Posts Tagged ‘getting fiber optic cable’
Finally Connected
Ten years ago today, October 18 was the very day of our arrival to this property we call Wintervale. Hoorah! I looked up our property on the county site and grabbed a couple of images from the widest span of dates available.
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On the left is the year 2010 which was two years before we purchased the property. On the right is from 2021 according to the county.
I prefer the images our friend Mike Wilkus provided from his recent flyover.
I was hiking the north loop trail with Delilah, waiting for the arrival of our in-home broadband internet installer to finally connect us to the world of streaming content, and spotted this scene of pine needles carpeting the ground.
I’m sure glad that tree isn’t over our landscape pond.
As can be seen from the view perspective of Mike’s photo above, there are cultivated crop fields around us, keeping us aware that we live among farmers.
Yesterday the closest field to our south was being harvested. Something tells me we aren’t in the suburbs anymore.
That’s quite all right with me, …especially now that we are hardwired with fiber optic broadband.
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Passing Peak
One day you wake up and notice the dominant shade out the window is yellow-brown. Honestly, it seems like it happens overnight. Tuesday, the trees were ablaze with vibrant hues of red and orange with green and yellow highlights backed by a blue sky to set them all off magnificently.
Yesterday, it looked as if a switch had been flipped to subdue the magnificence and replace it with a dulled pallor of decaying leaves.
The high heat of Tuesday held the potential of triggering some thunderstorms overnight but our roof received nary a drop. Somewhere around zero-dark-thirty, my full bladder nudged me out of a perfect slumber and in semi-consciousness I suspected I was hearing rainfall. Turned out to be the furnace fan noise through the floor vent.
A trip to the bathroom rousted me enough to check my phone for weather details and I saw there was an alert of lightning strikes nearby. I pulled up the radar image and discovered the line of stormy weather had split around us to the north and south. That would be great luck if you were hoping to dodge bad weather but it is rotten luck when the ground is so dry it is cracking open in a gaping grimace of distressed thirst.
The sparse sprinkles that misted down from passing clouds yesterday afternoon were just a mocking wetness that barely settled dust. It is weird to watch the dark rain clouds in the sky moving by all around us but never overhead.
The bright spot that occurred for us was the arrival of a truck up the driveway with a logo from the underground cable company that is installing fiber optic broadband internet cables in our county. The guy had just completed splicing the line at the road and was coming up to the house to check the strength of the signal.
We now have an appointment scheduled for in-home installation of the modem, the last step to get us connected to high-speed internet.
At least the technician didn’t have to deal with any rain while he worked to splice our fiber.
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Fiber Buried
The ongoing waiting game notched another step closer to having a fiber cable internet connection in our home when the crew showed up yesterday to run the cable from the pole on the street up to the side of our house.
I found it fascinating to observe the techniques of burying cable from close proximity. They had to bore under the road to bring the cable from the pole to our property. I learned they use a jet of water to carve a path for their piping. There was a rather large crew who took turns doing a fair amount of waiting between moments of busy activity.
They actually start at the house and bury the cable back down to where it gets pulled through a protective tube they install beneath the road.
Wherever they cross a gas line or the buried electric supply line, a hole is carefully shoveled to provide clear visibility of the depth they must avoid.
I attempted to schedule the last step of the in-home connection but jumped the gun because there is one more task that needs to happen first. Today’s crew simply buried the fiber optic cable and mounted a box on the outside of our house. A different person will show up to splice the connection of the cable routed under the road from our house to the feed that comes off the telephone pole.
I’m told that once the splice is done a tag will be hung on our front door with instructions to call to set up an appointment for the technician to run the cable from the box on the outside of the house through the wall to where we will connect the modem they provide.
It shouldn’t be long now until we take a leap forward into the present-day state of streaming content on the internet.
We will finally be able to allow our devices to download software updates whenever they become available, along with other high bandwidth activities. Streaming music threatens to command my attention for more hours a day than I should allow. I may need to actually practice some self-discipline or something.
Before I get to start worrying about that, somebody needs to show up and splice the connection across the road. But, it sure is sweet to have the cable finally buried up to the house. That is a milestone for which we have long awaited.
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Relative Something 