Wednesday, July 21, 2010

After a tremendous struggle and the expert technical aid of a dear friend I finally succeeded in getting my blog to register at Goodreads. But along the way I discovered that the glitches were not all my fault or theirs. A problem locally, for many Internet users, has been that of hungry chipmunks gnawing the insulation off the wires. Nearly every night, in fact, I hear their little feet scampering on my roof. But the problems are not confined to Los Angeles, or even to the US, as I learned through my recent research. Severe weather conditions at Internet Relay Stations around the globe contribute heavily to the difficulties, and living conditions at these outposts are little short of harrowing. Recently I got a rather touching email from a young man named Sergei Kazakov who operates a Relay Station in a remote area of the Ukraine, accessible only by helicopter or troika. This courageous and dedicated young guy spends six months at a stretch in a 500-foot tower on top of a mountain peak, subsisting mostly on borscht, vodka, Russian rye bread and farshyrovannye iaitsa (Russian stuffed eggs). A typical chore: he goes out in a howling blizzard with a pair of special felt gloves and cleans off the ice that’s clinging to the wires. Hats off to Sergei Kazakov and other diligent workers who keep the Internet going!

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