2009-03-11 Moonrise over Mt. Sterling

Dateline, Mt. Sterling, KY
Longitude: -83.94502
Latitude: 38.06882

I arrived at the home of my cousin Terri and her husband Kevin a few days ago and have been quite busy getting settled in, setup and connected during that time.

We're about 40 miles East of Lexington, Kentucky in an area of gently rolling hills, farmland, horses and a big, warm slice of Americana.

You know you're out in the country here, as cell phone coverage is very spotty. This has posed a small problem in using my cell phone as a tethered modem, with transmission throughput down to the old days of dial-up speeds.

I'm working on improving this. Yesterday we went into town and bought a Wireless-N WiFi router and installed it last night, solving another problem in the process. Terri is moving into a new computer so now both her old and new computers can be on the same LAN visible to each other for moving stuff over.

Naturally, the MacBookPro saw the WiFi network and efficiently connected, while I was within a few feet of the router. Unfortunately, the camper is not upstairs in her office. Rather, it is about 100 feet from the back of her house. The Mac sees the network from inside the camper but the signal is not strong enough to connect, so I am researching alternative methods for improving my reception a la Arthur, who is the King of WiFi, often picking up Access Points from upwards of a mile away.

The Hawking Hi-Gain™ USB Wireless-G Dish Adapter I found online looks like it might fit the bill. Plus, it's kind of retro.

Newegg.com and Buy.com both carry it and include a bunch of good comments from happy users.


Shelby has taken to the camper very well and I am now able to leave her there for longer periods of time without her going into a panic. After a few days of nice warm weather, it got a little colder today so here's a picture of her warming up after spending a while outside in her favorite spot.

We're going to decamp here for at least ten days in hopes of helping Terri get her garden planted after returning from a brief visit to Chicago early next week.