Light to heavy

Let’s start the blog with a normal update in my circle before moving to much heavier topics.

I believe I mentioned on here how they buried fiber optic cable in our neighborhood roughly a month ago. Well last night a sales rep came to my door asking if I would be interested in signing up for their high speed service. I have been pissed off at Comcast/Xfinity for years so I was very interested in hearing what they were offering. I currently pay roughly $225 a month for my existing service which includes basic TV and internet with download speeds of a gig and uploads of around 400MB.

Although the service normally performs well I hate the song and dance you play with Comcast where every year or so you have to renegotiate a new package to get your price back down. Even if you do, normally it means you are giving up something to keep the price near where it was. Even after those negotiations occur your bill seems to magically keep creeping upward every few months. I used to be more vigilant about fighting all of these phantom charges but to be quite honest I tired of it and just resigned myself to overpaying every month because I had no other alternatives. Well, now I do.

With Quantum Fiber which is associated with Lumen, a company I have dealt with for years at my job, I can get 3 gig of bandwidth up AND down for $105 a month. Not only am I more than tripling my speeds, there also is no installation charges, and that price is guaranteed for life. Yes that is not a typo, I will not have to pay more for my internet ever. There is also the possibility of even greater speeds being available to me in the future.

Fiber internet has a ton of advantages over cable internet. You aren’t sharing your pipe with neighbors so the performance should be consistent regardless of how many around you are using it. Fiber optic cables are not susceptible to lightning strikes like copper coax cable are which can result in equipment damage as I experienced myself a month or two ago. Cable internet always has different upload/download speeds, with fiber the pathway is the same both ways, something that is great for someone that uploads large videos to the internet on a regular basis. I’m hoping the service lives up to my expectations as it is scheduled to be installed Monday. I look forward to informing Comcast that I no longer will require their services.

With the wound on my head being closed finally I am trying to resume my normal activities which have been gimped for over a month. I played pickleball yesterday and plan to play volleyball tonight to see how that goes as well. I also have some projects I have been putting off since they involve a lot of sweat investment, those are back on the to do list.

I have my pest control guy coming today. Every two months they spray the property outside to curtail pests. Despite their efforts I have been having a lot of issue with ghost ants inside which are so tiny they can wiggle in through the smallest of cracks. I have been trying to battle them with bait traps that are supposed to eventually kill the colony as well as caulking various spots in the house where I have seen them enter/exit. Despite my efforts they keep showing up. I am hoping allowing the contractor inside to treat the trouble spots will get me back on the winning side of my insect war.

So I like most people saw the shooting of Charlie Kirk yesterday. I was not personally a fan of him as he was one of Trump’s loudest and most consistent supporters. He was very young and made a name for himself going around the country and debating people on various political, social, moral and economic points, a lot of which was on college campuses. His efforts to bring younger people into the sphere of caring about politics was without a doubt effective. Despite not agreeing with his stances on many things he was obviously an intelligent man that was guided by his beliefs. I respect intelligence as well as the right of people to believe what they want. My line comes when people try to enforce their beliefs onto others which happens in both directions.

Ironically it was at one of these big outdoor college Q&A’s where it went down. It appears that someone with a sniper rifle took him out from roughly 200 yards away while laying prone on a rooftop. He has not been caught. No matter where you stand politically, it was shocking and a dark day. The scariest part is in today’s world you just never know the true nature of the event. Was it an individual that just hated what Charlie Kirk represented or was it a third party that was tasked with a murder to cause further division, rage and distraction to serve a very small group of powerful individuals. It’s an awful truth in our world today that truly nothing is out of bounds in the realm of possibilities. I feel sad for Charlie’s family and friends and hope this does not lead to further escalation.

His murder is grabbing the headlines on 9/11, a tragedy that ironically opened my eyes to just how dark and deep the levels of deception the federal government can go to manipulate public opinion. Oh yea just for fun Putin flew drones over Poland, a NATO ally, that got shot down inspiring them to state this is the closest they have been to war since WW II. These are dark days we are living in, I’m just trying to keep my head down and avoid the shrapnel.