Woe is We

Our Verizon mi-fi card is not feeling well.  For some time now, it has occasionally gone into a cycle where it will fault out and reset itself, continually.  When we arrived at Jarrell Cove last Thursday, this was the ONLY behavior we could get from it.

Since Al depends on internet service for his job, we were considering going back to Olympia, immediately, to locate a Verizon store and have this issue taken care of.  The device is still under warranty.

Our friends Walt and Marti (we boated the Columbia and Snake Rivers with them) keep their boat in Jarrell Cove, and were aboard this week to attend a narrow guage model railroad convention, which included tours of many layouts in the lower Puget Sound area.  They invited us to ride along with them on Saturday, and were willing to make a stop at a mall to talk to Verizon people.

I wasn't involved in the actual transaction, but it appeared that "I can connect to it; it's fine." was their answer.  Al insisted it was not fine.  Eventually we saw him on the phone, and then move to a register area, and then he came back and reported that it was Tech Support's opinion that the SIM card was failing.  That was replaced and we should be fine.

On to a lovely afternoon, viewing three model railroad layouts and catching up with Walt and Marti.  We had a great dinner at Southbay BBQ in Olympia.

Back at the boat much later that evening, the mi-fi was still up to it's tricks.  Al was able to force it into a mode where it's speed was about equivalent to dial-up.  With MUCH patience, we were able to download emails.  Al was able to see that he had some work to do.  But I was greatly frustrated that facebook does NOT operate well in that mode, and I didn't even TRY to attempt a blog post.

Moving to McMicken Island yesterday afternoon has not improved things, so I am not sure when we will be heading for Olympia.  If Al decides that it is acceptable for his work, for a couple more days,  we will stay.

We are scheduled to haul the boat on Friday.

In the meantime, Al had an oyster lunch on the beach and I hunted sand dollars!