Thursday, March 11, 2010

Online again!

Praise be! I finally have an internet connection at home. Turns out that it's a pain in the arse to get an internet connection installed here in Melbourne if you don't have an active phone like (which I don't)- two service calls are required, and worst of all, it takes 4-6 weeks to schedule an appointment. After some investigating, I went with another option, one I hadn't seen at all in the US but is very popular here: mobile wireless broadband. Basically, it's a little stick, commonly referred to as a dongle (dirty!) that you plug into a USB port on your laptop to connect to the internet. You buy the device itself through a provider, and then pay to recharge it every so often based upon your usage. I'm testing out my dongle (okay, I really can't handle that term) tonight, and so far, so good, although it is a little bit slow due to the advanced age of my laptop. So the good news is, more blogging and skype! (Hit me up at emd3737 on skype.) And for the bad news, well, you're going to have to listen to me use the term dongle. Repeatedly. Dongle dongle dongle.

7 comments:

Suldog said...

Dongle. Heh.

Good to see you're settling in, even if you have to use semi-obscene words :-)

Frances said...

Hmmmmm...sounds like the dongle is more convenient if you carry your laptop, right? I mean, if it's mobile, you can use it anywhere you are...

Caro said...

long life to the dongle!!

Unknown said...

Yep, you can indeed use your dongle anywhere you'd like to.

Kevin said...

Office IT email this week: Subject: Has anyone seen the communal dongle? Another guy replies "I took it home last week and have it there. Will bring it back." I love reading email exchanges between two guys talking about dongles on a Tuesday morning.

Kevin said...

Oh, and all the guys in the office were equally mature about the word dongle as you might imagine.

eileen said...

Kev- Your workplace has a communal dongle? Whoa.

Yes, the dongle is portable, which will come in handy when I'm traveling with my laptop. In other computer news, I blew up my external speakers because the voltage isn't compatible down here. Whoops.