discon­nected – again…

howto silence the lambs.

Some title for the first block of my first article on this web site, but those words sounded right after having spent 4 hours on what under normal circumstances should be a ten minutes task.

In my country they have a very simple method for making all look as bright and shiny as possible: they hide all else. In our day and age that should be near impossible, but in Norway it's easy since whole areas can be left disconnected from all communication services and ignored.

example: 'connection to server timed out' example: 'download speed: 13 Bytes/Sec'

“See nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing … there is nothing” – the non-official but very actual and extremely effective policy in Norway as of the year 2011. No wonder they can make things look so bright in this country.

Anyway, I have found a working solution, and have paid a high price for it. Others in my country are not that lucky, and they also pay a price – for next to nothing.

do not look to Norway.

The same policy elsewhere in the world too, but that does of course not help anyone. As a citizen of what is known as one of the richest countries in the world I would not mind helping others to some progress, but since I am denied access obviously I can't do anything for anyone anywhere – not even for myself.

In order to communicate with anyone in Norway or elsewhere in the world, and to achieve anything worth achieving in my line of work, I have to leave my country for long periods – travel to places with working internet connections.

It is a somewhat radical and costly solution, but it sure is better than to waste time, energy and money in a country that excludes large groups of its population from basic human needs like “communication”.

everything down, for good?

Where I live one cannot even communicate through the local newspaper, since for some reason or another they simply deny access for people in certain areas and situations. We are of course allowed to buy the paper and read what others write – which usually isn't worth the effort to open the newspaper, but in no way are we allowed to present our own problems or express our opinions on print.

Lately the focus locally is on trying to sell water from our area world wide. We do indeed have the cleanest water offered for public consumption in Norway, so by all means: sell it all as bottle-water. Clean water is scarce in parts of the world so such an idea might actually work. No big deal but I would not use that water for anything but to bade in.

Local budgets are locked up in prestige-projects for years, so nothing useful can be expected to be done around here until the municipality has rotted on root – and probably not thereafter either. Some future…

time to let go.

There is a time for everything, and after 15 years of regression and frustration the time has come to let go. No reason to wait for what will probably not come in my lifetime.

From now on I will focus entirely on what matters to me, and ignore all else. Should (accidentally) bring me in line with the majority, but who cares.

sincerely  georg; sign

Hageland 10.mar.2011
19.mar.2011 - added a second timedout image.
last rev: 19.mar.2011


side notes.

15 years of regres­sion.

15 years since I logged onto internet first time, and the quality of the connection is only slightly better now compared to back then. The amount of data for each transfer has of course grown considerable over that time-period.

No matter how I calculate, the connections offered in my area today are handling fewer complete individual transfers than what I could get through 15 years ago. I call that regression.

At the moment of writing my sat-link connection has been down for 12 hours, which obviously doesn't help on the number of completed transfers. Quite normal to have a dead connection for hours, and it happens more often then for the copper-line I had up to 5 years ago. At least 25% down-time for my sat-link over a twelve month period … a severe regression.

My sat-link connection has its base in another country, and for some reason they have for 2 years not been able to map me to the right country. As Norwegian I hate being locked out from some Norwegian sites or only be offered Polish sites and stuff by “automated locators”. Another, huge, regression.

Any improvements regarding communication over the last 15 years? No, none that I can think of once regression is calculated in.

the cost of weak communi­cation.

I have not calculated exact cost – economically and otherwise, but especially the “otherwise” cost is high enough to justify investment in a “base“ abroad, with proper internet connections and all else I need for long stays away from home.

Frustration related to weak to non-working connections to my friends and fora around the world, has been and is very damaging to my health. That is not a layman's conclusion but that of my medical consultants.

No local “stress-releasing” solutions available, so I had little choice but to find one abroad. Many have presented “solutions” in my own country, but all of them carried too high a price-tag (in more than one way) to come anywhere near being acceptable.

My situation is complicated by two factors. One is that my health does not allow me to work “by the clock” or hurry back and forth between tasks and places. The other is that moving my internet-related activities 10 minutes away from home is no better than moving them to another part of the world - and there isn't proper internet connections within a 10 minutes radius from home.

For these reasons I have chosen a “part-time abroad” solution, with the added positive effect spending time in a warmer climate has on my health. Winter-climate in Norway is not good for old bones.


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