Maybe I can't actually remember the past as well as I think 
I can. I recall when I used 1200 and 2400 baud dialup. It 
was slow, but it was smooth. I used to poke around on BBSes 
quite a lot, and I recall the speed at which the characters 
scrolled into view. At least, I think I do.

Slow never bothered me. If I could type faster than the 
characters would show up, that never bothered me.Fast 
forward to  "right this minute" and things are a little 
different. I'm on a slow connection. That is to say, it's a 
choppy connection. It seems to vary quite a bit. I have a 
few downloads going, and I'm watching their speed bounce all 
over the place. Even before those were started, I was using 
SSH to connect to SDF and Grex and a few others. I was 
typing a few things up for gopher, and on IRC, etc., and 
noting that the connection was choppy.

Hopefully that makes sense. Slow is one thing, choppy is 
another. You could have a river that is moving slowly, which 
means it will take longer to get where you're going, and 
then you may have a river that is choppy, which will also 
slow your progress, but which will make your ride a lot less 
enjoyable.

As I type right now, I might wait several seconds before 
what I type shows up. When it does show up, an entire line 
or more of text might come in all at once. At other times, 
it moves along smoothly, and at still other times, I get a 
few charawcters of what I type at a time.

(Coincidentally, I am not seeing my typing and spelling 
errors right away, and I certainly don't want to go back and 
fix them at these choppy speeds. Spellcheck at the end I 
guess.)

Lest you think less of me, oh gopher user, know that I am 
quite used to slow computing. I really quite enjoy it. I 
have a z80-based computer that I can't wait to get our of 
storage. I have an 8088 that I just love to death. It really 
is just the choppy computing that I don't enjoy.

I also realize that there may be ways to mitigate this kind 
of network trouble. Maybe there are ways on my end, or maybe 
it's just the network that I'm using. There is probably a 
good explaation, and a good solution. I just don't know what 
either is.

Lastly, I realize that I'm a big baby. I'm spoiled, and 
complaingin about something that I'm lucky to have access to 
at all. The world is amazing. As Jim Gaffigan said, 
"everything is amazing, and nobody's happy." I am happy 
though. I'm really quite glad that I can do what I'm doing 
with computers right now. And if it's chppy, I accept that. 
Heck, I suppose it's a new experience. Well, different from 
the everyday at least.