Daily Archives: 2011/12/09

I’m looking into getting a Verizon 4G LTE Building Repeater Kit. When Verizon had a 4G outage the other day, I asked the fellow if the VL600 data USB modem that I use for the internet would be the same Megahertz used with the phones. He said, Yes, since it uses the same tower, it has to be the same. So, O.K. I’m going to put this on my on the blog wishlist, not the Amazon wishlist, since ordering this is rather complicated. One needs to fill in the boxes for the length of cables required: “Coax 1″ should be 20 feet, and “Coax 2″ should be 30 feet to make it work correctly.

Now, why oh why in the vale of tears of this world would a hermit want to have such a thing as that? Isn’t that worldly stuff? Shouldn’t he be dead, six feet in the ground, effectively, to be a “real” hermit? After all, Saint Anthony of the Desert lived all sealed up in a gargantuan sepulcher for years. And Saint Jerome, wasn’t he in a cave or something? What’s this hermit on Holy Souls Mountain doing on the internet, of all things?

Part of the deal in my becoming a hermit is that I’m suppossed to write… a lot… for which I need the computer because of the kind of writing that I’ll be doing, that is, things to publish, with all sort of non-Latin fonts, like Hebrew and Greek and Akkadian/Sumerian, even a bit of Egyptian and, of course, Arabic. There is, with all this, an enormous wealth of material to research on the internet. I’d like to the best possible because of the topics I’m writing about.

Keeping up easy contact for ecclesiastical matters is a real plus. After all, I am a priest in good standing, with the same faculties that any other priest has. There are bureaucratic moments in life. Also, I’m helping to teach seminarian Philip Gerard Johnson. The internet helps for this as well.

Then there is the blog, which will be even more centered on priestly life and ministry and prayer and spirituality and ongoing formation, that is, once I’m not on the edge of freezing because I only have plastic sheeting under which to get out of the rain!

Anyway, back to this wishlist item. Although I am NOT soliciting donations, ever, and although such a note about any wishlist is just a reminder for myself, if someone were to force such a thing on me I suppose that I would have to take it, being coerced into this by UPS Store, which holds things for me and forces me to take them so that they can regain the space in their store. When I order things, since it is going there and not here, I use their phone number and their address, though with my PMB (Personal Mail Box number in the store). They are “Suite 3″ in the shopping mall in Brevard:

George David Byers
102 College Station Drive
Suite 3 – PMB 233
Brevard, N.C., 28712-3702 USA
Phone: 828-883-4701

But if you’re reading this post, doesn’t that mean that I already have internet connectivity? Yes and no. I often post things when I am in town, using the WiFi bandwidth of, for instance, the library. But I’d like to go to town much less. Sometimes, hiking it down the mountain a bit is sufficient to get a bit of a connection, though maybe not. Up in the hermitage, I’ll just be ready to send an email or post something, and then all is lost because the connection went out. Sometimes it comes back quickly, sometimes it’s out for up to an hour. And then when it comes back it might be back only for a second or two, or a couple of minutes, sometimes more than an hour. Basically, this is unworkable when there are many other things to do rather than watch signal strength! There is prayer, and writing, and collecting wood for the ever voracious stove… So, I figure that’s it’s worth the expenditure. My little world!