The heat has been on in my building, and I am happy to report the 8.5’ steam pipe has not blistered anywhere. So that was Rustoleum + Coronado. Now I know what to do on the second pipe in my bedroom.
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I just put a “pumpkin spice” Glade Plug-In air freshener in my apartment, but it has the distinctly luxurious aroma a chicken tikka masala. Not complaining, but not what I was expecting.
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I worked on something interesting at my job today. First time that happened since 2019.
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It’s snowing.
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We had some before my birthday last month, but it was light, like it was sprinkled down on the earth.
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We had enough to need to shovel but not enough to pull out the snowblower. Or so I thought until I had shoveled a bit and was reminded of how exhausting that is. By which time I was too tired to get the snowblower out. So it’s mostly shoveled, but the rest will just have to wait.
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Got a snowstorm late last week. Finally had a chance to try out the new snowblower and it was nice. Then another one hit Sunday-Monday, and dumped over 12 more inches. And it was the wet heavy snow mixed with sleet that the snowblower really has trouble with.
Lost power and internet about noon on Monday, decided to nap because I couldn’t work. Power came back on a little after 6pm, but no internet. And their “24/7 Internet support, available M-F 9am-5pm” was of course no help.
Figured out how to do the tethering/hotspot thing with my phone. Shut down everything that might auto-update in the background, the automatic backups, turned off images in the browser, etc. to minimize my bandwidth usage since I only have 5GB per month on my phone. No streaming, I’ll just watch pre-downloaded shows from my media drive (Halt and Catch Fire, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Jeffersons).
My daughter, on the other hand, being a millennial, has 15GB/mo - but also she tethered her phone and put on HBO streaming HD on autoplay and fell asleep and woke up Tuesday with no data left for the month. Which was actually good because that meant she was really anxious to get the internet back on and even willing to call the support line first thing on Tuesday and try to get that dealt with.
We hired someone to clear the driveway because even with the snowblowers it was too much work. They kept getting stuck in that heavy icy slush.
Meanwhile I worked using my flaky 4G connection (which really slowed me down) and my wife went to work. The internet company said it was out all over around here because their local hub still didn’t have power. But they’d let us know when it was fixed. 2am my daughter comes up and reboots the modem and router, says she got a message saying it was restored, but it still wasn’t working. And of course, the 24/7 (aka 9-5) support wasn’t around to call.
Now it’s Wednesday. She calls again and they tell her they have power at their hub now, but the internet’s still down and no ETA on a fix.
Meanwhile the weather forecast says this evening we’re supposed to get another 6-10" of heavy snow and ice, and power outages are likely. Wednesdays I have to work late doing the nighttime deployment (typically 7pm-2am). And I’m still using my 4G connection which is really flaky and slow throughout the day.
It did snow and sleet a bit more. Now we’re over a foot and a half deep, and the icicles hanging from the roof are about 3 feet long, but it wasn’t as bad as they predicted. And the phone internet connection which was so bad during the day worked fine from 10pm-1am, so the deployment went ok.
Finishing day 3 of no internet and still have used only 60% of my monthly data allowance though, so there’s that. And even if my pace has been slow, and the flaky connection is frustrating, I’ve been able to do my work. Can’t wait to get ‘real’ internet back though.
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Fell off the front stoop yesterday afternoon (due to a stupid misstep) and banged my head on the stone walk. Not to mention pelvis, elbow and wrist. Fortunately a CAT scan showed no permanent damage of my head, due no doubt to the solid bone between my ears. No broken bones, but lots of bruises. Still pain in my butt mostly but glad to not be in worse shape.
Great way to start out my ■■■■■ year.
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Moist?
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Not on Depends yet . . .
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Finally got an email at 4:30 am saying a tech would be here between 8 and 10am (during which time I would definitely be asleep, but luckily my wife would be awake). He set up a whole new router and connection and now we’re back online!
Turns out the issue wasn’t technical at all. It was that one company was being bought out by another right when we originally signed up and we somehow slipped through the cracks - both companies had our info but each thought the other one was responsible for our account. So the place we’ve been paying and getting internet from for a year didn’t think we were actually their customer, and couldn’t switch our service back on after the outage.
The fix ended up being just to sign up as a new account with the other subsidiary company. Which is cool because it gets us the ‘new subscriber’ discount ($25 off per month for a year). I was all set to demand a refund for this month because an entire week without service is nonsense, but eh, that discount is good enough.
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Wow, 300 bucks off ain’t too shabby. Glad things worked out!
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Our electricity was off from around 6 pm. last Friday and came back on today around 11:42 a.m.
I’m hungry, tired, and trying to destress/de-anxify (is there such a word? well there is now!).
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We have a blizzard up here in the northeast. It KO’d our power but only for a few minutes - we were lucky, most of our town and the entire county is knocked out.
The hospital’s full up and overcrowded again, this time not because of the pandemic but because so many people couldn’t get home due to the road closures that they had to assign rooms to the hospital employees.
My internet is very limited since it’s all through tethering on my phone, which after I use too much they’ll throttle me, so I’m on strictly work only - except I’ll make an exception for Elsewhere, because you guys mean the world to me.
ETA for a fix is 48 to 72 hours, and meanwhile the snow’s still blowing. And it’s heavy and wet snow. I’ve already watched both versions of The Shining (movie and miniseries) but I have the sequel downloaded (Dr. Sleep) so I guess I’ll be watching that tonight.
It’s not perfect, but it’s way better than it could be. I have so much stuff here, and even if it’s limited via the phone, I do still have internet.
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Ditto!
In other Meh news, we got new iPhones the other day. My wife had to upgrade, because her work emails need to go through a special secure system that’s no longer supported by iPhone 7 (which is no longer supported by Apple). Somehow my Apple ID got borked, so the guy at the store couldn’t just clone my old phone. I had to reset the ID, which will take another 10 days, I guess due to security concerns. Till then I can’t get any of the four apps I want (including Uber), nor can I get texts (but I can send them ???). Fortunately the phone works, and I have GMail so contacts etc. all came over thanks to Google.
Really frustrating. But . . . oh well. At least we still have internet and electricity and heat. Knock on wood.
Gad it’s windy out.
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Update: we have internet again. The repair guy just had to replace a box that apparently has a known tendency to fry its output ports when there’s a sudden power outage. He was happy because it was an easy job - no downed trees or lines or unplowed road like a lot of places he’d been going.
Also found out (good to know for future reference) that the Red Cross set up a warming/food shelter at the school just two blocks down on my street. So if it happens again but worse, there may well be a very close place to go. That’s comforting.
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I have determined which variety of flushometer I need to get.
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It’s super fucking windy today. Weather app says 23 mph with gusts to 49 mph. I can hear my house move, and a couple places whistle. I know it’s solid, almost all oak, and most if it has been here over 100 years, but it’s disconcerting to listen to. Cats are not super thrilled either.
But, we’re not in the way of that monster storm that I see on the map from South Dakota, to Virginia, and down into Texas.
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We’re supposed to get >50 mph gusts tomorrow. 
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