Author Archives: Site Admin
Window-watching winter wildlife
This morning there are two foxes in the yard. They’ve been there for at least a half-hour so far, and show no interest in moving on anytime soon. One of them – reddish with darker tips on its hair, what we would call a “cross fox” – is busily pawing through the snow looking, I’m sure, for bits of bird seed. The other one, also a cross fox but with dark hair and lighter, reddish tips, is sitting on top of a snow drift apparently just watching the scene unfold. Both the dog and cat were excited about having the foxes there. I’m not sure how they know, but they seem to be able to tell just by body language that something “interesting” can be seen through the windows, for they both knew without my having said anything that they should run to an open blind and look outside. Last year we had a family of four foxes that visited regularly, probably a mother with three young from the earlier spring/summer. I don’t remember how many mornings we watched that group chase one another around the shed and repeatedly slide down snow banks – clearly they were finding enough food that they had time to play! I’m fairly certain that this morning’s two foxes are “new,” as last year’s family didn’t have any cross-coloring and at least three of the family members had white tips on their tails, which these two do not. Having foxes around, particularly in the winter, isn’t unusual here but I still get a great deal of enjoyment out of watching them go about their business and pleasure, right in my front yard.
Eyecom Cable’s “High-Speed” Cable Modem Internet Service
My latest graduate course started at the beginning of this week. Like all the other distance classes I have taken to date, video feeds from a variety of online sources are a large part of the resource material with which I have to be familiar. This is unfortunate, since our residential internet connection speeds are such that watching streaming video is impossible and even downloading video for later use can take, literally, days. Frustrated after spending almost two hours trying to watch a 2:34 minute video, which I eventually accomplished in 3-4 second bursts, I decided to compare my actual internet speed with what what Eyecom claims to be providing. Part one of that task was relatively easy. A number of online speed tests gave me results of 147 Kbps, 342 Kbps and 53 Kbps, which at best… sucks. Several other testing sites couldn’t even load, because of of poor connection speeds. After this I went to the Telalaska/Eyecom website to see what claims they were making to residential consumers, since I’m pretty sure at one time they actually had numerical values for their connection speeds. Interestingly, they no longer have anything like actual (or claimed) figures on their website. Now broadband customers, for the paltry sum of $79.90/month, are simply offered “three times the connection speed of dial-up.” So, I phoned their corporate office to see what they would say. For that 79.90/month they are offering a blazing 256Kbps! Knowing that, I guess I should be satisfied with my actual speed (which at an average 180Kbps is relatively close to what they claim to offer) and instead be annoyed solely with the financial rape of paying $80 a month for that kind of crappy service.