The backhauls are in! I left the ground at 10:45 AM last Friday and stayed up on the tower for the next four hours but we now have a real link to the Glidewell tower on Highway 13. (Silly me. I didn't put on any sunscreen so I ended up with a sunburn but the deed is done!) From there, the link goes through the company that we are buying our internet from, on to SpringNet and out to the rest of the world.

If you're interested in seeing the business end of our link: Come north from Springfield on Highway 13. It's on the tower on your left just before you come to Highway O. Our backhaul is a little-bitty grid reflector on the northwest tower leg at a height of 125 feet. The picture on the right isn't the tower backlit by moonlight. The highlighted circle shows the position of the backhaul to make it easier for you to find.

In related equipment news, we have the subscriber modules! I've been configuring them in the evenings for the past week. Unexpectedly, they are actual "P9" hardware, not "P10" so they should be stable. Obviously the next step will be the actual installations. In fact, I am not actively seeking any additional customers until we complete our current spate of installs. (I am getting calls and I will work in appointments as I can but I am not pursuing anyone new at this point.) I'm hoping to have everyone up by the first week of July.

And speaking of installs, several of them are going to require a grounding rod. I had intended to rent a jackhammer to put them in but the more I thought about it, and the more I looked around, the more I thought I should just buy one. So, I went to Harbor Freight Tools. I must say that I certainly feel more manly now that I own a jackhammer. ;-)

On the "know when to fold them" front, I finaly gave up on my quest for parity with AT&T. You might recall that I had originally attempted to get our Internet supply from a T1 which was supposed to be installed by AT&T. As part of that process, AT&T told me that I would need a dedicated phone line so that their technicians could configure the T1 router. I had the phone line installed and then found out that AT&T wouldn't be installing the T1. So I cancelled the phone line and asked AT&T for a refund on the monthly fees I had already paid. The representative said she would be happy to do that and I hung up the phone thinking that that was that.

Then the cancellation from AT&T came with an additional charge for $18. So I called a second time and was told that everything would be taken care of. Then I received a notice from AT&T that they were about to turn the $18 over to collection because I hadn't paid. So, I called a third time and went through the entire story a third time. And this time the representative told me the adjustments had been denied because there was nothing on my file to corroborate my story. At this point, I realized that I was going to spend a lot of time chasing this thing up the management chain so I politely explained to the representative that if AT&T really needed my $18, they were welcome to it. Later, to amuse myself, I sang Darth Vader's theme while I wrote out AT&T's check. (Anybody else remember that the old AT&T logo looked like the Death Star? There was a reason for that! ;-) 

Some of you may be wondering what the title of this article means. Among some programmers, launching a new program is affectionately referred to a "releasing it into the wild". No matter how much testing you do, no matter how much preparation, things always get interesting when a project is released into the wild.

As I said last week, things are about to get interesting!