Throttled Phone Hotspot Woes

I keep getting these little messages on my computer screen that I need to update my MacBook Air operating system. Supposedly it will update automatically but the ‘puter is off when that’s scheduled late at night. So yesterday when the little notice popped up I hit the “Load Now” button. The little line that shows how the download was advancing seemed frozen and then a notice popped up that the app would be finished loading in “8 days.” Not minutes. Not hours. But it was going to take another EIGHT DAYS!!!

You see, living here in the swamp off the Saint Johns River there’s no DSL hookups. The only way to get on line is through a mobile phone “hot spot.” In many ways that’s fine. In other ways it REALLY SUCKS!!! First of all, there’s no such thing as “Unlimited” with any of the mobil phone programs. They throttle the speed of your connection after you’ve accessed it for so many gigs. Much of that throttling also depends on how much traffic the tower you’re accessing is receiving. Down at Bradenton Beach on Anna Maria Island the only time I really felt the pinch was on the weekends when people from “The Dark Side” (the mainland) flooded the nearby beaches and jammed up the single tower on the island. Then it would be nearly impossible to use the hot spot until after dark when the beach goers went home.

It’s different here in DeBary. People are making calls all the time and my access is crimped. Who else is old enough to remember getting on line with the old phone modems. You got blinding speeds of 56 kbs. Well, with the throttled-down hot spot I was downloading the app I needed at SEVEN KILOBYTES A SECOND!!! Talk about sucking!!!

Tomorrow, March 4, I’m going to go to the DeBary Public Library and log on to their wifi and do the download there. I need to get a library card, anyway. I’ve always had a library card wherever I’ve lived. I even had one down in Bradenton Beach when I was living on the hook. Had it there so I could download books to my Kindle App to read late at night. The only place I DIDN’T have a library card was when I was living in Boqueron, Panama.