One Step Closer To Real Internet

Day 4: As of yesterday, I moved one step closer to being lifted from "third-world country" status and toward having access to true internet. Friends are always surprised when I tell them that my top speed with Century(blankety-blank)Link is supposed to be 768 kbps...yes, that's a K...but I seldom approach half that. It takes five or ten minutes every morning just to connect via CenturyLink's crap service, and then I have to deal with slow page loads. The new service will be through our electric company, although the work won't be completed until some time in the coming year. Yesterday, they tunnelled beneath the road and installed a vault for the optical cable they'll be running later. It was fascinating to watch the digger operation. The machine shoots a jet of water into the soil, and then sucks it up, rocks and all. I presume it works its way around big ones, but I did see one melon-sized one brought out and laid aside. The crew will be back today to finish up this phase of the operation here, moving on to do the same thing up and down the line. Even if it costs more, I am looking forwward to the day when I can tell CenturyLink to take a flying...um..."leap through" a rolling donut as I join the real world on line.

Good As Their Word

Day 92: Our little rural power company is as good as their word. They promised that they would be sending out crews to perform "more aggressive limbing" to help prevent future power outages this winter, and I was both happy and sad to see them working across the road this morning. While I appreciate their attempts to keep my electricity running, the birdies are not happy about losing the branches from which they can observe the feeders and my activity. That said, the "Crow Tree" has recently become a haven for Red-Winged Blackbirds, a species I consider almost as bad a pest as Starlings.Unhomed from their observation posts, the Blackbirds descended on the feeders as soon as the limbing crew left. I dispatched them with a loud clap of my hands, and watched them do a group double-take when they discovered their perches were missing. In the final telling, if I have power and a few less Blackbirds, I'll be happy.