Watering the internet

All things need water to survive. There is no better practical appreciation of that then the desert. In the spring we saw some sprouts of green venturing up from the sand, and even a couple of desert flowers from time to time – but as summer starts to cook the sand, the colors melt back to their subterranean lairs.

The midday sun brings temperatures upwards of 120 degrees, and the air conditioning mechanics rarely get the chance to enjoy the fruits of their labor. They speed from one job to the next, charged with keeping everyone else cool at the expense of their own comfort.

We do our best, in this compound, to get the outside work and heavy lifting done before the sun comes up or after it has been down for awhile. With a cool 90 degrees outside, we can do anything. Once the temperature climbs beyond 110, lethargy kicks in and we drag ourselves between tasks not completed in a more timely fashion.

On the days when we get it done right, we spend midday in the lounge, trading stories and surfing the net. We discovered last month, however, that the internet often stopped working at roughly the same time we did. That’s when it apparently occurred to one of my guys that maybe the internet was too hot to give a damn anymore.

His solution? Well, maybe if we pour some ice cold water on the satellite dish’s transceiver, we can get a little more work out of it. We all laughed at him. What a ridiculous idea, right? Well, it worked.

For the next couple of weeks we started to pamper the internet. We devised methods of shading it and trying different methods of watering it. We used the small hole in the top of the bottle approach, for the continuous trickle effect. We used a siphon hose from a 5 gallon jug. We even used the “drink water and spit up at the dish” method (which was effective only if you had a quick download). We finally discovered that the most effective and most water thrifty way of doing it was to tie a paper towel around the transceiver, climb the ladder once an hour, and dump a half liter bottle on it.

If anyone told me that I would ever have to water the internet to make it work…well, you know. Here’s hoping that your enjoying waterless internet and (moderate) summer sun.