The dapple of my eye

I was somewhat taken by this beautiful dappling on an apple skin. I wonder what caused it.

Tracks

Taken on my Bodie walk early Tuesday morning, these are not the sort of tracks I am used to seeing in the snow at the side of the road. The river is not that far away so perhaps a heron or egret, I will guess. The Old/Middle French pie de grue is the origin of the word pedigree and the tracks naturally reminded me of the fact.

Update: It appears Laurie Mace, who lives on this stretch of road, had captured a photo of the culprit:

⁦⁦@metromorning⁩ an attempted break in across the street from us a few weeks ago. pic.twitter.com/N2gQSk6prN

— Denison Denizen (@LaurieMace) March 21, 2022

The great internet speed upgrade

Six years ago I made Bell my internet provider. Bell's Fibe 25 service was then priced at $66 per month plus $10 for an unlimited usage promo. In my current bill, those prices were $92 plus $12.50. Mind, the Fibe 25 ran closer to 30 Mbps download (10 Mbps upload) after some supposedly-no-cost upgrade some time ago. I forget the details. At any rate, this was more than sufficient to service not only my internet needs but also Bell's television service to which I am also subscribed.

When I accessed my Bell bill I noticed that faster speeds were readily available. The Fibe 50 plan with unlimited usage built in was $100 per month. Wait, that's less than what I was paying now! A Fibe 150 plan was $105 per month, 50 cents more than what I was paying! So I decided to upgrade to the Fibe 150, which was installed yesterday. The installation required an optic cable to replace the copper one that was installed here only in January.

Justin, technician, prepares the new optic cable

The new cabling didn't just end at the house. It entered the house and reached a new hub that sits on my desk. It even has a 10 Gigabit ethernet port if I wanted to connect it to a new computer that had the capability (none of my current computers do). A speed test suggests that I now get 185 Mbps download and over 160 Mbps upload. I doubt that either of those numbers will improve my life significantly, but what can one reasonably expect for 50 cents? The new hub needed to be paired with our TV receiver units in addition to our home phone. Unfortunately, the latter pairing somehow broke our home phone services: call display no longer worked and we were unable to access Bell's voicemail. I spent several hours today trying to assess the nature of the problem and have Bell fix it. Even after that, the indicator light for new (voicemail) messages was inoperative and this required yet another call to Bell.

Anyways, that's done and I can now concentrate on worrying about why we have not yet received our CPP and OAS T4As. I can't do our taxes without them!