Countermove

Where was the blog for the 5th? I got knocked offline by a thunderstorm. If you're a regular reader, you know this wasn't the first time. The problem turned out to be my phone line surge protector. Throughout my various internet problems, this was the first one to die for the cause. It was brave and lasted many years. A moment of silence.
I have a new surge protector now that I hope survives a long time.

You might recall I lost my TV to lightning despite the fact that it was on a surge protector. I think what happened was because of Directv. There's this one piece of equipment that can't be plugged into a surge protector, or there's no signal. I suspect a light power surge went down the Directv line and terminated in the TV. Which was brave and lasted many years. A moment of silence.

I finally found a new TV. It's a 2014 Samsung that was on sale at Walmart. The picture's good. However, the sound isn't that great at low levels. Sometimes before bed, I'll turn on some classical music and set the TV volume to about 3. It worked great with my old Hitachi. There's a bit of disruption in the Samsung. I usually only do that in the winter, though.
Guess what I found on Amazon? An HDMI surge protector. I didn't even know they made them. So now, the new TV is on two surge protectors, one that plugs into the wall and one that plugs into the HDMI port on the Directv box. You should never have Directv btw. Dish Network is owned by the same company and is cheaper with more channels.

While I was offline, I was struck with frustration that I don't normally have when I lose my internet connection. I couldn't do the blog. I couldn't check email. I couldn't do any research for the next book. I have a flurry of [Research] tags in the prose I still need to clean up.
But what can I do to make sure I stay online? I'm not rich or a big corporation. Options would seem limited. But wait. I'm not without certain resources. I think I've found a way to make sure I never lose connection again. I bought a reconditioned 3G wifi hotspot from www.straighttalk.com for $15 and a GB of data for another $15. If disaster strikes again, I'm prepared. And now that I am prepared, I'm reasonably certain my connection will be just fine now. :) It's like buying insurance. Now that I have it, I won't need it.

And to make sure once and for all that everything really will always be fine, I need to go to Amazon and check for surge protector surge protectors.