Welcome to 1992...

[thistlechaser]

I feel like it's 1992 again. At my desk at work, I get 0-2 bars (out of five). Even a text-only page takes minutes to load. And pictures? Watching them load line by slow line... Takes a good five minutes or so to load my LJ flist. And, without tabs, if I click a link, I have to wait for the whole page to load again when done. Blah!

Edit, from my work machine: Yeah, so. 40 minutes and I haven't successfully loaded my flist once yet. Basically unusable at work. So what do I do now? Do they make rabbit ears to improve grabbing the G3 network? (Ha ha.) Basically right now I have a nearly $1,000 toy that does not do what I bought it for. I like it, I don't want to return it, but if it doesn't work here... (45 minutes of trying and it just failed to load it again!) I don't want to return it, but how do I make it work? (Getting my desk moved somewhere else isn't an option.)

Edit 2: Okay, non-LJ pages are being semi-more reasonable. Neither good nor fast, but they generally eventually load. Perhaps LJ is being dumb, or I need to change my setting to fewer posts per page.

Edit, final: Reducing the number of posts per page allows the pages to load almost without fail. Long, long, long delays, yes, up to five minutes for pictures (icons or in the post), but... that's okay enough for me to not want to return this. I can't use any game apps (apparently they run over the net, who knew!), but I think it's okay enough to keep. Whew.

Comments

[tersa.livejournal.com]

...loading a web page, at your desk, without internet wires, on a computer that is smaller than a legal pad.

You do realize the irony of your '1992' claim, right? :)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Hee, yes! Happily there are no modem noises involved in this! But seriously, it feels just like back then. Watching an image (a small one!) build line by line by line... having it pause midline. Though I guess back then it eventually succeeded, nine times out of ten it's failing for me now and I never even get the picture to load at all.

[doxxxicle.livejournal.com]

You can open links in new "pages" by pressing and holding the link until a popup menu appears. Then press the bottom right icon (looks like two overlapping squares) to see the list of open pages.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Oh, good to know! Thanks!

[doxxxicle.livejournal.com]

Do you see "3G" or "E" or a little circle next to the signal bars?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

3G all the time, E seemed to pop up when I had no signal/bars at all.

[doxxxicle.livejournal.com]

Bleh. Well, that's AT&T for you. :P

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

What does the E stand for? I jokingly consider it 'emergency'. Emergency! We have no signal!

[doxxxicle.livejournal.com]

E means Edge. It's an older slower wireless data protocol. I think AT&T's Edge coverage is better than its 3G coverage, or interference prevents 3G but Edge can work, or something like that.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ah! That makes sense, thanks!

[kelen.livejournal.com]

I would like to point out that in 1992 they didn't have pictures on web pages. ;) All text baby, all the time! Pictures were big things that the internets found too scary to load on tiny modems. (Well, I do suppose there were some pictures to be found for downloading, but you know.) :)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Busted! I almost think I was just on BBSs in 92... I must have gotten on the net a year or two later maybe.

I remember when text in color was the new thing! I sure did have a hard time using Lynx back then!

[kelen.livejournal.com]

That's how I know. ;) I didn't get into web stuff until 1994, and putting pictures on web pages was OMG NEW!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I got my first computer right after college (92), and I know I was on BBSs right away (long distance phone calls, wheee!), I'm just not sure when I made the switch from BBSs to the net... I want to guess it was within a year of graduating, but I can't remember what I had for dinner last night, let alone ... wow, that was almost 20 years ago?

It's kind of scary to think there are people walking around today that can't remember a life before computers and the internet.

[kelen.livejournal.com]

Scary to realize you are getting old, isn't it? ;)

I got into the internet in late 1994. Did the BBS thing a little in 1990, but it bored me, so I didn't stick with it. Really didn't use computers heavily until the end of 1994, when I was introduced to Mu*ing.

And here I thought MMOs would be a passing fad. ;) Never thought I'd play a couple so heavily.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I had a personal connection (sort of, kind of a fandom thing, but not exactly) with some BBSs, so that's why all my money went to long distance calls to them.

Yeah, it was MU*s that really got me hooked, too. Driving home from work as fast as I could so I could log on and RP! ...wait, I still do that sometimes! :P And a special 'pinging' program so my connection would always look active and never disconnect me (oh, how ISPs have changed!).

I know! I feel really, really old right now, but it's not so bad. I like being able to remember pre-net times!