Still hot. Still humid. Over 100F yesterday afternoon. I got my weather station working here at the house, but not the display in my office, so I’ll have real numbers again soon. Just have to put the outdoor part back up. I’m sure today will be pretty much like yesterday. Maybe with a touch more moisture from the sky.
I did my normal morning stuff. Then I did some pickups. Got the times wrong and missed two that I’ll have to get today. Hopefully, as one of them doesn’t have pickup times for the rest of the week. Having to get the kid at 3pm put the same crimp in my schedule as a normal school day.
While I didn’t get all the pickups done, I did get to Costco. Picked up some lamb chops for dinner, and a couple of things for the BOL this weekend. W likes to have more lunch meat choices than I normally have on hand, and I also grabbed a bag of frozen mixed veg. I’ll repack the veg in single meal sizes and take most to the BOL. It’s an easy way to get something very close to fresh veg.
Dinner was lamb chops grilled on cast iron in the kitchen. I’d normally grill them outside, but it was so hot I didn’t want to fire up the BBQ. The result was very nice, using the hot pan method (crazy hot dry pan, then add oil and reduce heat to cook.) Easy clean up too. Frozen veg tossed in a saute’ pan and some garlic naan from the freezer filled out the plates. Honestly, I should be eating out of the freezers, but I didn’t plan ahead and thaw anything, so fresh from Costco was a quick choice. From prep to plate was about 15 minutes.
I picked up a small Lodge cast iron wok in an auction and I’m looking forward to giving that a try some time soon.
D1 was diagnosed with some anemia so cooking more with iron isn’t a bad thing.
———-
I decided to order a battery and back cover for my phone. Total was $34 and it’s a straightforward job. I don’t really want to spend time moving to a new phone right now. Paul’s experience and previous moves combined, and I’m thinking it’s less time to fix the old phone than get everything set up on a new on. I do have a Galaxy Note II handy, but when I started to move to it last night, I can’t find all my SIM card stuff and the Note needs an adapter to use my current smaller SIM. That was part of the motivation to just fix the old phone. One thing about using older tech, the repairs are usually cheap. And the phone still sells for ~$120-150 so I’m not spending more on parts than it’s worth.
———–
It is all distraction and time sink when I need to be more focused.
Preemptively replacing the balloon that the old battery has become, before it burns me, the SIM and memory card, or my whole house or car seems to fall under “always be working to improve your situation.”
At least it makes me feel better to think about it that way.
Throw some stuff on the stacks too…
nick
Thanks to all for the suggestions on buying a refurbished Windows 11 computer. They are helpful in ways I had not considered. Here are my thoughts so far.
For those who mentioned notebooks, I am looking for a desktop, not a notebook or laptop. BTW, I use these terms interchangeably. This is for my wife, who originally wanted a notebook because she wanted portability for trips, and for around the house. We had been spending a lot of time out of town, but we are home a lot more now. A phone is much more convenient for travel.
Once my wife got a notebook, she discovered she didn’t like the fuss of traveling with it, or even moving it around the house, so it just sits in one place where her former desktop used to be. She also didn’t like exposing it to theft on trips if we stayed in hotels. I never liked the idea that private information would be stored on such a device, and then taken outside our home network. My way of coping with that was to treat my old notebook as a secondary device for trips, and keep such information off it. She wanted it as her only device, for convenience of course. Now that she has more experience, she sees that a notebook is less convenient than she thought. Hence, back to a desktop.
If she later needs portability around the house, I have suggested that she could still get a newer notebook and use it for such needs. Better still, I have suggested a big monitor with a small form factor computer fastened to the back. I even pointed that out at her doctor’s office, where they use tiny computers mounted on a cart with a desktop sized monitor and full sized keyboard. The cart has a small UPS which avoids shutting the computer down when moving it around. I convinced her that this would be easy to duplicate, or even skip the cart and put one in, say, her sewing room as a computer to interface with a sewing machine or even just watch TV. The possibilities are many.
Thanks to @EdH for the offer to borrow the Beelink SER5 Pro mini pc. We think alike, but I don’t have time for another project right now. That little computer is impressive, similar to the original Intel NUC series, but better and lower cost. I see that NUC is now also made by Asus in addition to Intel. There are many small affordable full capability computers for dedicated uses. We sure live in fascinating times.
My wife’s current notebook is a Dell 15.6” model with a 10 point touchscreen. She has never used the touchscreen feature. I have tried the touchscreen, but didn’t like it. It is one of the better notebooks I have used, but only if portability is a must. I bought it almost ten years ago on a black Friday half-price sale at a Microsoft store. It came with a clean OEM W10 installation and no bloatware. Its original price was about $800. It is not as nice as a ThinkPad, but has been trouble free.
As an aside, I have used just about every possible positioning of keyboards and monitors, even the old fashioned monitor mounted below a work surface. That seemed so natural until I tried it. I found it very awkward in spite of the similarity to writing on a desk, which is what I used to do a lot in my career before computers.
After trying different setups, I settled on elevating the monitor so my eye level hits it about a third down from the top. I am 6’-3”, so that is pretty high. At the same time, I have the keyboard on a surface that is 27” above the floor, which allows my arms to rest on the chair armrests and extend level. My legs fit comfortably under this surface. My back and neck are straight, and relaxed. This is a pretty comfortable position, and I have used it since the 1980s. I could spend all day with it before I retired. I don’t do as much now. I have a similar setup for my wife.
You can see from the above that there is a large gap between the keyboard and monitor, and a notebook can’t do this. Since I don’t need portability, a notebook is just not right for me.
The other issue is that I used to build our computers, and a notebook has too many compromises for portability. A lot of internal parts are special, and there is usually no room for expansion. My favorite case is a full size tower, which has lots of room for everything internally. I never liked external add-ons.
I want a tower case, but I see that most towers are short, and there are several even more compact versions of vertical cases, with everything crammed in a smaller space. Larger cases are now rare, and external drive bays are almost extinct. Optical drives are either nonexistent, or replaced with slim laptop drives. Many are awkwardly vertical.
My old HP Z series workstation is a mid-tower, the shortest I have ever had. It has two vacant half height external bays below the half height DVD-RW drive. This is fine. I like the extra space in this case, and it makes working inside easy. Because it is short, I set it on a small platform to get its top at a convenient height. It still has a spinning rust drive, and I like setting it on the floor to isolate it from vibration. If I get a smaller case, I will have to rethink where to put it.
I have worked with small form factor business desktops, and while some are good, many are a pain to work on. I had to replace a power supply on one, and it required almost complete disassembly. I guess I will have to get used to this. Modularity, standard components, and ease of maintenance are disappearing.
Thanks for the recommendation of a discreet GPU. I like this, even though the Intel integrated graphics is probably adequate. I will likely get 4K monitors, and these seem to be OK with both popular graphics subsystems.
I will probably get new monitors a little later. This needs some study. I want a dot pitch that is finer than my current 1920×1080 monitors, and a much larger screen. I am thinking 32”. Prices have come down a lot since I last shopped for one.
I have casually looked at computers from Dell, Lenovo, and HP. I have the most experience with HP, but it does not seem to be as good as in years past. A friend has experience with Lenovo desktops, and likes them, but there don’t seem to be many choices in the refurb market. That leaves Dell. There are a ton of Dell refurbs, and many look pretty good. Almost too many choices. I think I am ready to do some serious looking over the next few days. I think it will be hard to go wrong. Even if I get something I don’t like, some are cheap enough to keep as a spare. I am low on modern spare systems.
For those who suggested Apple hardware, thanks, but no. I have never owned an Apple product, but used their stuff in my work and as a volunteer after retiring. I am open minded, but just don’t get along with them. My wife hates them. No Elysium for us. Some people like GM cars, some like Fords. Others like Studebakers and Packards; I would never try to convince someone to buy what they don’t like.
Don’t get too excited. Obama is not getting indicted, and he can always clam Executive Privilege if it gets even close to that happening.
The same thing goes for BJ and the Frau.
Brennan, Comey, and Clapper are maybes, but Comey would still be tough.
Biden has the mental capacity of a yam at this point.
Central Texas has been out of water for at least a decade, but that doesn’t stop the builders.
As for the car, the thinking is that they will always have the fast chargers up at Costco.
The Buzz doesn’t even sell with a cable for home charging included in the base price. That will cost you an extra $800.
“Show Ya” still doesn’t have the EV out of their system.
“Show Ya” still doesn’t have the EV out of their system.
– when it all stops, they will. Might not be soon, but new generation is not coming on line fast enough. The chinese are building thousands of power plants. We are not.
Water exists on its own, and can be harvested and moved around, and periodically falls from the sky. Some people are already (and have been) saying that limits on available clean water will be the true limit. At some point, when push comes to shove, Cali will be cut off. Vegas and Phoenix too. This much and no more. Go where the food is.
Which leads me to the point, after the environment is rendered unlivable, thru war, drought, local climate changes, etc. the people LEAVE. They go somewhere else. We’ll see waves of mass migration (as we already do for political and economic reasons.) The Dust Bowl shaped Cali to this day. All the ‘displaced persons’ from Europe changed America in the wake of WWII.
You can rob Peter to pay Paul for a while. You can live on debt for a while. It’s easy to eventually outlive either.
n
“Which leads me to the point, after the environment is rendered unlivable, thru war, drought, local climate changes, etc. the people LEAVE. They go somewhere else. We’ll see waves of mass migration (as we already do for political and economic reasons.) The Dust Bowl shaped Cali to this day. All the ‘displaced persons’ from Europe changed America in the wake of WWII”
Don’t wait Relocate
Elon needs to step it up.
Mars sounds like a sh!tty place for humans. It’s closest, and a stepping stone/learning opportunity though so it will have to do, unless our understanding of the universe changes significantly.
n
“Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact, it’s cold as hell”
Baillie Gifford is running out of patience with Elon now that their investment in BillG’s needle kink scheme has imploded.
RIP Hulk Hogan. Only 71. Elephant Walk.
None of the Dumbos will get convicted, but I will enjoy watching them sweat and spending money on lawyers.
@JimB: Sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into it, there’s a plethora of options out there, to be sure.
The fox(es) in the upgrade henhouse are Apple’s and Microsoft’s (and Google, natch) plans to scrape all your data for their AI clouds. Email, taxes, medical records, address books, company correspondence, private correspondance, pictures & metadata, your ebooks, your bookmarks & browsing history … password archives maybe?
Even assuming you trust their claims of anonymity you can’t trust them not to be hacked – Sharepoint, which has a lot of big users of far more importance than any John Doe, was hacked this week.
Well, there’s apparently a big effort underway to streamline the launch permitting process. It seemed a bit weird given Musk’s apparent fallout with Trump, but big money can move in mysterious ways.
Musk works for DoD. They need the ‘internet in space’ to fight the next war. Getting it in place is a priority. There are lots of things to do before open hostilities kick off.
n
added – like the last mention of “90 minutes to anywhere on earth” rapid deployment of gear. Only SpaceX has the infrastructure to deliver that.
A few smaller players will be sacrificed, as in Watergate.
Clapper would be an easy choice. He is such a tool.
The only thing that surprises me about Clapper are s that he didn’t have a military career stop at the Mac Dill freak shows.
Hogan clips:
https://redstate.com/rusty-weiss/2025/07/24/hulk-hogan-wrestling-icon-and-star-of-the-republican-national-convention-has-died-at-the-age-of-71-n2192045
Guest appearance on Walker Texas Ranger (S9.E13, Feb 3, 2001):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIh7-AJ9UFM
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001356
Thanks for the memories, Mr. Hogan.
You silly savage. Do you really think they are spending their own money on such trivial matters? A lot of lawyers will do it for nothing more than the press coverage and national exposure.
As for sweating. Do you really want to see pictures of Cankles sweating.
>>I don’t really want to spend time moving to a new phone right now. Paul’s experience and previous moves combined, and I’m thinking it’s less time to fix the old phone than get everything set up on a new on.
Since I’ve standardized on Google Pixel hardware I have had minimal issues when migrating phones. (Of course, as with all things tech, YMMV.)
BC: Body Communications
https://www.gocomics.com/bc/2025/07/24
Yup, well said.
“FERC to implement new environmental procedures after Supreme Court ruling”
https://www.ogj.com/general-interest/government/article/55305392/ferc-to-implement-new-environmental-procedures-after-supreme-court-ruling
“The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will implement its own National Energy Policy Act (NEPA) procedures after a US Supreme Court’s ruling limiting environmental impact evaluations to the physical scope of the project—not the upstream or downstream effects, Chairman Mark Christie told reporters July 24 after his final meeting after President Trump asked him to step down.”
“The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Seven Country Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle Country, Colo., is “huge in terms of clarifying” the scope of environmental reviews, an ongoing issue at FERC since before he was on the commission, Christie said.”
“The former precedent resulted in numerous court cases stalling or overturning gas pipeline and LNG projects and ordering the commission to reevaluate a project’s environmental impacts (OGJ Online, Sept. 19, 2024).”
You cannot evaluate a projects risk to the world, the simulations will never complete and the assumptions will always conflict with each other.
SideQuested: Super Heavy Incoming !
https://sidequested.com/page/book2-7/
Oh yeah, landing that huge dragon will do some damage to that beautiful picture.
I’ll bet the artist has a wrist ache now.
“Top Epidemiologist Sounds Alarm: mRNA ‘Vaccination’ Is ‘Chemical Lobotomy’”
https://slaynews.com/news/top-epidemiologist-sounds-alarm-mrna-vaccination-chemical-lobotomy/
“A leading American epidemiologist has warned the public that Covid mRNA “vaccines” are a “chemical lobotomy” that “cause severe brain damage and DEVASTATE mental health.””
“The warning was issued by renowned McCullough Foundation epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher.”
“Hulscher has been one of the leading voices in raising alarms about the dangers of mRNA “vaccination.””
Well, that is not good if true.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
Starlink is down. Worldwide it seems.
I thought my system decided to suddenly puke.
“Here’s Why Ghislaine Maxwell Is the “Most Dangerous Witness” Regarding Epstein”
https://thelibertydaily.com/heres-why-ghislaine-maxwell-is-most-dangerous-witness/
The life expectancy of this person is not good.
Starlink is down. Worldwide it seems.
I thought my system decided to suddenly puke.
And it is back up. Looks like they just rebooted Starlink.
Once my wife got a notebook, she discovered she didn’t like the fuss of traveling with it, or even moving it around the house, so it just sits in one place where her former desktop used to be. She also didn’t like exposing it to theft on trips if we stayed in hotels. I never liked the idea that private information would be stored on such a device, and then taken outside our home network. My way of coping with that was to treat my old notebook as a secondary device for trips, and keep such information off it. She wanted it as her only device, for convenience of course. Now that she has more experience, she sees that a notebook is less convenient than she thought. Hence, back to a desktop.
Two things:
I am still dealing with the disaster known as my father’s computer. I have resorted to just canceling his Amex card to stop the several news and cloud stuff that is charging my mother $1,000+ per month of services that she could care less about.
My father’s PC has six hard drives. I have not taken the time to figure out what is on each hard drive. Nor have I been able to find any financial stuff older than two years such as tax returns. I just want to scream. I am going to make an image this weekend of his six drives.
Starlink was just down again. This is not good.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1m8dlr8/starlink_down_for_you_guys/?sort=new
It seems to be down everywhere.
I have my phone tethered.
Starlink is down. Worldwide it seems.
“a great disturbance in the internet, as if millions of starlink terminals suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”
my theory is that all the satellites fell out of the sky at the same time due to global warming/Trump/Putin.
Or, more likely, a summer intern at Starlink HQ.
still down here, Verizon for the win…
Transfer Maxwell to the custody of DeSantis and the Martin County Sheriff.
Ryan Wesley Routh is still alive and awaiting trial in Stuart, FL. He isn’t going anywhere for a while.
Routh was in court today, seeking approval from Judge Eileen Canon (!) to represent himself in his September trial.
Granted.
Following up on the earlier post:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/man-accused-of-attempting-to-assassinate-trump-can-represent-himself-at-trial-judge-says/ar-AA1Jbjk7
Prisoner exchange.
My truck was just showing 104 F outside and the local thermometer is showing 103 F. Hot !
“SpaceX’s Starlink Hit by Major Outage”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacexs-starlink-hit-by-major-outage
“Complaints spiked on Downdetector.com around noon PT with 55,000 reports from around the globe. The satellite service says it’s ‘actively implementing a solution.’”
Well, I wonder what caused the problem ? I am guessing Russia and/or Iran.
Starlink is up. I really need to route the cable up under the eave and through the wall. It’s just a matter of time before some critter chomps the wire where it is laying on the porch.
101 F here in the shade.
n
Today I learned 2 things.
You know, they got it backwards. I’ve never failed an emissions test, but I now see vehicles with broken headlights and taillights, and I’m assuming non-functional brake lights and worn out wiper blades. Probably bald tires, too. Those get people killed.
“EPA moves to slash Obama-era gas can regulations: ‘VENT THE DARN CAN’”
https://www.theblaze.com/news/epa-moves-to-slash-obama-era-gas-can-regulations-vent-the-darn-can
“’Gas cans used to POUR gas. Now they just DRIBBLE like a child’s sippy cup.’”
The EPA as a collective has about zero common sense.
The gas cans are good in theory. The folks decreeing them don’t care. They don’t use them. That’s the Help’s problem.
Why it takes three hands to fill the lawnmower without spilling gas is something I haven’t figured out.
I haven’t figured it out either; I routinely spill a little gas trying to fill it.
No inspections here. The DFW, Houston, Austin, and I’m sure SA metro areas have emissions testing.
We didn’t have inspections at all years ago. It was on you to make sure your lights worked so a cop wouldn’t stop you.
I don’t miss having to mess with it. I SURE don’t miss paying for the constant headlight adjustment scam. Too low one year, too high the next year. So you can’t see at night or low beams are blinding everyone. Same place, same gut working there. It usually takes a couple of hours total time and I have better things to do with my life.
My 1993 Ford Probe still registered 0.0 on the emissions test when I traded it 25 years ago.
I have failed the test in my 2001 Solara trying to skate by with a bad evap system. If I don’t reset the light far enough in advance of the inspection, the O2 sensor check will report “incomplete” along with the evap system, and two incomplete checks will result in a failed test.
The car never has a meaningful amount of pollutants coming out of the tailpipe. It is all about the evap system throwing the code.
Right now, the car needs new everything, including shocks/struts and brake fluid. If I don’t have to pay for the evap system repair this year, I will pay for the brake system flush and have the shop check the pads. I will consider the suspension.
At some point, the car will get sold in the next year.
I never had a problem passing a safety inspection.
Austin/Travis and Williamson have emissions inspections.
My regular inspection place closed in January, after the new rules went into effect.
It’s part of Cali’s clean air push. 49 state cars? What’s that gramps?
I will say their draconian and anti business rules made a major change in the air quality in LA. South Coast Air Quality Management district really did clean up the air.
Dunno how much the vehicle emissions contribute, but adding lanes and keeping traffic moving would probably do more than reducing tailpipe emissions.
n
The inspections in Texas were also someone’s rice/soup bowl.
Out in the boonies or in places like Brownsville or El Paso, inspections never had a point because it was always possible to find a mechanic to sign off on a problem vehicle with a cash payment.
People in the metro areas are pressed for time and thus mulcted.
I have failed the test in my 2001 Solara trying to skate by with a bad evap system. If I don’t reset the light far enough in advance of the inspection, the O2 sensor check will report “incomplete” along with the evap system, and two incomplete checks will result in a failed test.
I thought that your daughter wrecked this car ?
Nope. She nearly totaled a 2016 Corolla.
Trump/Biden Bux means that the used price for the vehicle was nearly as much as the Solara cost new.
The Corolla was “repaired”, but I’m under no delusions about the longevity there. The vehicle no longer feels “right” when driven.
My son did a fair bit of damage to the Jetta earlier last year, but driving that car post repair feels about the same as it did before the accident.
The latest in-law surprise with the Jetta was the half-a**ed fix of the passenger side mirror. My ex brother-in-law, Big Papi, just glued a new mirror on top of the old one.
The glue finally wore off. Fortunately, it happened in the driveway.
Hulk Hogan had a first run syndication series in the 90s, “Thunder in Paradise”, filmed on location in Central Florida with interior filming and post production actually taking place at one of the “studio” parks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCL5cZ3qNAg
IIRC, Hogan also had a surf shop in Orlando, but I don’t know if that survived the pandemic.
https://twitter.com/michaelnicollsx/status/1948509258024452488#
“Starlink has now mostly recovered from the network outage, which lasted approximately 2.5 hours. The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network. We apologize for the temporary disruption in our service; we are deeply committed to providing a highly reliable network, and will fully root cause this issue and ensure it does not occur again.”
Huh, the Starlink outage at my place was a few one minute or less outages.
https://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2025/07/24/ninth-circuit-declares-californias-background-checks-on-ammo-purchases-unconstitutional-n1229380
Since SCOTUS is extremely likely to agree, that should effectively spike similar laws in other circuits.
RIP Chuck Mangione, 84
https://redstate.com/beckynoble/2025/07/24/jazz-great-chuck-mangione-dead-at-84-n2192050
A friend of mine was a pretty serious trumpet player and took lessons from Mr. Mangione. There is no substitute for listening to live horns.
Another “King of the Hill” voice cast regular.
I really hate Xfinity, I mean really despise that loathsome organization.
I was getting really bad upload speeds, sub 5MBPS. Tech came out and removed a filter on the line as the modem was only locking on 1 upstream channel. Then the modem locked on four channels but upload speed was still poor. Consensus is it was the modem.
I bought a new modem. Upload speeds are back to what they should be. But now the home phone does not work.
I have been on chat for 100+ minutes, three different people, all saying they will fix the problem. Nope, none of them did anything but waste a bunch of time.
If there was a viable alternative I would switch in a heartbeat, at 50% more cost.
Sub continent, Indians. Worthless. Prabhakaran, his name is Ralph.
The Starlink outage lasted a couple hours here. I imagine there were a great many people trying to reconnect all at the same time.
—–
I am sitting here watching the second of the hobbit movies on Prime. For some reason I never saw any of it when it came out in 2013. I did see the first and was unimpressed, and bits of the third movie.
Not bad.
Well made but way too long. Benedict Cumberbatch became the biggest star in the world the year before with the second season of BBC’s “Sherlock”, and he was in everything that Summer, including “The Hobbit”.
The Rankin-Bass TV movie was probably the right length for the material but doesn’t satisfy the purists.
Still, if you have kids — the intended audience for the film — and want to get them into that world, go with Rankin-Bass.
Okay, “A Scandal in Belgravia”, the first episode of the second season of “Sherlock” is the best 90 minutes of TV I’ve seen in the last 15 years. Cumberbatch is amazing with Laura Pulver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bBHT158E0s
Pulver is currently on “Mobland”.
Ah shoot. I need to get the trash and recycling out tonight. Then it’s bed time.
n
My nephew totaled the old Mercedes diesel sedan tonight that my parents gave him. He was going down a FM (farm to market) road. He missed the first cow but got the second. Popped the air bags and shattered all of the glass on the passenger side. Probably bent the frame.
Hah. I have AT&T for cellular service. Just checked, and 22.3 Mb/s down and 0.07 Mb/s up, about typical for this time of the night. It is slower in the evening and daytime. I am considering changing carriers, but Verizon Wireless has the only other cellular infrastructure in my area. T-Mobile uses AT&T towers. I have one of their fixed base “5G” devices. It is highly variable, but usually just fast enough for TV streaming with occasional buffering. I am probably going to drop it after I try the VW fixed service.
With AT&T I get much better cell data in town, and when I travel, but VW is just the opposite.
I have a WISP for Internet now. It is rated at 50 symmetrical, and usually delivers about 20 minimum down and 30+ up, with good latency. This is the best in my area. I stream TV at 4K with almost no issues.
A friend is a gamer, and has Starlink. He found it to be much slower than the local cable company’s service at his site. There are occasional interruptions as satellites come and go, making gaming unreliable. He went back to cable for gaming. I can’t get cable.
I need to contact Frontier, our local phone service. I am supposed to get fiber to my site, but all activity in the area seems to have stopped. I suspect this is part of the outgoing previous administration’s rural Internet boondoggle, which spent the money on other things. DEI?
Yeah, I am unhappy, but not to the level of hatred. Yet. I have been hoping for better Internet for 25 years.