Three for Three

/ Ken Gierke / rivrvlogr

Monday, February 15, 2021

Once again, I’m an internet orphan.  For the third time in the past month, a snow plow has taken out the temporary cable my internet provider has had lying in the street (a block from my home) since last summer.  This outage occurred at 9:30, Sunday evening.  A call to customer support gave us a scheduled repair date, February 22nd.  A call in the morning asking support how my wife can work from home as a state employee gave us a new, expedited repair date, February 16th. Meanwhile, continued snowfall on the steep hills of my neighborhood means we’re pretty much stuck at home.

Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Our internet outage continues. Snowfall since Sunday has been about nine inches of powder, falling in intervals that have required plowing on at least three different occasions – still pretty slippery on these hills. With three inches of new snow predicted for tomorrow, and with subsequent plowing, will a repair this afternoon mean a damn thing? Single digit, and sometimes negative, temperatures (Fahrenheit) means the salt laid on the side streets each morning is marginally effective until noon. There are steep hills entering, and within, my neighborhood, and trying to get out to the main thoroughfare proved futile this morning.

Lacking typical internet access has given me an opportunity to assess my phone usage. As popular as web use on phones is to the current generation, I’m not big on phone surfing. I find absolutely no convenience in reading web pages on my phone. Other than actual phone usage (what little there is), I’ve narrowed my phone use to a few categories: text, clock, calendar, camera, calculator, and banking. Currently, I can’t cast my phone – stream any shows or videos – because both the Chromecast and Amazon Firestick attached to my TV want to communicate with the web. I can’t cast Spotify from my phone to my stereo for the same reason. I even find using the reader in the WordPress phone app to be annoying. I use that mostly for notifications. Yeah, I’m an old man, although I guess that composing this on my phone says something about my dedication to my blog.

A Mediacom service truck just turned around in my cul de sac. Relief in sight? I guess we’ll see.

10 thoughts on “Three for Three”

    • I spent an hour talking to a T-Mobile rep this morning about using a mobile hotspot device. It starts out at high speed, but gets throttled after 100gb of download. I borrowed a T-Mobile hotspot from my library when my internet was out in January. Just my laptop and the Amazon Firestick used 30gb (free, thanks to the library) in just 3 days – and we have a total of 4 users in the house. I decided against that, but switched my phone account to a T-Mobile plan that gives me unlimited data on my phone – plus – the use of my phone as a hotspot for 3gb per month (and I’m saving $10 per month). That should work in a pinch if the net goes down and my wife needs to work from home (which she would have done the past 2 days due to weather & road conditions). Ugh!
      Sorry, just venting here!

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

  4. Nightmare. I lived one place where there was an electrical fire and they had a cable from the street over the sidewalk for months. There were numerous problems, needless to say.

    All internet cables should be underground. A little difficult to accomplish given the current weather. I’m with you on the phone, too tiny for these old eyes. Good luck! (still and again) (k)

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  5. Pingback: Five and Counting | rivrvlogr

Leave a comment