Greetings and welcome!
We have made it to November without any measurable snow here. That is unusual. By my recollection we almost always have at least a dusting of snow by the end of the month. I ain’t skert tho.
They did have some snow out east this week. Much of the east coast saw snow, but it got very heavy up north. Places in CT and NH saw as much as 30″. The little bit of snow that fell in NYC was the third time since records were kept, about back to the Civil War era. The fact that it fell on the OWS Climate Justice Day protests made it a little ironic too.
Colorado had snow too, with 6-12 followed by temps in the teens.
It just isn’t our time yet.
There is a storm coming in for tomorrow that fires up the old What-If machine. The storm isn’t expected to bring snow, but the path of it would be favorable at a colder time of year, and the projected 3/4″ of precip that would be 9″ of snow is nice too. The last storm would have been wet with us on the warm side, this one is a little more favorable.
Cell phone problems around here and the hot tip..
I am in the process of switching cell phones and plans. In the process of this I again figured out which phones work around here and which ones don’t. A lot of people’s phones don’t work on our networks, and that can be bad if you need it out snowmobiling or hunting.
Here is the hot ticket. There are two kinds of networks for cell phones, GMS and CDMA. Most areas are ok with GMS, but we have CDMA around here with spotty GMS coverage.
The GMS phones that I tried only worked poorly in the front yard, with no signal in less favorable conditions. My CDMA based Cellcom router and CDMA Tracfone work well inside and out, and just about anywhere.
The way that I understand it the GMS is mostly ATT and the CDMA is Verizon based. Cellcom is the big carrier around here and they use CDMA, at least for my router and my phone.
How do you tell the difference? Sometimes there is a model number suffix.. Lg510C or LG 501G. You can look up the model number on the net and find it pretty fast, and often it is under the battery by the model number.
As far as Net10 and Tracfone, you pretty much have to buy the phones off of the net, the Dollar Store in Lakewood only had GMS phones. The GMS are cheaper to buy and run, so they push them, but GMS phones don’t work well around here at all.
What you have to do is get them on line. When you are ordering from their web site is put in a CDMA only zip code ( I used Helena, MT 59635) which you can easily Google up.
For some people it is a need to have an up north emergency phone because the usual one is spotty. You can good coverage around here, but you have to get the right phone. You can get a Net10 CMDA phone for about $30 new and they have a $15 a month plan (200 mins). Tracfone has $15 CDMA phones and $10 a month plans (50 mins).
Until I pulled the plug on the land line I had a $10 tracfone with the $10 a month just for an emergency phone in the truck and on the sled. It was a CDMA Nokia 2126I and it always worked great.
That is about it from here. I wanted to bring you up to date on the phone thing before I forgot. I will be back later in the week with the usual updates.
Have a good week and thank you for visiting!
RJB