As you know, I am paying for internet in my CHU.  Most of the month it has been useless.  The connectivity is generally in the bytes/second range if there is any at all.  It takes upwards of two hours to check my e-mail, if it connects.  I am pretty ready to just give it up.  However, tonight for the first time I was able to chat with my wife!

The IM client actually connected and the throughput was pretty good.  Good enough I decided to try an experiment. I hooked up the webcam I bought before I left and tried to see if it would work. It did! My wife and daughter were able to see me during our chat, albeit really choppy, and we had connectivity for a few hours (minus a few periods of downtime).  I don’t know why getting the webcam working was so great, but it was.  It was only one way since they don’t own a webcam, but it felt really nice to have anyway.  Eventually the signal died and we lost the connection, but it made my day.  Maybe I can get some sleep tonight now.

If this kind of connectivity gets to be the norm, then I might just keep the internet around.  Otherwise its back to MWR.

On a side note, its still pretty surreal to me to have internet available in a warzone, let alone video chat from my CHU.  I guess its a sign of the times.  Our grandfathers had letter mail that took 3 months. Now, its video chat and email. 

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