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Okay, I’m six hours behind schedule. I have an excuse.
Yesterday was Day Two of the electric upgrade for the house. We were without power most of the day. I have a lot of images on my camera—I’m planning to do a little photo book about the house—but I haven’t downloaded them. However, the good news is, we have power in the old house and in the new addition. We have progress!
Here’s a look at the new electric service from the outside
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And here’s the final result inside.
Exciting stuff, huh?
Let There Be Light!
This is the exciting part. Here’s a look at the hallway in front of the new bathroom looking toward the new kitchen.
Progress.
Wait! No Internet?
While the electricians were pulling out the driveway, I was trying to get the Internet back up. We’re using Comcast/Xfinity. The cable was in the way of the electricians, so it was disconnected and moved out of the way. All I had to do was reassemble the pieces.
I did so.
No love.
I pinged www.yahoo.com. “No reply” my command prompt said.
So I called Xfinity tech support. After seven or eight minutes of arguing with the automated phone attendant and repeatedly saying “representative,” I connected with Mariah in the Philippines.
We went through a few troubleshooting steps and determined that she couldn’t see (as in connect with electronically) my cable modem. I recounted the story about how a few weeks ago, Xfinity technicians had come to move the cable box out of the way of the new electric service. Then they came again the next day to replace the cable from the box to the street because it was old and the signal was bad.
I was chatting with Mariah and considering the situation. Tech support involves a lot of pretty obvious steps. Is it plugged in? Is the power on? Did you restart it?
I had new coax running from the street to the cable box. I was pretty sure that was good. But the coax running from the cable box through a hole in the window frame was old. It had been moved around a lot recently. Could it have failed?
Still chatting with Maria, I pulled out my box of old coax bits and bobs, and found a good piece of coax—one of the old jumpers we used when were connecting a VCR to a TV. (I had a half a dozen pieces of coax with connectors on one end only. Most of them have been sent to the breakers, now.)
ASIDE: A shout out to modern hearing aids. My mobile connects to them via Bluetooth, so I can hear what people are saying very clearly. I can even put the phone in my front shirt pocket upside down and I have a mobile teleconferencing phone. Very handy.
With new cable in hand (I checked to see if it would be long enough and it was good) I armed myself with a cordless drill, fresh battery, and 5/8 inch spade bit. There was an old hole in the window frame from cable installations past. I redrilled it from the inside. Went outside. Redrilled from that side. Disconnect the old. Connect the new(ish). Wiggle it through the holes.
About this time, Mariah was setting up a service call from a technician. It would be Thursday. Yikes, a day with no Internet service. That would not be good.
I told Mariah to hang on for another minute while I connected my modem to the new(ish) jumper.
I restarted the modem. Watched the lights blink. The one fourth from the top that wasn’t going on before—it came on. I went over to my digitial desk and pinged yahoo.
Pinging me-ycpi-cf-www.g06.yahoodns.net [69.147.82.60] with 32 bytes of data:Reply from 69.147.82.60: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=54
Reply from 69.147.82.60: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=54
Reply from 69.147.82.60: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=54
Reply from 69.147.82.60: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=54
Ping statistics for 69.147.82.60:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 15ms, Average = 14ms
Huzzah!
“Mariah,” I said. “You fixed it!”
Mariah laughed.
We cancelled the service call. And in the spirit of “wrap it up,” I filled and sealed around the cable on the outside and inside.
Today, I’m waiting for Charlie, the plumber. We’ve texted. It’ll be later in the afternoon. But we’re on his list.
Progress.
Anon.
Ridge
I would have taken the opportunity to run my electric line underground. I did that recently when installing a new breaker box. I find the overhead wires running to the house to be very unsightly and very old fashioned, like when we first got electricity and had to hook everyone up quickly....Gwyn