HinesSight

CenturyLink sucks when it comes to rural broadband

After we got Starlink satellite internet at our home in rural south Salem, Oregon in early 2021, I stopped complaining about CenturyLink after we dumped their crappy 6-7 Mbps DSL "broadband" and started enjoying 50-150 Mbps Starlink download speeds.

But today a CenturyLink repair guy came to our house to fix an annoying buzz on our landline, which got me thinking about rural broadband again.

(Yeah, we're old-fashioned, since we still have a landline, in part because the Verizon cellular connection on our iPhones is pretty poor, two bars at most, unless we take a hike up our long driveway.)

Since it took a while for the repair guy to figure out what was causing the buzz, I was able to chat with him about what used to be my favorite subject when I talked with a CenturyLink technician -- why our neighborhood about six miles from the city limits of Oregon's capital can't get fiber optic service.

We're only a couple of miles from where CenturyLink's fiber optic line ends along Liberty Road. It wouldn't cost a huge amount to extend fiber optic to our area.

Before we got Starlink, a few years ago I contacted a local broadband company about signing up for their cellular broadband. It turned out that because we didn't have a line of sight to the cell tower they use, that wouldn't work for us. 

Another company was kind enough to give me a rough estimate for what it would cost for them to extend fiber optic cable along Liberty to our neighborhood. Their estimate was about $400,000. That's a lot of money, but it sure seems doable for a massive company like CenturyLink (now legally Lumen Technologies.)

There's several hundred homes in our area. Yet the repair guy told me that CenturyLink isn't even installing fiber optic in all parts of Salem, or in all new subdivisions, so he felt that our neighborhood will never get fiber optic. 

Not because it can't be done. Because it wouldn't generate enough profit for CenturyLink.

Hopefully President Biden's bipartisan infrastructure bill will fulfill Biden's promise that broadband will become available to everyone in the United States. I'm skeptical, though, that this will happen anytime soon. 

Broadband should be a public utility like electricity. In the 21st century fast broadband is a necessity. Businesses need it. Families need it. Students need it. But so long as broadband is left in the hands of private companies out to make big profits, many people in the United States won't be able to get it.

I asked the CenturyLink technician if 5G cell service would come to the rescue of rural people lacking fast broadband. He wasn't very optimistic. I hadn't thought about this before, but he said that more cell towers would be needed for 5G, and they all require a fiber optic connection.

So plunking 5G towers all over rural America is going to be impractical, most likely.

Which makes Elon Musk's Starlink satellite broadband the best option for many rural people. Yes, the cost is $110 a month, recently raised from $99. If government funding could subsidize the cost of Starlink for those unable to afford it, this could be the best way to go for lots of rural Americans. We're certainly happy with it.

Oscars blow it by a pitifully minor mention of Ukraine

Tonight's Oscars show was viewed around the world. It used to get hundreds of millions of watchers. Maybe that's less now.

Regardless, both those who put on the Oscars and those who won awards blew it by failing to take a much stronger stand in support of Ukraine against Russia's unprovoked invasion.

I watched every minute of the show.

I kept waiting for someone -- a presenter, an award winner, anyone -- to make some impassioned remarks about the bravery of the Ukrainian people and the need for freedom lovers everywhere to support their battle against Russia.

Instead, all we got was the bare minimum: a screen with a bunch of words that called for a moment of silence for Ukraine, along with a request to donate to Ukrainian relief.

Better than nothing. But just barely. 

I heard a lot of talk in support of deaf people, of LGBTQ people, of Black people. But there were only two verbal references to Ukraine.

After a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Godfather movies, if I recall the number of years correctly, one of the honorees said as he was leaving the stage, "Viva Ukraine." 

Wow. The Oscars ran about 40 minutes over the scheduled three hours.

So there wasn't time for a couple of minutes to honor the freedom fighters in Ukraine, who, while the Hollywood elite were congratulating themselves for being able to make movies, were risking their lives to combat the biggest invasion of a European country since World War II?

I guess not. Looks like the Oscars had decided that what the world needs now is 3 hours and 40 minutes of an award show devoted to wealthy people involved with movie-making patting themselves on the back.

The other verbal reference to Ukraine came from Amy Schumer, one of the three hosts, who said after making a humorous remark, "There's a genocide going on in Ukraine and women are losing all their rights."

Huh? Thousands of Ukrainians are indeed being killed. That arguably is a form of genocide, but it also is simply Russia bombing civilian areas rather than military targets. And I have no idea what Schumer meant by women losing all their rights.

Maybe she got Ukraine mixed up with Afghanistan, where the Taliban are indeed taking away women's rights.

Actually, many women and children in Ukraine are losing their lives, not their rights. Russia is forcing lots of Ukrainians to flee to Russia from cities being bombed by Russian forces, so I guess that could be considered a loss of rights.

I found this year's Oscars entertaining, but also deeply irritating. It astounded me that no presenter or award winner, neither of whom is at a loss for words, didn't use the world stage they found themselves on to draw attention to the horrors being inflicted on Ukraine by Russia.

Instead, I watched Will Smith rush up on stage and punch Chris Rock after Rock made a joke about Smith's wife. OK, she has hair loss, and Rock joked about that.

Chris made a comment about Jada's shaved head ... saying he couldn't wait to see 'G.I. Jane 2' -- which got some groans from the crowd, to which he just sorta shrugged off.

Chris didn't think he'd crossed a line, but Will clearly did ... because he stormed the stage and literally socked the dude in the face. A stunned Rock exclaimed, "Wow. Will Smith just smacked the s*** outta me."

The American broadcast on ABC muted, and even froze, but in other countries it continued ... and Will shouted "Keep my wife's name out your f****** mouth" twice to Chris.

Will Smith later made one of the most annoying acceptance speeches I've ever seen when he won Best Actor for his role in "King Richard." Smith kept saying that God had chosen him to do some amazing things, which apparently included punching Chris Rock and swearing at him.

Religious hypocrisy is the worst kind. Will Smith showed that tonight.

My John Deere X394 lawn tractor works great on rough ground

After several decades of using a DR Field Mower (which you walk behind) to cut grass on our ten acres in rural south Salem, Oregon, last summer I decided to admit that my 73 year old body needed an easier way of doing that job.

So after considerable research and discussions with Ray Rodriquez at Pape Machinery, our local John Deere dealer, I bought an X394 lawn tractor. 

It's taken me a few mowings to get used to the X394 (X means it is only sold through a John Deere dealer; the 94 indicates that it is at the upper end of the 300 series tractors; I think the 4 relates to the four-wheel steering).

Today I mowed almost all of our grass except for our lawn. I'll share photos below.

It only took me about 90 minutes, which is way less time than I spent doing that job with the DR Field Mower. It also was much easier, since I sat on the cushy John Deere seat with my water bottle nestled in the cup holder on my right, instead of wrestling the DR Field Mower around.

When I talked with Rodriquez about my mowing needs, he had me look at two types of grass visible from his office window. One was a flat lawn. The other was a flat field. I told Ray, "Neither looks like the bumpy sloping fields I need to mow."

I showed him photos of those fields. He then was adamant that if I got anything other than a high-end 300 series with a solid steel frame, I'd be unhappy after a year or two when a cheaper John Deere model made of less strong stuff had a bent frame.

I'm glad I took that advice. The four-wheel steering is perfect for our fields, which have many trees and other obstacles to navigate around. And the power steering on the X394 makes mowing much easier also.

Here's a tour of what I mowed this afternoon, starting with the easier areas and moving on to the tougher areas.

This small patch of grass close to our house is almost lawn like. 

A larger field next to the top of our driveway is fairly smooth, but definitely field-like. I'm wary of steep slopes, so I had to leave unmoved some grass on the sloping area next to the driveway, which I could handle with the walk behind DR Field Mower. No big deal. I can use a trimmer for that.

This sloping area is easy to handle with the X394. The bare ground could be an issue if it was muddy, since the X394 doesn't have traction control. Last year I almost got stuck a few times, so now I'm cautious about mowing when the ground is wet.

I then headed across our actual lawn, which didn't need mowing today.

The X394 has a 48 inch deck, but is quite a bit wider with the large side discharge chute. It just barely fits between the rock on the left (next to our dog's butt) and the Oregon Grape on the right.

This field, with some branches covered by a tarp waiting to be burned in the center, may look fairly smooth, but it is rough going -- with tough bunches of grass, field mice burrows, and such. When I used the DR Field Mower here it felt sort of like a bucking bronco as I walked behind the mower as it jerked this way and that. But the X394 handles this field great.

The next field down is fairly smooth. If you look closely, you can see how close I can mow to most of the trees, given the four wheel steering on the X394. The obvious exception is the drastically leaning tree on the left, which got that way after a February 2021 ice storm decimated our part of Oregon. Just haven't gotten around to cutting that tree down. The black burned area in the top center is where a lot of debris was burned after downed trees were cleaned up after the ice storm.

This field is a challenge. Quite a few trees to mow around. A gully in the center that I've learned to avoid with the X394. Several stumps that were cut low to the ground, but I managed to hit one with the deck set at a 3.5 inch height. Maximum height is 4 inches, which I'll try next time. Every time I use the X394 I learn more about what it can do, and what I should avoid doing. Like, mowing over that stump.

After I finished mowing, I hooked a hose up to a coupling on the deck of the X394, turned on the water, and cleaned out the clippings by running the mower blades for a minute or so. Great feature. Sure beats reaching under the mower to clean the deck. I use a backpack leaf blower to clean off debris from the mower before I park it in our garage.

I can heartily recommend the X394 for anyone with rough ground that needs mowing. I've only used the lawn tractor for about 7 hours, but so far it has operated flawlessly. The only problems I've had have been self-created, such as the times I almost got stuck by using the X394 in an area where I shouldn't have been mowing.

Live and learn.

I'll end by sharing a couple of photos of the creek that runs through our property just past the last fields I mowed today. Thankfully, creeks don't need mowing. 

Why I'm still wearing a mask in public indoor spaces

I readily admit that if you look at photos of me with and without a mask, there's good reason to feel that the reason I'm still wearing a mask out in public, even though it isn't required now in most places, is that I look better with my face covered up.

(For sure, I look younger.)

But actually I have some pretty good reasons to buck the clear maskless trend, now that Governor Brown has lifted the indoor masking order (which still remains for health care facilities and pharmacies).

These reasons are based on public health advice/information I've been getting from my Twitter feed and usual news sources: New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic -- you know, the mainstream media that reality-based liberals like me enjoy reading.

(1) I'm old. Being over 60 puts me in a high-risk Covid group. Being over 70, even more so. People at higher risk from Covid for whatever reason should still wear a high quality mask in public indoor spaces where unvaccinated people and infected people will be encountered.

(2) I don't want to get long Covid. Or short Covid, for that matter. When I hear people say, "a mild case of Covid is just like the flu," I think, OK, but I don't want to spend a week or two sick with the flu. Plus, many people with Covid have serious lingering symptoms like fatigue that can last for months or years. This can happen even with mild cases. So no Covid is way better than any form of Covid.

(3) An Omicron subvariant could be coming soon. Omicron is a variant. BA.2 is an Omicron subvariant. It's causing a rapid rise in cases in many parts of the world. Bad news is that BA.2 is even more infectious than original Omicron. Good news is that it appears to be no more severe. 

New infections jumped by eight per cent globally compared to the previous week, with 11 million new cases and just over 43,000 new deaths reported from March 7-13. It is the first rise since the end of January.

The biggest jump was in WHO's Western Pacific region, which includes South Korea and China, where cases rose by 25 per cent and deaths by 27 per cent. 

...The picture in Europe is also not universal. Denmark, for example, saw a brief peak in cases in the first half of February, driven by BA.2, which quickly subsided.

But experts have begun to warn that the United States could soon experience a similar wave to that seen in Europe, potentially driven by BA.2, the lifting of restrictions and possible waning of immunity from vaccines given several months ago.

"I agree with the easing of restrictions, because you can't think of it as an emergency after two years," said Antonella Viola, professor of immunology at Italy's University of Padua.

"We just have to avoid thinking that COVID is no longer there. And therefore maintain the strictly necessary measures, which are essentially the continuous monitoring and tracking of cases, and the maintenance of the obligation to wear a mask in closed or very crowded places."

My first counseling session: "I feel like you heard me"

I could have saved the $40 insurance co-pay by taking the advice of this cartoon and letting our dog make me feel better, instead of going to my first Salem Health counseling session.

But after seeing Wayne Halle, a MSW counselor, I'm convinced that I made the right decision to take my problems to a human, rather than a canine.

I was referred to Halle in late December after I told my family physician that I found a recent glaucoma diagnosis to be more than a little disturbing, especially when layered on top of a couple of other annoying health problems that I have.

However, early on in today's initial session I told Halle that since it took about ten weeks to get an appointment with him, now I wasn't as worried about my glaucoma. 

Of course, I quickly said that I have other concerns.

This was after I noted that like Halle, I too have a MSW (Master of Social Work) degree, as does my wife, a big difference being that soon after I got my degree, I realized that I wasn't really cut out to be a social worker, which led to me getting a job in health services research and then health planning.

My main takeaway from the 50 minutes or so I spent talking with Halle was how good it feels to be listened to attentively. That's why, when we were making plans for a second session, I told him, "I feel like you heard me."

Which isn't surprising, given that's what counseling/psychotherapy is largely about. It's also what everyday conversations should be about.  Often, though, we're guilty of paying as much attention to how we're going to respond to the other person, as to what they're saying. 

At least, I'm guilty of this. 

So it was refreshing to have Halle ask good questions about the difficulty I have in coping with a bladder that, as I like to put it, went on strike about five years ago and hasn't gotten back to working normally.

(Smooth bladder muscle, unlike regular muscle, doesn't recover when it loses its tone and becomes atonic, unable to properly push out the pee.)

I explained that one of my mental health concerns is a strong feeling of regret that I both failed to recognize warning signs that the prostate problem which I knew I had was morphing into a bladder problem, and also that when I had a urinary retention episode (unable to pee), I delayed seeking treatment, wrongly feeling that the problem would resolve itself.

Halle zeroed in on the key issue. 

"So tell me," he said, "before this happened, how many times in your life had your bladder stopped working?" "Um, none," I told him. "How then," Halle asked me, "could you have known what was going to happen, since you'd had no experience with it?"

Bingo. This interchange alone would have made the session worthwhile. My regret immediately lessened.

I'd had similar thoughts, but since the thoughts came from my own mind, they didn't have the impact  that Halle's words did. Meaning, I'm kind of immune to my own bullshit. My mind is continually churning out ideas, some of which make sense, and some don't. 

This is the problem with being your own therapist, something I alluded to in talking with Halle.

I told him that I have countless (almost) books about meditation, mindfulness, neuroscience, and such, many of which have good tips for dealing with anxiety and worries, of which regret is one manifestation. But it's difficult for me to break out of deep mentally unhealthy patterns on my own, since this is akin to me lifting myself off of the ground.

Someone else can do this, because they can use their legs and arms as leverage to raise me up. I, though, am stuck when I try to do the same thing.

This is the beauty of a skilled counselor like Wayne Halle. Within a few minutes of meeting this perfect stranger, I was telling him things about myself that I'd shared with only a couple of other close friends and relatives.

Such is the power of unconditional acceptance in a therapeutic relationship. I felt like the ideas and feelings I was sharing, though naturally familiar to me, since I was speaking them, had a special power when directed at Halle's welcoming and non-judgmental ears.

Somehow that made my concerns seem more manageable -- given that a stranger was listening to me with calm acceptance, unlike the often negative reaction I have to my own thoughts and emotions.

Which is damn strange, really, how I can be harder on myself than other people are with me. Anyway, I look forward to my next session with Halle, which won't be for about another month. (Salem, like most places, needs more mental health professionals.) 

Scheduling group meetings is tough in the Age of Covid

For many years I've done the scheduling for a monthly Salon discussion group my wife and I are members of. 

Pre-Covid, that used to be easy. 

We'd meet in the homes belonging to the dozen or so people in the group. I kept track of where we met each month, doing my best to keep to a regular rotation among the various homes. 

I'd ask the people who were next up in the rotation if they could host a meeting on a certain date. If they could, then I'd email everybody in the group to see if that date was OK for them.

Pretty damn simple. 

Post-Covid scheduling also was easy for quite a while. From March 2020 until November 2021 we met either via Zoom, or, if the weather was warm and dry enough, outside in the back yard of one of our members.

In December 2021, when Covid cases were pretty minimal, we had a maskless in-person meeting at our house. Everyone survived. A few people chose not to attend the meeting, feeling they weren't ready yet to meet in person.

Now our discussion group is in an awkward period, along with the rest of the country, really. 

Covid cases are rapidly declining, along with hospitalizations and deaths. But we're not quite in the endemic stage, when Covid simply becomes an ongoing problem to live with, like the flu.

So the twelve members of our group are representative of the range of attitudes toward Covid at this stage of the pandemic, which probably soon will become an endemic (using that word as a noun rather than an adjective).

Eight of us, including my wife and I, are fine with meeting in-person indoors.

Everybody in our group has been fully vaccinated and boosted. We're all Covid-careful. So getting together in someone's house seems low-risk. After all, we've been in public stores, gyms, and such with strangers who don't always wear a mask.

Having a small private meeting with people you know and trust is considerably less risky. And naturally anyone who wants to, can wear a mask during the meeting, which reduces the Covid risk even more (likely to almost nothing).

However, four members of our group aren't ready yet to meet indoors. They're OK with meeting outdoors, but currently the weather is too unpredictable for that to be a good option. 

This has made scheduling our March meeting difficult. I've always gone by the adage, "greatest good for the greatest number." If nine people can make a meeting on one date, and eleven on another date, I'll go with the day that works for the most people.

Problem is, a Zoom meeting would have the largest number of our members taking part. Yet eight of our twelve members prefer an in-person meeting. 

That's the way we're going to go this month, with hopes better weather will enable us to meet outside soon -- a desirable option until the four people reluctant to meet indoors feel comfortable doing that.

Complicating things is the difficulty in gauging how strongly people feel about meeting indoors versus via Zoom. How is it possible to compare those who really hate Zoom meetings with those who really hate the idea of meeting indoors when Covid is still circulating in our community?

Is one form of hate more worthy? Maybe. Maybe not. But I don't know how to assess that, so I'm simply assuming that the opinion of someone who wants to meet indoors is equal to the opinion of someone who wants to meet via Zoom.

Anyway, these are interesting times we live in.

Everyone wants to get back to complete normal, but Covid isn't going to allow that for the foreseeable future. So we all have to navigate a course that leads as close to normal as possible, without veering off into the shoals of either excessive risk-taking or excessive caution.