Space-X Starlink Satellite
Until very recently, I had the vague idea that Elon Musk was some sort of exotic scent for men. Then my cousin got a spiffy job in California working for Tesla and I found out a little more — at least to the extent that the scent exuded by this particular Musk is that of money and cutting edge electric cars. And now we are hearing about Mr. Musk even closer to home. Yes! His Starlink satellites have reached the skies above Oysterville!
According to our neighbor (who, as far as we know, is the first in our area to sign up) the system delivers exactly what its website promises: Starlink provides high-speed, low-latency broadband internet across the globe. Within each coverage area, orders are fulfilled on a first-come, first-served basis.”
“It was seamless!” she enthused to us at our Friday Night Gathering. “No muss, no fuss. Instantly we were up and running — no problems encountered by our local installer or by us!” And best of all, the download speed for the internet is 200+MB/s (a figure so vast when compared to our all-time CenturyLink speed of 5.88 MB/s, that I cannot remember the exact number)!!
CardioMems Device
Will we sign up? The jury is still out. Mostly because it only makes sense to do that if we bag our landline and current internet delivery service. We will do that in a nano-second IF Nyel finds that his daily CardioMems report can be sent another way. Right now, the data from the device that measures and monitors his pulmonary artery pressure and heart rate goes daily via our landline directly to his cardiologist in Seattle. That communication allows for immediate tweaking of meds, should the numbers so indicate. The big question: is there another way that his CardioMems machine can communicate with Seattle?
Fingers crossed! If our stars are in the right aspect and there is a way to circumvent our landline, we’ll be on the waitlist before you can say, “200 MB/s.”
That, of course, turned out to be untrue. At my suggestion (ahem!) Nyel searched online for the CenturyLink Modem firewall settings, got a long list of them plus a matched list of open and closed ports. He laboriously wrote out the information (having found no way to send a link or to forward a “legible copy”), sent it to the (apparently) highest level techie trouble shooter at the Mother Ship and voilà! Cinderella II is hard at it “learning” our house and mapping her routes.
Cinderella is definitely a New Age Princess. Her Fairy Godmother communicates with her through a cyberspace connection and and acts as intermediary between us simple folk and our Roomba housemate. All directions must come from the Mother Ship where the FG sits at the controls.
