When my sister and I upgraded to Broadband, the salesman looked slightly surprised when we opted for the 20GB level (10GB peak-time and 10GB off-peak) - we told him it was better to have too high than too low a limit.
Since then it's been a running gag at our place: "Only four more days to go to use up that last 5GB. I don't know if we'll make it."
Well, guess what happened this month?
On the last day of our billing cycle, I thought the Internet seemed a bit sluggish. Julie asked if I'd checked our usage. That seemed a bit unlikely but I took a look.
Oh my, how did that happen?
Then I remembered. There was that website for the Lum & Abner radio comedy that had a link to download an entire year of the show at one hit. I tried it and it was one of those odd downloads that doesn't tell you what the size is.
So I let it run.
And run.
Every so often I'd look at it. 100 MB. 200 MB. 300 MB.
Hours went by.
Finally it was time to go to bed. The download had been running for twelve hours and hadn't finished yet.
"You could leave it running overnight," said Julie but I elected to shut it down before it completed. It was up to about 900 MB already and still going.
That, it struck me, was the crate of straw that broke the camel's back. That would have used up almost 10% of our allocation for the month.
No wonder we'd hit the wall.
OK, I won't do that again.
(There's a follow-up to that story – for a couple of days afterwards my internet connection was still slow. I finally contacted the ISP and they explained that sometimes the modem "remembers" the new speed and I should unplug the modem from the powerpoint for 60 seconds. It worked; I probably should have thought of trying it myself.)
CD listening today:
You Light Up My Life: 22 country gospel greats
Platinum Collection CD #257
The compiler of this album gets a bonus point for putting together the album without doubling up on either artists or songs. Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Slim Whitman, Charley Pride, Hank Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jim Reeves, Frankie Laine... it's all good.
Pleasant listening for $4-95.
I've found a place on the Internet where I can listen to the 1970s drama series CBS Radio Mystery Theater. There's a lot of interesting stuff here, but the drawback is that the first year episodes are horribly muffled.
Given the age of the shows, I assume that somebody recorded them by just putting the microphone of their tape recorder in front of the radio and taping them that way. That's the way I used to do it at the time anyway.
It's an unsophisticated low-tech method and unfortunately the results show it. But sometimes that's the only copy that's in circulation.
The bedroom boombox (the TEAC CD/MP3 player) seems to have given up altogether. It's been increasingly reluctant to play MP3s and last week it didn't want to play CDs either. The good news is the FM radio still works.
I should think about getting a new one sometime, but at the moment I'd rather not spend the cash. If I want to hear anything before I go to bed, I can transfer it onto the little pocket MP3 player - even though I'm not mad about those silly little earphones.
Julie brought over another hen from her place. This one has gone broody so she thought it might look after the chicks she brought over last week. That makes 15 here.
Otrfan.com have announced their new line-up for free old-time radio programmes. There may be extras, but the basic line-up is as follows:
Monday: Abbott and Costello; Dragnet; Gunsmoke.
Tuesday: Jack Benny ; Mysterious Traveler; Whitehall 1212.
Wednesday: Boston Blackie; The Man Called X; The Saint .
Thursday: The Cisco Kid ; Philip Marlowe; The Whistler.
Friday: Arch Oboler's Plays; Fred Allen; Weird Circle.
Saturday: Lux Radio Theater ; X Minus One; Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.
Sunday: Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator; The Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show; Suspense.
This is a great website and their selection of radio shows is really outstanding for a free site. I recommend it. Click here to visit it.
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