Oh the horror!

[hrj]

One forgets. So quickly one forgets the gnawing, ichor-dripping, Lovecraftian horror that is dial-up on the internet. Ah, but hope gleams brightly. After nearly 24 hours of no DSL, no sooner had I dredged up the phone-line splitter, the extra long cord, and the dial-up utility -- no sooner had I suffered through the downloading of a hundred e-mails at near-manuscript speed -- than Earthlink relented and released the DSL from its prison.

Comments

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Haven't you learned how to steal wifi from your neighbors yet?

[hrj.livejournal.com]

My neighbors all have password-protected networks (as do I). If I'd gotten really desperate, there are always coffee shops. (Although the last time I was in Sweet Adeliine the network wasn't working -- dunno if they've stopped making it available or not.)

On the up side, in the process of getting everything rebooted and reset (including the wireless station), I seem to have solved the problem of my two computers not sharing the network connection amicably. I have a suspicion which setting it was that I did differently this time, but I'm not inclined to experiment.

[kareina.livejournal.com]

Oh, how I wish I *could* forget! As etfb implied above, internet is different down under. For reasons I cannot comprehend (other than avarice on the part of the business owners), internet in Australia comes with "download limits"--anything we do on line, be it as simple as simply looking at a web page counts towards that limit. If we should exceed that limit in a month they reduce us to dial-up speeds for the remainder of the month. With four people in the house that limit is often exceeded. :-(

[scotica.livejournal.com]

Ouch! You have my sympathy!

I have to admit you're more resourceful than I. When my DSL goes out, it doesn't occur to me to revert to dial-up. (Sometimes the wireless router and/or the DSL modem/router maliciously decide to stop working and sometimes I can't get them going again for half a day or more. I suspect that it is flaky aging equipment, but I also suspect I will end up putting off replacing either one until they actually die for good.)

[etfb.livejournal.com]

Watch this Australian internet user as he utterly fails to sound at all sympathetic.

(Although I have to admit that, once I switched to my current ISP, I suddenly stopped having speed issues, and everything else Just Worked. If you know of any Aussies looking for a new ISP, tell them: Internode (http://internode.on.net) is love!)

[julesjones]

There's a reason why my website is very unshiny, and that reason is that I still occasionally have to use dial-up when visiting non-connected family. I haven't forgotten what bloated sites look like (or don't look like) at dial-up speeds.

[zeborah]

I have decided that I don't mind shiny as long as it's failsafe: that is, it can have all the flash, javascript, movies, images and even music it likes, as long as

a) it doesn't download and/or start playing movies or music without my say-so;
b) if I don't want to see the flash I can go to an html interface;
c) if I've turned off images in my browser the site still looks usable and preferably even elegant.

It ought to still work with javascript turned off but I haven't found a need to turn it off so I don't personally mind.

But since I came close to exceeding my bandwidth last month (reached 80% in the first half of the month) I've been browsing primarily with images off; it's fascinating. It breaks LiveJournal threading, such as it is - the indents are lost. For no apparent reason it breaks a particular advanced feature in my library catalogue. (I can't be bothered reporting it; Library IT have more important intractable things on their plates. I did report, and they promised to fix, the way a particular important image is (not) working on the homepage. And I try not to email them with requests more than three times a week...) But most stuff works commendably well.

Somehow ads still manage to download.

[julesjones]

Yes, the real problem with the chrome is not the chrome itself, but that too many webdesigners who insist on using lots of chrome don't think to make the design degrade gracefully for those who have the chrome turned off. One of the last checks I do when I've been fiddling with my site is to look at the page through Lynx, to see if it makes sense with dial-up and/or accessibility browsers.

One of the consequences of this was that when I decided earlier this year to drag my site into the new millennium, it required relatively little work to change the look. (Though I still need to go through the site and apply the change everywhere.)

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Joel's parents only have dial-up; we suffered through it for three days while visiting them. No wonder his parents think the internet isn't much use!

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

Turgid drama!