Friday, January 16, 2009 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
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Sunrise, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM, January 16, 2009
We'll know soon
Yesterday I wagered Broadband Access would come up mid morning today, like it did last Friday. Let's hope it does.
Meanwhile, I have a slow connection at the moment (about 5:30 am) and I'm going to try and get a bit done here on the site.
Grumble.
[Update] Nope - access didn't come back up, except for a few minutes in the afternoon. At least that I'm aware of - I didn't sit here watching a static screen all day. A neighbor across the way seems to have better, though spotty access than I do. I wonder if my modem and router are in need of an update.
Night camp
Site 7 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - very good signal and access speed ( I have to qualify this - during my January 2008 visit the signal and access speed was excellent - in January 2009 it was practically non-existent during the day and slow at night with unpredictable short periods of excellent access)
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park website
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park on my Nightcamps map
- Check the weather here
Five Trillion Spiders
Spiders begin their hunting with a few handicaps. They're often smaller and weaker than their prey, and they have no wings to give chase in the air. Some species extend their legs by hydraulic pressure, using the same liquid that carries oxygen from their lungs, so they have a hard time running and breathing at the same time. Even their poison may be no match for their victim's: a crab spider's bite is to a honeybee's sting as "an air-gun compared with an elephant rifle," John Crompton wrote. Yet spiders kill at an astonishing pace. One Dutch researcher estimates that there are some five trillion spiders in the Netherlands alone, each of which consumes about a tenth of a gram of meat a day. Were their victims people instead of insects, they would need only three days to eat all sixteen and a half million Dutchmen.
From Spider Woman by Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker magazine, March 5, 2007, page 69