, in which the router was looking for 100 megabytes of input and with the great length of the cable, it was getting only 10.  Once Eduardo reset the router to accept 10 megabytes, it worked and internet was coming into the computer.  It was up for about 10 minutes, and went dead.  She checked at the other house, and their internet was down as well, so that indicates a general outage.  I hope it doesn’t go out when we are in a crucial operation.  Melaney uses the computers so much.

            Eduardo left, and said she would have to try it out in the morning.

            Eduardo was paid 50,000 colones, the equivalent of $100 for this router.  She checked online, and the same router would sell retail for under $40, so he was paid well for his work out here.  As it happens, he also tried to hit Rita up for another 5,000 ($10.)  She phoned Melaney and was told about the whole fiasco, and that Eduardo was paid well for his troubles out here, plus he got some education in setting up wireless networks.

            We tried out the computer the next morning and it didn’t work. Melaney worked on it, resetting and reconfiguring the router. After 40 minutes of effort she got it to work. It was satisfying that Melaney could do in 40 minutes by herself what the technician couldn’t do in two days. Too bad she doesn’t get paid for it.

 Melaney spent the whole day on the internet.  She didn’t think my laptop would support the wireless network because it had been showing signs of old age and malfunction, but it did, loud and clear.  In all, we have two full sized laptops and two notebook computers on the wireless network.  We should be well set up.  It is so much faster than the little plug in toy that we were using at first.  Now we can be in contact around the world. 

Our octopus network of electrical wires in the sitting room is still on for power.