u/Ianthin1

Hey folks. We have had Spectrum (KY USA) for 15 years without the issues a lot of people have reported. Up until about two weeks ago it has been generally solid with rare outages usually around major weather events. As fiber has moved into our region they have been great about boosting my speed without a bump in price. Currently we are on a 1.2GBS service.

The problem is my wife is WFH, taking calls all day and usually a few Teams video calls too. We also could have 4-5 video streams going at any given time with some in 4K. It’s not unusual to see DL speed spike to 60-70mbs. Over the past two weeks we have had 7-8 severe outages lasting hours, not minutes. It’s dropping in and out as I type. I know it’s not just or house, the whole area has been hit by it too. I would love top switch to T Mobile or any cellular option, but we get terrible signal at home from all providers. We have to rely on WiFi calling for our phones to work. An external antenna wouldn’t be effective unless I built a tower to put it on.

So that leaves Starlink. Their 200mbs service costs what I’m paying now for 1.2gbs. I’m concerned it could struggle to keep up (not that I’m coming anywhere close to using 1.2gbs), especially during storms. I could step up to the 400mbs service but would rather not if possible. I have great line of sight to the sky with no tree interference.

What are the real world experiences like? Does the 200mbs service live up to the numbers, or is it overrated and I would be better with the 400mbs?

Hey everyone. My wife and I have been raising our niece (almost 10) since she was three. Her parents, my sister in law and her boyfriend were addicts and started to lose the ability to care for her by the time she was two. My wife and I, my in-laws and another SIL stepped in first to give them time to get help and back to a point they could raise her. No time constraints, never withheld her from visits, all fully agreed to by all parties. The last time she saw her parents together was her third birthday. She saw her mom a couple of times over the next 18 months then not until she died of drug related issues. Her father cleaned himself up and would do FaceTime and arranged visits at a park or birthday party, but he was never going to come back full time. He had three other kids he had already lost parental rights to. We haven't seen anything from him in almost three years.

About 9 months after this all started my in-laws began the process of gaining custody, and eventually adopted her. The whole time she was living with us, going to preschool, traveling with us to visit my parents on holidays. We took her to therapy to work through some of the terrible things she dealt with as the child of addicts. She is still a dependent of my in-laws and legally theirs of course, but for all intents and purposes we are her parents, and she refers to us as such to friends and other people she encounters. The deal has always been when she was ready we would officially adopt her. We never pressured her, just asked a couple times a year what she thought about it.

Well, now she's ready. She came to us a few months ago and said she wanted to be adopted. Obviously my wife and I are thrilled, but we have been giving her some space since then just to be certain she is sure about it. We're all ready to get going, but I'd like to know as much as I can before we contact a lawyer. We are in the US (KY). It will be uncontested. I assume there will be some sort of home visits, maybe background checks which won't be a problem. She does get a monthly disability payment, we assume because her mother was on it and this is a survivors thing. We don't know if she will continue to get that or not.

So have any of you been through something similar? Any idea what kind of timeline we should expect? Any info that can be provided would be fantastic.