We Are LIVE!!!!

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On Tuesday RBT went live in Aguilar!

Dan and Karen finally got all the bugs worked out of the MicroTik and the rest of the system. Karen then tested the logins and they flipped the switches. boom! Aguilar was live with wireless Internet communications.

I no sooner got the call that we were live than we had the first few customers log on. Wheeeee!!!! This was really good as we had less than 24 hours at that point to pay on the T-1 bill. Luckily we made enough. Now to just keep that cash flow going.

Sadly, we had to take the MicroTik out of the Budget Host because it and the Engenius radios are not talking nicely. The Engenius products don’t like heat or cold in extremes. This means that we have had 4 of them fry in less than 3 months. Not a happy thing. So, BH is up and running free wireless at the moment. :< Not great for the pocketbook. However, we hope to have that fixed in the next month.

Meanwhile, we are working on paperwork. Forms, letters, billing and all sorts of other bits. Wheee….. NOT. My office is a mess. I also need to make up a new ad for the Huerfano Journal as well as a “letterhead” or logo for the business. Our business cards are rather generic, and I want to do something with lightning bolts or radio waves and mimic the local scenery with it. Dan wanted a skull with crossed lightning bolts under it and antennas for ears. Karen said no. Bad enough that our favourite song at the moment is The Last Saskatchewan Pirates by the Arrogant Worms.

Dan wants it to play when people bring up our website or for our hold music on the phone. Karen just twitches as she gets the song stuck in her head. teeheehee….

Yesterday was busy in that between taking all sorts of calls, I made posole and then Dan, Morgan and I headed to Gardner School for Poetry Night by the 5th & 6th graders. They do this sort of Beatnik coffee house thing. It’s always fun. Last night in the middle of one of the girls reciting her poem, a spider descended from the ceiling. The table of girls to the left saw it and started to squirm. Dan went to the rescue and removed a wolf spider about the size of a nickel. Dan was acclaimed a hero. I’m not sure who flinched more, the girls, or Julia, the principal. Afterwards, we drove home and after checking to see if Aguilar was still up, we went to bed early. Wheeeee!

Today started out with me taking the kids to school and Dan checking to see if Aguilar was still running. Gads! You’d think it was a newborn baby he had to check to see if it was still breathing. OK, well it is sort of a new baby. :> We had our first customer who forgot how to log on and another inquiry about equipment. We are going to have to keep and inventory of routers and cables as well as switches and the rest of the computer bits. Thank goodness for lots of shelves.

Karen and Dan are also out looking at a tower site. It might be for sale cheap enough to snatch up. If so, it would be a real feather in our cap. Tonight we also have to work on documenting all of the fun stuff…. like how we did it. sigh… Oh, and I get to start a new book. Deploying License-Free Wireless Wide-Area Networks.

I’d much rather read Widdershins By De Lint, but that will just have to wait a bit. Professional reading comes first. I’ll take it with me when I go to pick up the kids at Badito. After we come home, I’m going to warm up the posole from last night. John and Beth are due home really late from their Library conference in Pueblo. Good thing the kids don’t mind eating in a half finished kitchen.

Well, I’m off! Yeah, and more than just my rocker!

The phones…. they won’t stop ringing…..

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You’d think I worked at a business or something! Gads! Today has been phone hell. They ring, they ring some more and sometimes there are 3 calls at once! Plus we have been having issues with Vonage and a mix up with our service. They connected the device to the wrong account numbers. What a cluster f*ck. However, I think that Dan finally got things worked out. Here’s hoping!

Stefan called and I had to put him on hold three separate times in less than 5 minutes. Wow! Poor guy, he was just trying to tell me how life was going for him and Anabell, and he could barely get a word in edgewise. I kept having to interrupt him, put him on hold and answer the other phone. Twice it was my parents who arrived in town today.

Then there were the conversations. :> Geeze! Here we are a wireless internet service provider. A WISP. Better yet, we are providing free access to Aguilar government entities. So far, two of them don’t want it! What the hell? I sort of understand the fire department. They probably have some government based contract that they can’t get out of. However, the library is not.  They’ve gotten a grant with a company that is suppose to give them WiFi. It’s been promised service, but as far as I understand it, they aren’t actually connected yet. Instead, they are costing the town money for a satellite that has been their connection for a while. I talked to the city manager, and he wasn’t sure if they were connected and didn’t understand why they didn’t want free service. Sigh….

The rest of the phone calls were about service. When would it be turned on? (it is) How long will it be free? (until the end of the week) How much? What do I need? What’s a WISP? and When are you coming to our area? (as soon as possible) Oh, and the software company called me because Dan forgot to give them his cell phone number. Wheee….

My parents arrived amidst all the phone calls. They are here for the rest of the week to work on their house. Dan was a tad crabby, so I took Mom with me to go pick up the kids. I told her all about the shopping trips. I thought she was going to laugh herself silly. Especially over the ear piercing.

Now I get to have a quiet evening. The kids are home, work is mostly done and now all I need to do is return the DVD we forgot for the last 4 days and head to Safeway for some milk. Tomorrow looks like it will be just as busy, so I think I will head to bed early again.