A Good Sleep Saturday night, as we were headed to Bonaire for a two-day stay, was great since I do most of my writing and editing of the stories on Sunday; other parts of the newsletter are done Monday, such as the Honorary Unsubscribe, and I send the newsletter late in the day Mondays as soon as it’s done.
Except we awoke in Bonaire on Sunday to some bad news aboard ship: no Internet. They found Bonaire? the Netherlands? had refused to give SpaceX a license to provide Starlink Internet here.
I do have a backup plan: a terrific international cell phone plan, including some amount of hotspot Internet access. I wrote about it on Residential Cruising. It doesn’t cover every possible place, of course, but there’s cell service in Bonaire! That’s the good news; the bad news is, not a byte of Internet through the phone.
Finding a Backup
As I was discussing this with Kit, another Resident came up and said he had Internet on his phone, and recommended his carrier. He set up a hotspot for me so I could sign up, and very quickly I had an account, paid for the first month, and got a second eSIM for my phone. (Thanks, Andy!) Then began two hours of growing frustration as I couldn’t get it activated. (Sample support comment, after I said we were in Bonaire on a cruise ship: “Sir, you cannot expect there to be cell towers in the middle of the ocean!” Me: “Yes, I know: I’m not an idiot. But as I said, we’re in port — did you notice I’m talking to you?!”
Thinking: what a concept! Not thinking: what an eye-roller! Yeah, I know: I write about obliviots for a living, so I should be used to them by now. I remain a frustrated optimist.
Trying all sorts of things deep in the settings, where most people don’t even know there are settings, I finally managed to get online and get a lot of work done — but a couple of hours later my phone was cut off from both the original and new plans, which I’m guessing is a local cell company action or failure, and as of Monday morning, as I’m adding to this story, I’m still not online. The friend who got me the hotspot is cut off too.
But I do have other ideas, which worked if you see this. Meanwhile, for now I’m not recommending the second company, or even saying who it is, since I’m still hoping to get it sorted. If, and only if, it proves reliable and useful will I update that page on Residential Cruising with the new alternative.
But hey: the bright side is, we went for more than six months and travel through (as of Sunday) 30 countries from tiny to large — 26 of them new to me — before having an interruption in work affecting my ability to get a newsletter out to you. And while I’m giving up on additional research for the day, which means no Honorary Unsubscribe (at least yet) this week, I still got the newsletter out on time. Early even. Not bad!
Will It Happen Again? Almost Surely.
It’s a reminder that stuff can happen, so don’t panic in the future if a newsletter doesn’t publish as expected. I’ll catch up as soon as I can. (P.S.: I expect similar problems in China.)
Our next stop is Curaçao, and after that, Aruba — the other two ABC islands — which again are all controlled by the Netherlands, so “we’ll see” if, once we get far enough offshore (e.g., when between islands), we’ll have Starlink service that will enable me to be online.
Despite reporting that we were “stranded” in Belfast (or, worse, “marooned” — Oh, the Melodrama!!), only now do I feel sort of cut off from the world. Yet before I finished posting this, I confirmed my backup backup to my backup worked. Woo hoo!
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Congrats on getting back online! LOVE your “Sample support comment”. (smh)
While I am also a frustrated optimist, I sadly fear that the obliviots are slowly taking over.
The ship management bought those for those with offices in the Business Center?! *INCREDIBLE*!!!
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“Those”? No. They ran out and bought one; it can handle up to 32 users at a time, and they asked that it only be used by those who really need it for business use. Still, it really is an “above and beyond” level of service, and I’m grateful. -rc
Perhaps you need a failsafe newsletter ready to go. Similar to radio stations, transmission tower senses. No signal and plays a generic sing and station Ident until the jock gets back from making a coffee. Server doesn’t receive the latest issue so batches out the standby story!
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Nope. For one, I won’t store the distribution list online for security reasons; it’s only there during actual distribution, and literally unloads itself at the end (part of my software spec). And I’d much rather readers understand that now and then it might be late, and I’m QUITE sure, based on earlier events (e.g., I was on a serious medical rescue call), that they’re totally fine with that. -rc
Not only what Randy said, but there is always the risk of something going out with content that is badly timed with very recent events.
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Which ALSO sometimes happens anyway…. -rc
Do you still have your amateur radio ticket? You’d be really popular going ashore and operating from some of these places. Hi hi.
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Yes, I still have my ham license, and will until (as they say) my “key” goes “silent”. But radio transmitters are on the forbidden items list, and after 20 years of being the county’s Radio Guy, I’m fine with not playing with radios for a long while. -rc
Yes Randy, very satisfied with a delay of whatever length. I know you will use any occasion to write the story. Thank you.
Love the sample support snippet. Reminds me of a time I had an issue with my internet provider. I called them up (on a phone that was in no way connected with my service) and explained that my modem appeared not to be online. They confirmed that they could not see my equipment from their end, so what was their solution? Send an update OVER THE INTERNET to fix my problem.
I tried to explain to them that while not specifically an internet guy, I actually work as a programmer / tech support — for over 30 years now — and I was pretty sure that was not going to work. The “specialist” insisted that I just needed to give it an hour or so and everything should be fine.
After about 30 minutes he called me back — and imagine my shock when he told me it wasn’t working. He finally relented to sending out an onsite support person later that week, and it turned out the actual problem was bad wiring (and I think one of the cable boxes might have been faulty as well). Gotta love it
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Wait: he called you back?! That right there is 10x the service most of us get! -rc
Don’t be too hard on the call centre agent who was trying to help you. I do IT support for a living and have a lot of experience with these people: remember the business of ISP is a competitive one, and they can afford the proverbial two out of three: good, fast (read: not glacially slow), cheap. The inevitable result is minimum-wage fresh-out-of-school employees with a checklist. In my estimation it was a “plus” that the agent even had enough gumption to think about cell phone towers in the middle of the ocean and calling them an obliviot is unnecessarily judgemental. OK so they didn’t draw the line from your already established communication with them to the fact that you should be able to get data, but I find that giving people in that position the benefit of the doubt often helps the situation along and would like to think they would have gotten there eventually. Certainly snapping at them _never_ helps.
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I don’t think what I said was “snapping” at her. My voice was pleasant, and even though I didn’t transcribe it, I even called her “ma’am”. I’m always at least as polite as customer service reps are. -rc