HinesSight

After getting Starlink's Gen 3 router, I'm liking it

I've had, and enjoyed, Starlink's satellite internet service since January 2021, when I was approved to be a beta tester and got to put the original round dish on our roof. Not for free, sadly, I had to pay for it.

Recently Starlink emailed me with an offer to purchase their new Gen 3 router that works both with the first generation round dish and the second generation square dish. This time I had to pay $200 for the privilege of being a beta tester.

I decided to get the router because the original router was still in use. It's worked fine, but I figured that the Gen 3 router had to be an improvement. This is part of what the Starlink email said about the router.

The new Gen 3 router introduces WiFi 6 and tri-band radios to Starlink. With improved range, performance, and device support, the Starlink Gen 3 router will extend your WiFi network throughout your home to provide a more consistent and reliable connection with faster speeds.

 

The Gen 3 router can replace your current router, and multiple Gen 3 routers can be meshed together to extend the range of your WiFi network.   

I'd agree with those claims by and large. The Gen 3 router has a minimalist design and fits nicely on the table where the vertically oriented original router looked like it could tip over at any moment.

Installation was easy. Or at least it would have been, if I hadn't inexplicably put the ends of the ethernet cable in the wrong places, even after reading the instructions several times. You can read all about that misadventure in my blog post, "My guide to happiness: act stupid, then undo your stupidity." 

The Gen 3 router seems to start up with a connection considerably faster than the original router. That's a plus, since at times the old one would take forever, more or less, after being plugged in.

I did experience much slower speeds at first with the Gen 3 router. However, after a few days the speeds returned to their normal range of 30-125 Mbps or so depending on the time of day and how the Starlink gods are feeling.

At one point the speed dropped to the dreadful DSL range that my wife and I were stuck with for many years out here in rural south Salem, Oregon, 6-7 Mbps.

I was about to submit a support ticket to Starlink, but after I read the tips to fix a slow connection I decided that I was capable of unplugging and plugging in the router again, which led to a marked speed increase right away.

At the moment, 9:50 pm on a weekday, I'm getting 58 Mbps download and 16 Mbps upload, which is fairly typical. 

The wi-fi signal in the most distant part of our house from the router seems less strong but also faster than the original router. In the early morning I've gotten speeds of over 100 Mbps in that area, which never happened with the first generation router. 

So I'm pleased with the Gen 3 router so far. 

I declare a winner in the Decaf Instant Coffee contest

For many years I was a coffee addict. More accurately, I craved the caffeine in coffee. I'm still in recovery. Probably always will be.

But even though my withdrawal several years ago was difficult, I've managed to give up the hard stuff and get by with a little help from my decaffeinated friends.

I'll share their photos below. One of them has become my best Decaf Instant Coffee friend. Here it is.

Republica makes an organic decaf instant coffee from Arabica beans that to me tastes like brewed coffee. I just use a level teaspoon in 16 ounces of hot water. It's made by a woman-owned company in Australia  that checks all of my environmental/fair trade boxes. Republica uses a water-process for decaffeination rather than chemicals. I get it from Amazon.

I had to seek out alternatives to regular coffee after developing a bladder problem in 2017. Because caffeine is a bladder irritant, I discovered that my body was happier without caffeinated coffee. 

Plus, I found that after a difficult coffee transition period -- full caffeine to half caffeine to no caffeine -- I felt like I had even more energy without the ups and downs of regular coffee. And my sleep was considerably improved.

For a while, though, it seemed that even the minimal caffeine in decaf coffee was causing me problems. That led me to explore alternatives to coffee. 

I started with Roma. It's a roasted grain beverage. I liked it. But naturally it didn't have a coffee taste or smell, though the longer I stayed away from coffee, the more I forgot what I was missing.

Cafix appealed to me more, though it is very similar to Roma. It just seemed to have a bit more of a coffee vibe to it.

I gave Dandy Blend a try. It has a mixture of grains and dandelion root. While it had the most coffee-like flavor, dandelion root turned out to be a bladder stimulant. I didn't need that, so decided to stop using Dandy Blend.

Eventually I decided to ditch the coffee alternatives and try the real thing in decaf. A friend told me about Kava, which had the apparent benefit of reduced acid. However, the chemical used to accomplish the decaffeinating didn't get along well with my digestive system. 

So I went back to Republica, which I'd tried early on in my alternatives-to-caffeine seeking but set aside for a reason that I no longer remember. I still had a jar in the cupboard. As noted above, it's agreeing with me.

Hopefully I've found my forever Decaf Instant Coffee friend. Read the user reviews on Amazon and you may be tempted to give Republica a try yourself, if you're into decaf coffee.

My guide to happiness: act stupid, then undo your stupidity

Everybody wants to be happy. And everybody has their own ways of accomplishing this.

Recently the New York Times had an interview with a Buddhist monk, Matthieu Ricard. When I saw that the story was called The 'World's Happiest Man' Shares His Three Rules for Life, I got excited.  

Yay! Finally I'd know how to be happy all the time. Sweet. But when I read what Ricard said the three rules were, I felt my Perpetual Happiness Balloon popping. 

You know, once I was on the India Today Conclave. They said, “Can you give us the three secrets of happiness?” I said: “First, there’s no secret. Second, there’s not just three points. Third, it takes a whole life, but it is the most worthy thing you can do.”

Ugh. No secret. Not just three points. Takes a whole life. Bummer.

Then I realized that while I'm far away from being the world's happiest man (I'm not even the happiest sentient being in our house, being eclipsed by my wife and dog, and likely also by the mice who live in our crawl space), I do have a secret to happiness that works for me.

Since a New York Times reporter isn't going to be beating down my door to learn what it is, I figured that I'd share it in this blog post.

Well, I already have in the title above. I ran out of space or I would have made it: Act stupid, then undo the stupidity and feel the bliss of relief.

There's no end of examples that I could offer for how I've applied this (no longer a) secret to aid in my happiness. Here's a good recent one.

Though I live just six miles from the city limits of Oregon's capital, Salem, our neighborhood's primary "broadband" provider, CenturyLink, offers a pitiful 7 Mbps via DSL that travels through ancient copper phone lines. 

When Elon Musk's Starlink satellite internet service came online several years ago, I was thrilled to have my application to be a beta tester of Starlink approved. That got us a decent broadband speed.

A few weeks ago Starlink sent me an email saying that because I was an early beta customer, I was entitled to send them $200 for a third-generation router that offered better features than our first-generation router.

OK, I fell for the pitch. I'm always up for a chance to improve our broadband life, especially since in the not-so-good old days of sloooooow DSL, streaming shows on Netflix often had us watching the buffering spinning ball as much as Bridgerton.

The new router arrived a few days ago. After I opened the box, I downloaded a PDF file that had the simple instructions for installing it. 

I read the instructions several times. I laid out the power supply cord and the ethernet cable. Connecting the power supply was a no-brainer. But the ethernet cable had two dissimilar connectors: one long and one short.

The place on the router where one end of the ethernet cable was to be inserted was strangely deep. So deep, I got out a flashlight and looked into the depths of it. My mind thought, "That must be where the long ethernet connector goes." 

I then studied the installation instructions again. Closely. Intimately. The instructions showed where the long connector of the ethernet cable was to go and where the short connector of the ethernet cable was to go. 

Supremely confident that I knew what to do, I inserted the long connector into the deep recess of the router and the short connector into the normal looking hole in the power supply.

Then I expectantly waited for the flashing white light on the router to turn solid, showing that a connection with the Starlink satellites had occurred. After watching the flashing light for a while, I got concerned and reviewed the instructions again.

Which elicited a loud F*CK from me. You can easily fill in the blank.

Somehow I'd gotten the two ends of the ethernet cable in the wrong places. Yes, even though I'd read the instructions several times, paying special attention to the images of the long and short connectors of the ethernet cable.

Worse, the short connector was stuck in the power supply. The little clip used to release an ethernet cable was nowhere to be seen. Or felt. I fiddled with it for a while, but didn't want to break the connector in the power supply.

Panic started to set in. If I couldn't undo what I'd just did, our broadband speed would plummet to near zero, since we have dismal cell service out here in the not-very-wilds of six miles from the Salem city limits.

However, with the aid of a very small screwdriver, I was able to push on the clip and release the short connector of the ethernet cable. Which then fit easily into the router, just as the instructions had said. And the long connector fit easily into the power supply, just as the instructions had said.

All I can figure is that when my brain thought early on that the long connector must go into the deep recess of the router, that erroneous thought won out in an unconscious battle between it and what the instructions said.

The relief I felt when the flashing light on the router turned solid almost immediately after, duh, I'd done what the instructions said, created a jolt of happiness in me which lasted for a long time. 

It's worn off now. But the good news is that it won't be long before I do something stupid again, which, when I undo my stupidity, will make me happy. 

Obligatory warning for those who want to follow in my happiness footsteps: sometimes I do something stupid that can't be undone, which obviously doesn't make me happy.

Watch this video of Lahaina fire destruction. Then do what you can to help.

My wife and I have vacationed on Maui many times. We love the island. The town of Lahaina has a special place in our hearts.

Front Street in Lahaina was a delightful place to visit. We'd go there most evenings during our stay to shop, people-watch, see the art in the many galleries, eat. The atmosphere was like nowhere else we'd ever been.

Now much of Lahaina has been destroyed by the wind-stoked wildfires that have killed 53 people on Maui.

This screenshot from the video below shows the destruction. The three minute video was really painful for me to watch. It is raw footage, with no audio, but the pictures are more powerful than any words.

Here's the YouTube video.

Please consider donating to one of the relief organizations mentioned in this Travel + Leisure story about the Maui wildfires.

Here's a photo of Lahaina's Front Street from the visit we made to Maui in 2017, the last time we were there, which was part of an Adobe Spark slideshow I made about our vacation. Again, its unbelievably sad that this marvelous place has been mostly reduced to ashes.

US women's soccer shootout loss shows power of smallness

Understandably, most of us believe that in order to accomplish something great, you need to do great things. Meaning, large important things.

There's a certain logic to this, but it doesn't fit with reality. 

In the real world -- as contrasted with the ideal world constructed in human minds -- important outcomes often hinge on insignificant details.

For example, and as a progressive it's painful for me to think about this, if Hillary Clinton hadn't decided to set up a private email server as Secretary of State instead of relying on her government account, there's good reason to consider that she'd have been elected president in 2016 rather than Donald Trump. 

There's a saying, "for want of a nail the kingdom was lost."

Something of great importance may depend on an apparently trivial detail. The saying comes from a longer proverb about a battle during which the loss of a nail in a horseshoe leads to the loss of a horse, which leads to the loss of the rider, which leads to the loss of the battle, which in turn leads to the loss of a whole kingdom.

This relates to chaos theory, a subject I find fascinating.

Basically it involves the sensitivity of large scale systems to minute changes in initial conditions that then multiply over time. Frequently this is referred to as the butterfly effect: a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, which creates a tiny atmospheric instability that eventually becomes a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.

Today the United States women's soccer team lost to Sweden in a penalty shootout after the teams ended up scoreless after regular play and two extra time periods. A shootout is used to decide a winner.

One by one, players from each team alternate at trying to score from the penalty spot in front of the goal. It's tough for the goalkeeper to stop a shot at such short range, so there's a battle of wits between the player taking the shot and the goalkeeper trying to guess which way to lunge to try to stop the shot.

You can see the United States-Sweden penalty shootout in this 7:39 long YouTube video.

After a strong start by the US and Sweden, there were misses-by-a-mile by players from both teams. But what really struck my eye was the shot by a US player that bounced off a crossbar and the even more amazing failure of the US goalkeeper to prevent a goal that she seemed to have stopped, but which technology revealed just barely crossed the goal line.

Here's a screenshot from the video:

The ball crossed the goal line by the narrowest of margins before the US goalkeeper swatted it away on a second try after it rebounded following her first attempt to block it.

And that decided the match. Which ended the US women's team competition in the World Cup at the earliest stage ever and dashed their chance to win three World Cup championships in a row.

Such is life. Large outcomes often are determined by very small influences. Sure, the US team would have won if several players hadn't kicked the ball well over the net in the shootout. Those were big mistakes.

But I suspect that the image which will haunt the US team is the one above. How the soccer ball ended up in precisely the right location to give Sweden the victory after taking an unlucky (for the US) or lucky (for Sweden) bounce off of the goalkeeper's hands.

Oregon leaving Pac-12 for Big Ten is a disaster for Oregon State

Today the University of Oregon and University of Washington announced that they were leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten conference, which now will have 18 teams. 

With the departure of Oregon, Washington, USC, UCLA, Colorado, and apparently also Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah to either the Big Ten or Big 12 conferences, this leaves Oregon State, Washington State, California, and Stanford in a pitiful Pac-4 conference after the upcoming academic year.

The Oregon State athletic director isn't happy.

While UO leaders celebrated its move, Oregon State athletic director Scott Barnes decried it.

“The great history and tradition of this conference has been severely damaged,” Barnes said. “The best interest of the student-athlete hasn’t been served. Traveling to the Eastern seaboard multiple times a year is not in the best interest of student-athletes. I’m furious because it puts this university in harm’s way and our student-athletes in harm’s way. There’s some damage done that we’re going to have to mitigate.”

This is a shocking end to the Pac-12. It happened really rapidly.

Just a few days ago ace sports columnist John Canzano, who used to work for the Oregonian and now has a substack publication that I subscribe to, wrote about how the Pac-12 powers-that-be were expected to approve a media deal with Apple TV.

Except, they didn't, because the deal wasn't going to provide some of the schools with as much money as they wanted. So that led to the Big Ten inviting Oregon and Washington to jump the Pac-12 ship, which the university presidents bought off on today.

Without consulting their fans. Without consulting their students. Without consulting their athletes. So far as I know. This is the power of money in sports these days. It is all-powerful, tradition be damned.

There's lots of good commentary on what happened today. Canzano has written a couple of excellent pieces, here and here, which may or may not be available to those who don't subscribe to him.

Bill Oram of the Oregonian has written a great piece, "Oregon Ducks survived this round of realignment roulette. But what did it really cost them?"

Couldn't agree more with what Oram says:

Expect rain on Nov. 24.

The football gods will need to pour one out over Autzen Stadium when the Oregon State Beavers and Oregon Ducks play for the final time as conference rivals.

Let it pour.

To hide our tears and wash away our sins.

Greed, that evil temptress. She gets us every time.

Oregon is on its way to the Big Ten, pulled from boiling seas to the safety of a cornfield.

The Ducks survived this round of realignment roulette.

But in order to do so they had to sacrifice their rivals and kill their conference. A soulless, boardroom form of Squid Game. Play or get played.

The Pac-12 is dead. Oregon State is reeling.

But Oregon is safe and the university’s only responsibility was to itself.

It was spectacularly inept conference leadership that left the Ducks with little choice, and no choice for the other universities that jumped to safety.

Someday there will be excitement from this corner on what a new life in the Big Ten means for the University of Oregon and its teams. Football games at Camp Randall, the Big House and the Horseshoe. Hoops in Assembly Hall and Tom Izzo in Eugene.

Never could have imagined it.

But at the moment that is inadequate salve for what has been lost.

A once-proud conference, cocksure about its survival just days ago, has been scattered near and far, like dandelion fluff caught in the wind, done in by the influence of television dollars and executives who have moved universities around like pieces on a game board.

Risk? More like Reward.

The Pac-12 sold itself off for parts.

When it was founded with the stroke of a pen in a downtown Portland hotel 108 years ago, it was called the Pacific Coast Conference and then the Athletic Association of Western Universities. Later it morphed from the Pac-8 to the Pac-10 to the Pac-12.

Now?

Pac-It-In.

It’s time to go home.

Commissioner George Kliavkoff is but one of many to be blamed, but the conference died at his feet. His legacy in this job is complete.

Kliavkoff was the one who could not negotiate a palatable media deal or control the conference’s narrative. Who could not reel schools back in as they started to riggle away.

He seemed oblivious to the threats around him and was immune to backstabbing.

He got burned by the so-called alliance with Big Ten and ACC, blindsided by USC and UCLA’s escape acts and bamboozled by Colorado.

And he still seemed confident that he could hold the Conference of Champions together with a firm handshake and a twinkle in his eye.

What good is a mistake if you can’t learn from it?

Oregon and Washington were pushed to the Big Ten.

If there were a conference worth staying for, they would have remained in the Pac-12. The clearer path to the College Football Playoff would have been too enticing to pass up for schools that now enter a prestige conference as freshmen.

But as potential emergency hatches go, this was a great one. The Ducks were fearful of getting left behind when the L.A. schools left a year ago, and Kliavkoff’s failures ended up opening doors for the Ducks that would have likely remained closed.

If all that matters is the result, then the Ducks are doing cartwheels.

But it’s not that simple. This is a bitter pill for many and not just Beaver fans. Oregon now joins a host of schools around the country that have abandoned many of the ideals of intercollegiate athletics for security and financial bounty.

The move will be seen through the lens of football, and indeed, that is what drives decisions and makes network executives salivate. But beyond big-stage Saturdays when Oregon plays at Michigan, or Ohio State comes to Autzen, athletes in all of Oregon’s 20 Division I sports will travel as far as Rutgers and the University of Maryland for conference matchups.

Hasn’t the beach volleyball team suffered enough?

It’s a move that shatters much of our established identity as Oregonians.

Rob Mullens, the Oregon AD, said Friday that he hopes the Ducks can still schedule Oregon State in all sports. And he should be applauded for wanting to continue the rivalry.

He also knows he would have been defenestrated if he said anything else.

So good job on the Day 1 PR. Let’s see what happens.

Even if Oregon and Oregon State continue their home and home football rivalry, the highlight of the state’s sports calendar, it won’t be the same. There won’t be the same stakes. Once Oregon reaps the benefits of Big Ten recruiting and funding, its hard to imagine it can ever be a fair fight.

No, it will never be the same.

It was only the dreamers and fools who ever believed it could be.

Let it pour.