The problems with HughesNet/DirecWay are never ending. We know that the service breaks basic web services like XML-RPC and that there are plenty of service problems but I will be so happy when I never again have need of their services. The story this time goes like this. I haven't used the network connection in days. What use the family has made has been minimal so we've had a total of 50-60MB downloaded this week. I have been thinking that I should start iTunes at midnight some night so I get to the FAP-free hours for downloading podacasts. After several days of waiting until tomorrow I gave up and started iTunes today. I stopped all the podcast downloads and went about my way. iTunes wanted to download iPhone 1.1.1 update and I allowed it this hefty file. All was just fine until the usually reasonably-sized Career Opportunities podcast sent out a hefty 80MB wiz-banger.

So now thanks to a bit of bad timing and HughesNet I'll not have internet connectivity for the better part of a 24-hour window. To top it all off their interface for checking when you're victim to the poorly named Fair Access Policy runs more than an hour behind. Thankfully the AT&T Edge network is much faster here.