I’d forgotten that today would normally have been Tax Day until we walked by our neighbors and found them greeting us on their lawn:

Of course, I made sure to be at least six feet away when I took the photo!

I’m continuing to have good Internet connectivity with my own modem (Xfinity’s is still in its shrinkwrap). An all-day ping to my Linode server has only shown three dropped packets, which doesn’t seem too terrible. But I’m going to wait another couple of days before I return their modem, just in case.

Speaking of returning things, I sent my old MacBook Pro to Apple for recycling and trade-in. I’d bought it just under 10 years ago, soon after being laid off from IBM. My manager allowed me to hang on to IBM’s MacBook Pro for a few weeks until Apple’s new models were available, for which I’m still grateful; I’m sure if I’d bought the previous model, I would have had to replace it a long time ago!

Now I’m erasing my old Time Capsule – it was never the most reliable form of backup, and it’s time to put it out to pasture, too. I guess I should get a small hard disk and use it for Time Machine; I hardly ever have restored a file from Time Machine (partially because doing it from a Time Capsule was painful), but there’ll be a time sometime when I need to…right?

Our Internet woes continued this morning; rebooting everything didn’t help, so I finally gave into desperation and called Xfinity. I used their chat tool to set up a callback from tech support; 15 minutes later, my cellphone rang and I was talking to Brian at tech support in Honduras. I described the problem and let him know I was seeing a lot of packet loss as well as huge variability in ping time; a few minutes later, he’d downloaded new firmware to my modem, restarted it, and all was well. Thanks, Xfinity, and thanks Brian!

Except that an hour later, the Internet service went all to hell again. I got back with Xfinity and another agent tried to reset my modem with limited success – then yet ANOTHER agent called me, looked at the signals and suggested I get a temporary rental modem from the service center. I agreed and he set it up on my account and drove over to the service center. It was the easiest in-person transaction I’ve ever had with Xfinity.

As long as we were out, we did this week’s shopping (Talenti gelato was still on sale at Nob Hill!), and when I returned, I was happy to hear the Sonos playing away.

I’d left a ping running when we left – to my great surprise, there had been NO packet loss for the two hours we’d been away. I decided to take my chances and leave my old modem in place but monitor what was going on.

It’s been 6 hours so far with no packet losses. It’s as if agreeing to pay Xfinity another $14/month (plus $9 in taxes and fees!) solved the problem all by itself.

I’m going to leave things as they are for a few days; if the problem doesn’t recur by next shopping day, I’ll take the modem back, still in its protective plastic, and see what happens then.

Has it been four weeks already? Time flies when you’re not going anywhere!

We had lots of calls today, starting with our son bright and early at 8:30am (his lunchtime) and ending with a Toastmasters meeting on Zoom ending at 8:45pm. And we managed to walk, too.

My computer migration continues – I’ve made a backup on USB disk and it seems to work; I tried using an old backup disk (Firewire/USB 2.0) but I couldn’t make the new laptop see it at all – now I’m running it through a 7-pass erasure so I can throw it away safely.

And this evening, I’m having severe Internet problems – it comes and it goes, and even when it’s here, it’s not very fast (except when it is). During my Toastmasters meeting, Zoom did a great job of preserving the audio, but I was lucky if I got a frame of video every other second. I’ve rebooted my router, cable modem, and switches with no joy; I’m going to let it sit overnight before trying to contact Xfinity.

It’s always something!

It was Easter, so we didn’t have to decide whether to brave the Farmers’ Market because it was closed. And we didn’t walk in Downtown Los Gatos, either – all three of our walks were in our own neighborhood (as usual).

Our friend Dale led a mask-making Zoom class at Shir Hadash; she showed us how to make no-sew masks from fabric, pillowcases, kippot, and even a disposable mask using two coffee filters. She also showed how to sew masks according to the Kaiser Permanente instructions. We’ll be making some masks before our next trip to a store!

I did some work for Toastmasters and backed up my old laptop’s SSD so I can put the laptop in the mail to Apple sometime this week and complete the trade-in process. I also seem to have found a reasonable compromise between screen resolution and readability on the new laptop – I have it at 1680×1050 with several apps set to bigger fonts (the old laptop was 1680×1050 but had a 15” screen).

We watched the second half of Silicon Valley Shakespeare’s 2018 production of “Much Ado About Nothing”; it brought back nice memories.

But the sound had a lot of noise and distortion – I wound up buying a copy of Rogue Amoeba’s SoundSource 4 in hopes of notching out the worst of the noise, and it helped somewhat. Strangely, the first act (which we watched yesterday) seemed to have better sound.

I read the May issue of QST today; they were scrambling to include information about the effect of COVID-19 on DXpeditions, special event stations, and Field Day (as well as the cancellation of the Dayton Hamvention). As I was looking through the issue, I noticed one special event station had planned on operating at the end of May in honor of the “Mike the Headless Chicken Festival” in Fruita, Colorado; it seems unlikely that they’ll be able to do so, but reading about the festival brightened my day!

QST also reprinted their letter column from 1970, which was largely devoted to hams condemning or supporting the “National Student Information Net” which served as a clearinghouse for the National Student Strike that year. Politics was nasty then, too – maybe we’ll change some day.

When I woke up this morning, I found an email from United that they’d “noticed I’d made some changes to my flight” and that if there had been “significant changes” to the schedule, I might be eligible for a refund. I thought cancelling the flight qualified as a “significant change”, so I decided to call them after Torah Study.

“After Torah Study” became “after Torah Study, lunch, and a walk”, but eventually, I sat down to call the Premier desk (I’m a lowly Silver, but I’ll take whatever help I can get), prepared for a long wait on hold. The system asked me for my Mileage Plus number, then it made me answer one question, and ten seconds later, I was talking to a human being – I was shocked.

She looked at my record and said she’d forward the request to the Refunds Department and that I should expect to hear from them in a couple of weeks. Here’s hoping!