It is already after 7:00 p.m., so I have little time. I would not even blog today, but I want to speak of two things.
First, I have not had Internet access in over two full days. Service went down via Shaw Communications on Tuesday morning, perhaps around 9:30 a.m.
Evidently only today was it restored.
The scuttle is that a backhoe somewhere severed an underground cable, so the outage covered a very wide area (I live in Surrey).
As it happens, my youngest stepson took over responsibility of paying for our Internet service some months back because he wanted to increase the strength of our data package.
My younger brother and I only have basic cable for our T.V. programming because we rely upon our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box to fetch up episodes of all of the T.V. series we follow. We essentially only watch some news on regular T.V.
Well, with the loss of our Internet service, along went our cable T.V. service, too. The household was left with nothing.
Cable T.V. was restored yesterday ─ late last afternoon or so. But my brother and I still couldn't watch our usual shows on T.V. because the Android TV Box requires the Internet to find the episodes it provides.
I probably spend around eight hours daily working on my websites and my two blogs, so losing out on two full days meant that the time is irrecoverable.
I wonder about any local businesses that rely upon Internet sales!
Anyway, my stepson got in touch with Shaw to see if they would accord us any concessions for this loss ─ after all, we are expecting to be billed in full when the monthly bill shows up.
He was told that they might make a proration and reduce the bill by whatever few dollars the couple of days would be valued at in subscription terms.
And so he has decided to switch providers. Apparently Telus Communications will be around approximately September 5 to get us set up with their fancy fiber optics or whatever it is that they tout.
We only had the older regular cable Internet service with Shaw.
I have had Shaw service for Internet since early in the 2000s. If I was still paying for the coverage, I would remain with them, even though it boggles me that they were unable to restore coverage for over two days. After all, it is not as if we live in some remote part of B.C.
Granted, it was not Shaw's fault that the service was disrupted, but I fully expect that someone will be financially liable for that ─ whether the construction outfit the backhoe operator works for, and / or even an insurance settlement.
I can't imagine that Shaw would take this blow as a loss that they would just have to live with.
And that being so, their customers deserve some sort of decent concession for the massive inconvenience and even financial loss where some businesses are concerned that rely upon online access to their websites by the public.
I couldn't even log into my online banking account to monitor the state of my chequing balance, and the monthly mortgage was due to be debited from it today!
I knew that the account was anywhere from $300 to $400 too short to meet the mortgage payment, but my eldest stepson was going to make up the difference. However, that was to be done via an online transfer ─ which we could not easily do.
He used his cellphone, but there was the issue of just what my banking membership number was ─ it is not my bank account. And thus it was not something I could refer to a blank cheque to find.
As well, I no longer get monthly paper banking statements that detail the previous month's transaction details, and which would also indicate my membership number.
So yes, the loss of Internet these past two days was quite a 'big deal.' Shaw needed to step up and do more than offer a prorated billing reduction to customers who might approach them concerning concessions for the service loss.
Ad now they have lost this household as customers.
Personally, for me it would have been "better the devil you know...." I would have remained a customer. But it is now my youngest stepson paying the service bill, so he is free to do whatever he wants.
And he seems to have settled on switching providers.
Before I start talking about the second topic of importance to me, I want to post the following two photos that I took yesterday morning at 9:21 a.m. of two lilies that are housed in half of a small barrel in a garden plot in our front yard:
I have no idea just what kind of lily they are ─ my wife brought them home a few years ago and planted them there. Most of the garden plot is awash with a type of thyme plant that bees love when the plants are in bloom as they mostly still are now.
That bare patch in the second photo is entirely my fault. Over the Fall and Winter I had been expectorating coconut oil there ─ I brush my teeth with the oil, and then use it for oil pulling. And rather than just spit the oil out into a sink, I do so outdoors.
I had no idea that inundating that one spot over those several months would actually kill off the thyme plants that had been growing there.
Now I just randomly expectorate the oil over various sections of the lawn.
Okay, the second topic I wanted to delve into involves my planking progress.
A few times over the previous week or ten days, I have been managing to hold the position for nine and more minutes. I think it was three days ago that I planked for 10 minutes.
Please keep in mind that I am a wee bit over five feet and 10 inches in height, and I weigh in the mid-180s (pounds).
Also, I am 69 years of age.
I cannot bear to keep looking at my cellphone's timer, for time seems to drag abominably and it becomes so frustrating. It is actually discouraging. So instead, I slow-count before at last checking the timer.
Of late, I slow-count to 500. After all, 480 seconds are eight minutes. If my count is slow enough, then I can expect to be somewhere near the nine-minute mark by the time I finish the count and log back into my cellphone (while still holding the plank position).
The 10 minutes were a huge surprise, for I hadn't realized that my count had been that slow.
Well, this morning the strain was as bad as anything yet experienced. When I finished, my forehead was actually wet with perspiration.
What did I see when I checked my cellphone's timer?
Believe it or not, it was displaying 10 minutes and 40 seconds and counting! For just a second or two I considered getting to 10 minutes and 45 seconds and stopping, but then I immediately realized that there was not as much glory in any inherent bragging rights as there would be by actually lasting for the full 11 minutes.
And so I did!
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