Crawling the Web

I am pleased to report that I am writing this blog entry from a computer at the church. This means that the church now has high-speed satellite internet. Well, mostly. Or at least sort of.

After a marathon install session yesterday that ended up costing us a couple hundred dollars more than a regular install, and took until about 5 p.m. after starting in the morning (no lunch for me, he says sadly), we finally have reasonably high-speed access to the internet on one computer. Not the one we wanted, since Wildblue apparently isn't talking with Windows ME, but this is better than nothing.

Had it not been for the heroic efforts of a church member who came by to help set up a wireless network here at the church (supplying at his own expense all the components so far), we might still have nothing. Our installation person was clearly a professional at getting the equipment set up outside and getting it into the building -- but actually working with the computers was clearly not his forte, and so when we ran into hitches of various sorts, of which there were several, this meant long delays. Our church member ended up coming back over last night while we went out on visitation (on which at least one profession of faith was made, and a couple of very positive visits, as well), and working until about 9 p.m. to get things with the network as far along as they are now.

This all wouldn't have been so obnoxious a system of delays had yesterday not been our wedding anniversary. Between me having to be here for this install and visitation, I scarcely got to see my poor wife yesterday -- we'll have to kind of reschedule for another day.

Of course, we're not done with climbing into the web here at church. It looks like the Windows ME computer will have to be switched to another operating system (along with having Office put on it, so I can actually produce things like sermons on it), and the secretary's computer still needs some work before it'll recognize the wireless network, or some such. But this is progress. At least now I have the computer and internet connection to do some of my work from here at the church while I wait for the rest to come together.