Five and Counting

Yesterday’s internet outage was brief – less than two hours after the snowplow broke the “temporary” cable lying in the street near my house, the cable was replaced. With all of our calls about lost service in the last month, it appears we have been made a priority for repair.

A phone call to the city’s Streets Department was met with sympathy, but, “That’s between you and the cable company. The streets need to be plowed.”

And the snowplow struck again this morning.

January 15th – 3 days
February 8th – 1 day
February 14th – 2 days
February 17th – 2 hours
February 18th – ?? –– update – 2 hours

My new SIM card, which will allow me to switch to T-Mobile with unlimited data (at a savings) will arrive today. Just in time. Verizon has notified me that, with two days left in my billing cycle, I’m about to go over my data allowance, which is no surprise since this snowplow/cable situation has forced me to burn data on my phone.

And yes, this blog was uploaded from my phone.

Cutting the Cord
Three for Three
Four for Four

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.