This morning, it’s rainy and in the mid 50’s. Clouds are so thick, I’m not sure there’s even a sun up there. The pool was installed yesterday and it may be August before the water is warm enough to swim in.
It all started out normal.
Lots of digging since I wanted the pool close enough to the house it didn’t cost a fortune for decking to reach it. Hendrix Pools came prepared. The photo below was taken at about the time they cut the fiber cord and cut off my Internet connection to the world. 😬
Hendrix kept digging and I called my provider, REMC.
No one had any idea that lines would be out there behind the house. The cable comes from the road to the house… why it was way back there is a mystery.
Digging finished, plastic was laid down and a dump truck of sand went on top of that. I heard the owner of Hendrix tell a new employee, “This takes 14 minutes. It’s 14 minutes of Hell, but it’s only 14 minutes.” That’s when they all grabbed a shovel and spread the sand evenly across the bottom.
The outside was up within 10 minutes and the liner was next…
Internet restored!
REMC came to the rescue with a line locator and “patched” the cable. I have Internet again! Yippee!! They marked it with flags and instructed me to keep everyone away from it. That’s one order I plan to follow.
20 plus years ago…
It’s been more than 20 years since I helped install an above ground pool. We offered free beer and the neighbors arrived to help. So many mistakes! Hours of hard work and the liner finally placed by drunk people, the fire department arrived with water.
They shot it in with so much force, it scooted the liner and the wrinkles were there forever. And lumps. We had plenty of lumps at the bottom too where we didn’t get the ground flattened. And the water? It was brown and took a bajillion dollars to clear it up.
A loss of Internet for a few hours was a small price to pay. Now we just wait for it to fully fill and the sun to shine. 🙂
TIL (Today I Learned): People who work at U.S. nuclear power plants are exposed to less radiation than what is given off by the granite walls inside the U.S. Capitol Building.
I can scroll through Facebook in a matter of seconds UNLESS there’s some dog rescue video. That leads to watching some food recipe being prepared and makeover haircut videos that go on and on and on. I even sit with my mouth open and watch those stupid 5-minute craft videos where they make stuff out of toilet paper rolls. Like I want that crap in my house?? NOPE!
The Internet is a time sink!
At some point during the day I hit up either Apple News or Drudge Report. Short and sweet catch-up on what’s going on in the world me thinks. That works UNLESS there’s something that really catches my interest. Once that happens, it’s like dominos with me knocking all the blocks down as I go from one article to the next. If there’s some youtube video on America’s got talent like this one— that can go on a loop for HOURS.
And I haven’t even touched on email. Good grief — oftentimes, I’ll review correspondence with one client for one event to find we’ve racked up 100 back and forth messages. I should get paid by the number of emails I’ve read and responded to and not commission. I’d be RICH!
Of course, the best way not to fall down the same rabbit hole is to not head down the path where it’s located.
With work and email I simply must take that road. When it comes to the other stuff, I have no excuse. Oh, to be more like Dharma… enjoying the sunshine without any knowledge of computers or the Internet…
TIL (Today I Learned): The temperature on the moon at the Apollo 11 landing site was 200ºF.
We all have electricity, right? And… we probably all have Internet access too. You’re reading this after all. 🙂 So have you ever thought about how our lives would be different if our electric power companies provided similar experiences as our Internet service providers? I’m not talking about severe weather days here — just random days.
Can you imagine not knowing if today you’d only have a little power — or maybe none at all? Your lights might flicker and sometimes go off and your A/C wouldn’t work long enough to cool your home. You couldn’t have a freezer with spotty power service. I’m sure you could think of a bajillion other things that would change if our electric power companies weren’t consistently providing us the service we pay for.
Our Internet was down all day yesterday. It was spotty at best the day before. Order a pizza in Seymour? Sorry… phones are down as are the machines that connect for payment approval. Businesses can’t do business and security cameras are all off. I couldn’t even set an alarm on Alexa to tell me when my cake had finished baking.
There were over 2 million people in the same boat as me yesterday. Metronet was in the shitter. (As an aside… at least I had my phone service. Verizon and Straight Talk were also out yesterday in this area. ATT is my mobile provider and it’s been experiencing issues for the past week, but held strong throughout yesterday’s outage.) How did Metronet handle the 2 million people that weren’t getting what they pay for? By cutting and pasting the same response over and over and over again.
I want that job!!
Metronet said: “Main fiber lines were severely damaged and has effected us as well as other providers throughout the USA.” So… how were the lines damaged? These main fiber lines… where are they? Inquiring minds want to know!
In other news… I did get to mow between raindrops. That’s something my neighbor didn’t get to do. It rained every day last week and grass everywhere celebrated. Poor Bret… his wife is probably giving him a hard time. 😉
I get Internet advertising… I do. Still, I get awfully tired of being followed around everywhere I go in the land of Internet.
For example, Ben sent me an email with 2 links to look at bar carts he likes for his dining room. I don’t want a bar cart! Obviously, Facebook thinks I do because bar carts are displayed at every single opportunity. Then, I get the obligatory email (like in the image) showing the bar cart I looked at and other offers for even more bar carts.
I’m being smothered by bar carts that I don’t want!
It’s like a bully waving a sucker in front of a fat kid, all the while repeating, “You want this? I know you want this.”
What I DO want is more mornings like we had this morning. Cooler temps (70 degrees when I rolled out of bed) and a whole bunch of lovely shades of blue in the sky.
I have Comcast/Xfinity cable TV and Internet service. I also have Metronet Fiber Internet. If one goes out, I have a back-up. I don’t mind paying a reasonable price for a good product or service, but when I paid my cable bill today I decided enough was enough. My Comcast bill was $188 bucks (it went up $20 in March and another $20 in April). It included TV service rarely used because I also have DirecTVnow, Netflix, and Prime Video. Yes. Seriously.
I started a chat in an effort to cancel the cable TV and keep Internet, and 50 freaking minutes later the representative was still trying to lock me into a plan with XFINITY Voice even though I kept telling her I didn’t want it. She FINALLY gave me a number to call, but kept right on typing in the chat window.
The person I connected to by phone probably knew by the sound of my tone and clipped version of what I endured that I was about to cancel the whole shebang. My bill is now $60 less for the exact same thing I have now.
I’ve included a short portion of the transcript is below to help reinforce this public service announcement. Skip the chat option with Comcast/Xfinity. It’s a joke, you guys.
