I am not finished, by any means with our taxes, but at least we started today. And there’s yet time to do more work. However, fearing how gremlin prone declaring success can be, I think I have made big inroads into the quality of our internet access aboard.
Having spent 2-3 hours scanning documents, etc., to send to our CPA I decided it was time to send off three emails I had built up. This meant trying to get the internet going yet again without the wireless hub. As expected I ran into immediate problems which would only resolve if I first connected to the older XP machine. When trouble shooting I often have a ‘continuous ping’ running – this is a means by which I get a near real time read on connectivity.
This time, the screen was visible when I was messing about with the computers. I spotted an odd coincidence which I simply didn’t believe at first – putting it down to a freaky coincidence. What I saw was my Vista machine suddenly getting worse when the XP machine completed it’s shutdown. To add to this wierdness the Vista machine connection came back to life the moment I turned the XP machine back on. It was only luck I spotted this. I even pointed out the observation to Helen saying I didn’t believe it but would follow it through.
More tests later and I established that it was overall load on the A/C system while on the inverter that was the factor. If I ran the microwave, traffic would flow. With just a little load on it would not. When powered by the genset instead of the inverter there were no issues at all. This has been a real distraction as I’ve got used to the idea that the issues are sometimes resolved when I used the second laptop not realizing it was overall load on the house A/C that was affecting things. It wasn’t just that though. There was some Vista crap to work through and the wireless hub is still a bust.
Turns out I had a spare 400W inverter kicking around back from our Timeless days. I hot wired it to the forward fuse box to test things out and hey presto things are working. Each time. Every time. I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone based on the levels of success I’m experiencing. I did try the wireless hub with the backup inverter but it still exhibited the same issues so I’m declaring it defunct and will look for a new one at a decent price.
I have now put proper ends on the wires to the second inverter and fused it properly. Now it’s permanently installed although I need to put longer wires on sometime and move it as it’s in an awkward place right now.
Note of thanks to the tech folks at Demarctec who are always quick to lend a hand with questions I have.
Now that I’ve written this I’m going to be touching a lot of wood to keep the luck running. So far, so good. Time outs are very few and far between – an improvement on prior best.
This afternoon – more tax work.
This evening – second attempt for local curry. Something to celebrate.
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