I could understand the hack job as a temporary fix, because the pole was dangling over the road by the cable, but it's been 6 months.
Another pole failed last winter, so they just took it out leaving the line amp hanging in space.
The wireline phone company replaced all of the shared poles earlier this year because they were all from the 1960's and quite rotten. The cable and phone lines take divergent paths about a half mile closer to town.
There is no other choice here for internet and TV, so Comcast gets away with it. The phone company keeps talking about offering a fast internet service, but they would need to replace a lot of old junk first, so nobody is holding their breath. I will say that Comcast is fast when it works. I have seen near gigabit speeds, not that I actually need them.
Another pole failed last winter, so they just took it out leaving the line amp hanging in space.
The wireline phone company replaced all of the shared poles earlier this year because they were all from the 1960's and quite rotten. The cable and phone lines take divergent paths about a half mile closer to town.
There is no other choice here for internet and TV, so Comcast gets away with it. The phone company keeps talking about offering a fast internet service, but they would need to replace a lot of old junk first, so nobody is holding their breath. I will say that Comcast is fast when it works. I have seen near gigabit speeds, not that I actually need them.
George,
Good thing this is a light snowfall. The ground should still be warm enough to melt much of it.
To get the poles fixed you should try getting a complaint form from the state utility regulation commission. This side of the border just mentioning you know about complaint forms and the commission gets you much better service!
I am looking forward to a nice snowfall of more than a few feet. There is an empty house behind me that should have the roof collapse and finally go away.
As soon as I got my emergency generator the electric utility company changed the distribution cabling. Went from power going out for more than a week or so down to under two hours worst case!
I sometimes use my cellphone as my "Personal Hotspot" for internet service.
Good thing this is a light snowfall. The ground should still be warm enough to melt much of it.
To get the poles fixed you should try getting a complaint form from the state utility regulation commission. This side of the border just mentioning you know about complaint forms and the commission gets you much better service!
I am looking forward to a nice snowfall of more than a few feet. There is an empty house behind me that should have the roof collapse and finally go away.
As soon as I got my emergency generator the electric utility company changed the distribution cabling. Went from power going out for more than a week or so down to under two hours worst case!
I sometimes use my cellphone as my "Personal Hotspot" for internet service.
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I have plenty of unfinished projects to work on so that's not an issue. The synth boards are still in NYC, and Mouser shipped by Fedex. They will not come down the dirt road on a day like today, UPS generally won't either, as there is no place to turn the trucks around and they back up all the way down the road to make deliveries.
At 5 AM this morning there was about 1 to 2 inches of snow on the grass. The driveway was still black but the rain that had puddled overnight had started to freeze. Still, not as bad as it could be. There is still a light snow "falling" sideways from the north. What landed on the concrete front porch melted and never refroze.
We are two miles out in the country down in a "holler." There are two cell towers that cover this area. Both are below the horizon by over 100 feet. In the summer on a dry day we get enough scatter that the phone may get a text if left up on a shelf in just the right place. Rain or snow kills all cell service. There is no TV signal, and very limited AM or FM radio here.
We switched from AT&T to Comcast's Xfinity Mobile because they do text, voice, and data over WiFi via their modem for far less $$$ than AT&T.....all good as long as Comcast is working, which it still is obviously.
We use baling wire....or bent coathangers, duck tape.......
The pole is unfortunately hanging by the cable that carries the signal, so it will break eventually. The pole is on a curved spot in the road, so they can't just remove it.
George,
Personal cellphone repeater/range extender with an antenna mast! All now off the shelf stuff! I suspect from previous employment you can get that going!
My experience with cellphones in W. Va. is that the service has gotten much better over the past decade. It is now bad to terrible, used to be horrible to as good as it got for the dark ages!
Personal cellphone repeater/range extender with an antenna mast! All now off the shelf stuff! I suspect from previous employment you can get that going!
My experience with cellphones in W. Va. is that the service has gotten much better over the past decade. It is now bad to terrible, used to be horrible to as good as it got for the dark ages!
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We saw a portion of the grand-kids on Sunday. They have hybrid distance-learning and in-school learning. The 8-year old was disappointed to hear that there will be no snow-days this year. Chrome-books taken care of that!
We had winds in excess of 70mph in North Jersey, family reports snow in eastern OH.
We had winds in excess of 70mph in North Jersey, family reports snow in eastern OH.
No arguement there. I am not speaking of solid to gas as happens in the manufacture of freeze dried coffee, I am speaking of the dew that forms on your car windows. When the temp and RH drop, the cooling effect of the evaporation can freeze the water before the surrounding air temp drops below zero and before all the dew has evaporated.
I have a Wilson WeBoost, one of the better cell boosters on the market. Unfortunately, as stated on the Wilson website, you must have a signal to boost!
If I connect a Yagi antenna to the input of the booster, and a spectrum analyzer directly to it's output and go signal hunting on my property I find random places where a weak signal can be found, still not strong enough to wake up the booster. I tried the same test with my antenna on the end of a 25 foot pole. Still not enough signal. None of these responses come from the direction of either cell site.
The strongest response comes from pointing the antenna at the side of my neighbor's metal house trailer, and the second strongest response comes from point the antenna up at the top of the 400 foot hill between me and one of the cell towers. Both of these sources are likely random signal scatter, and change from day to day. Experiments with trying to use either of these sources did not work.
Xfinity Mobile uses Verizon for areas where their WiFi service doesn't work, so I will experiment more when I have time and better weather. The only cell tower for this area is shared by both AT&T and Verizon, but they both have local sites in town on the sides of a building. They are not co-located, so there could be a Verizon signal somewhere on my property, but walking the grounds with a phone didn't find anything.
Comcast is still working fine today, but a bit slower than usual.
Back in October we ordered a large pile of building material from Lowes to build a new deck in the back yard. They delivered the 4 X 4's and the joists quickly, but stated the the composite decking material was not in stock and was backordered. A delivery would be arranged once the decking came in.
At about 8 AM this morning I got a call from the delivery driver, he was on his way here with the decking, expected ETA, a half hour. I just got the vehicles clean enough to move out of the driveway when they showed up. Sherri's Honda had about 2.5 inches of snow on it, and my uninsulated delivery van had about 3 inches. There is now 640 feet of decking material on the driveway where the van used to be. My morning workout is done!
Oh, right. I think we've only had the dew freeze through low temps here. Was thinking about the sublimation of ice and snow. Sometimes the ice patterns can be different from day to day inside a closed car even if it's not used and constant cold, sublimation and crystallization.
Freeze drying is more about accelerating the process by lower pressure/induced vacuum. Vacuum can also help lower the boiling point of liquids to help make distillation possible at room temperature.
Fractional freezing (my current favourite) is making part of the liquid, usually water, crystallize in lower temperatures and sift them out from the other liquids.
-4c now.
George,
You do know how cable TV got started? So put up the cell booster on top of the 400' hill. Let it serve the neighbors and you might even collect a fee! At the least you will have support for placing the booster.
There is the fellow I know also in W. Va. who solved his problem by placing a old and no longer serviceable 40' metal sided trailer where it would act as a reflector. Flattened the tires and it will take serious effort to move it. Of course he doesn't admit to anything, but now gets signal!
You do know how cable TV got started? So put up the cell booster on top of the 400' hill. Let it serve the neighbors and you might even collect a fee! At the least you will have support for placing the booster.
There is the fellow I know also in W. Va. who solved his problem by placing a old and no longer serviceable 40' metal sided trailer where it would act as a reflector. Flattened the tires and it will take serious effort to move it. Of course he doesn't admit to anything, but now gets signal!
If I could get access to the top of the hill it would be relatively easy since it's line of sight from there to the tower over on the Ohio River. The land at the top of the hill and the access road up to it is owned by the same family. They have made it clear that nobody is going up there. Some of the old timers in the area down here suspect illegal activity, but I have no idea myself.
The hill itself behind my house is a near vertical cliff on the other side of the creek. Some kids tried to climb it a few years back resulting in one of them needing medical attention.
The picture shows an impossible climb. It is a few years old. There is not that much snow today, and that deck is now gone.
The hill itself behind my house is a near vertical cliff on the other side of the creek. Some kids tried to climb it a few years back resulting in one of them needing medical attention.
The picture shows an impossible climb. It is a few years old. There is not that much snow today, and that deck is now gone.
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It's suppose to be 19 here in the morning. It's usually worse up there, I remember as a kid. (Grew up in NM)
We are about 25 miles north of NM, about a mile east of the Ohio River.
Here are some pictures taken in 2016. That's the most snow I have seen since I moved here. The weather guy said 12 inches. Of course I had to go play in it.
The coldest I have seen was -12F in 2014.
It has snowed all day today, but the temp has hovered around 32F so the level on the ground has stayed about 1 to 2 inches. I brushed the snow off the driveway this morning, and it's still black. I guess it absorbs enough IR to keep the snow melting. The concrete front porch has finally turned white.
Here are some pictures taken in 2016. That's the most snow I have seen since I moved here. The weather guy said 12 inches. Of course I had to go play in it.
The coldest I have seen was -12F in 2014.
It has snowed all day today, but the temp has hovered around 32F so the level on the ground has stayed about 1 to 2 inches. I brushed the snow off the driveway this morning, and it's still black. I guess it absorbs enough IR to keep the snow melting. The concrete front porch has finally turned white.
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George,
The roads will cool and freeze tonight. Then snow will start to stick. First snowfall each year melts faster as the ground is still warm.
Should rain before the weekend and clear the snow leaving mud.
However the snow allows hunters to track the deer. This time of year being outside without high visibility orange, if you get shot, it will be determined an accident and you will be at fault! (Has happened!)
The roads will cool and freeze tonight. Then snow will start to stick. First snowfall each year melts faster as the ground is still warm.
Should rain before the weekend and clear the snow leaving mud.
However the snow allows hunters to track the deer. This time of year being outside without high visibility orange, if you get shot, it will be determined an accident and you will be at fault! (Has happened!)
My driveway turned white before dark this afternoon. The areas on the north side of the vehicles went white first, as they saw no IR all day long. This shows that a considerable amount of IR gets through the thick cloud cover that kept it quite dark all day today. The outdoor thermometer said 32.something from about 8AM until it made it up to 33.0 about an hour ago.
Before the house on this property was completed, Bambi met with an accidental death by lead poisoning right in front of one of those frozen trees by the creek. She was pretty tasty too.
The snow allows one to track the deer, and someone like me to follow the ATV tracks back to the shooter for a share of the meat.....after all she died on my property.
BTW there were deer and rabbit tracks visible in this morning's snow, but both are real common here. I used to see them in the yard all the time, but a loud crowd moved in at the end of the road that keeps them away. It is also a fact that in West Virginia more deer are killed by automobiles than bullets.
Before the house on this property was completed, Bambi met with an accidental death by lead poisoning right in front of one of those frozen trees by the creek. She was pretty tasty too.
The snow allows one to track the deer, and someone like me to follow the ATV tracks back to the shooter for a share of the meat.....after all she died on my property.
BTW there were deer and rabbit tracks visible in this morning's snow, but both are real common here. I used to see them in the yard all the time, but a loud crowd moved in at the end of the road that keeps them away. It is also a fact that in West Virginia more deer are killed by automobiles than bullets.
Around here just outside of the city, deer, rabbits, wild turkeys even on occasion!
Should stop snowing tomorrow.
I used to have a loud neighbor, I bought the house from his father! I now have an empty house next to me and another behind me. Only next door neighbors have pet ducks, also known for laying eggs without a noisy male.
Should stop snowing tomorrow.
I used to have a loud neighbor, I bought the house from his father! I now have an empty house next to me and another behind me. Only next door neighbors have pet ducks, also known for laying eggs without a noisy male.