Just before we left for France, I noticed that our Internet speed had gotten awfully slow, and rebooting everything didn’t make a difference. I planned to call Comcast when we got home, but I didn’t have to – they sent me a message saying that they’d noticed a problem and helped me set up a tech visit.

The tech arrived today; we did a speed test on my office computer, which got 30Mbps downstream and about 40 upstream – I’m supposed to get nearly 1Gbps down and 40 up. The tech tried plugging the cable directly into his “meter” and got proper speeds – but he also found a lot of errors and variation in signal strength level, so he wanted to investigate more.

He had me plug my computer directly into the modem, and I got the speeds I’m supposed to get; then I plugged the computer into a switch plugged into the modem and got the same fast performance. It sure looked like my router was the problem.

The tech surprised me by not closing the ticket and blaming my router; instead, he went out and looked at the drop and the wire. A few minutes later, I noticed him stringing a new piece of cable outside.

He came back and had me re-run the test with the modem in circuit – and all was well.

He told me that squirrels had chewed on the cable, so he replaced it; he also told me to keep an eye on the speed and if it starts to drop, let Comcast know.

I’m impressed.

Things are still working fine this evening; I have lots of offsite backups happening, so I’m not surprised that the available upstream speed is lower than before.

Our solar panels are up! As is a lot of new hardware attached to the house – an AC combiner to combine the output of each of the 18 panels and micro-inverters, a sub-panel for the circuits which are being powered by the battery backup, the system controller, and the battery backup.

Unfortunately, they’re not producing any useful power yet; the lead installer said that they need to set up some sort of account on the Enphase servers before they can turn on the controller, and that won’t happen until after the weekend (or maybe not until final inspection).

Progress!

One of the key concepts in David Allen’s Getting Things Done method involves realizing that some tasks can only be done in certain contexts. For example, when the book was originally written, “needing a phone available” was a frequent context to use in categorizing your tasks (those were simpler times!). One of the other contexts that comes up is how much energy and mental alertness you need for a task; he even suggests creating a list of tasks you can do with limited brainpower.

Today was a “limited brainpower” day – between not having gotten enough sleep last night and my back still bothering me, I didn’t want to do anything needing a lot of mental energy.

I was surprised how much I got done – I “renegotiated” the price for SiriusXM service for another year (go to their website and choose for the “cancel” option; tell the nice customer service chatbot that you’re cancelling because it’s too expensive; wait for an agent to enter the chat and tell them the same thing; reduce the rate from $23.05 to $7.27 per month), changed our flights to Frankfurt in the fall to save $1000/person and give us an extra day there, visited the chiropractor (my back is better, but still not recovered), and even cooked a couple of meals.

And the materials for our solar system got delivered; they’re doing the installation tomorrow.

Our trip home was boring. I asked BA for “mobility assistance” to keep me from having to schlep luggage around – it sort of worked.

In Paris, they let me sit down until they were ready to let us check in (they tell you to be at the airport 3 hours early, but they don’t start checking a flight until two-and-a-half hours before departure time), and then they told me to go sit out in the terminal and someone will come and pick me up. There were two other BA passengers waiting, so I joined them; after 45 minutes, no one had come to pick any of us up (and one of the passengers was getting worried about making their plane). I gave up and we walked to security, the lounge, passport control, and the plane – no problem.

In Heathrow, they picked me up on landing and took us through the Flight Connections and Security maze, which I really appreciated. My pusher, Mohammed, zipped us through Fast Track (which was working for a change) and to the front of the security line – and for the first time in a long time, none of our items required extra screening! He took us to the lounge and promised someone would pick us up an hour before the next flight. But no one showed up for quite a while after the promised time – due to problems with the escalators causing huge lift queues. When my new pusher arrived, we were off on a zippy trip to the B gates, where we discovered that our plane was going to use buses instead of a jetway. I probably would have been fine, but they put me on a “high lift” along with the other passengers needing assistance and Diane took the bus.

A “high lift” is basically a bus that can lift its passenger compartment to plane door level so you can walk onto the plane. It’s not the most comfortable vehicle in the world, but it got the job done.

I felt pretty good when we got to San Jose, so I decided to skip the assistance. It was an easy walk to Global Entry and we were cleared in just a minute or so. And then we waited for our bags – I didn’t check my watch, but I’m sure it was at least 20 minutes before the first bag was delivered. Our bag came out fairly quickly after that, and we headed off to get a cab (no waiting, unlike ride-sharing).

And we’re home.

As we were walking to the apartment after our trip to the Pompidou Centre yesterday, my back started hurting – not totally unusual, but definitely unexpected. And it kept getting worse through the evening, but it wasn’t really bad.

Until 4am, when I awoke in serious pain. Diane helped me get to the bathroom and take a couple of Aleve, and that let me go back to sleep. I don’t think she got back to sleep, though.

We had plans for today – we were going to go with Pete and Debbie and take one of the sightseeing boats on the Seine. And perhaps we’d squeeze in one more museum.

But when we got up around 7, I wasn’t feeling great and the weather wasn’t appealing, so we stayed around the apartment (passing up second breakfast!) and chatted. We walked to Penny Lane, a Mediterranean sandwich restaurant a block away; it was delicious, and I can’t believe they can pay their bills only being open for lunch five days a week! I noticed a lot of Israeli cookbooks (many in English) and asked the owner about them; he was born to Israeli emigrants to France. An interesting place and well worth a visit if you’re in the neighborhood.

I suggested we walk to Galeries Lafayette to look around, but had to turn back after only a few steps – Diane, Pete, and Debbie went and enjoyed the views; I sat and iced my back, which helped a little.

By the time they got back, I was hurting again; I’d had my second dose of Aleve but it hadn’t kicked in. I asked our host if they could recommend a doctor and they said I should call SOS Médecins on 3624. When I called, Orange told me that my account had insufficient credit! I finally figured out that 3624 is a pay-per-minute number, so I couldn’t call it from either my French or American phone. I asked my host for more help and eventually got a regular number to call, 01 47 07 77 77.

You know how frustrating it is when you call a business and get told “our menu has changed” and “your call is important”? It’s worse when you’re in pain and the messages are in a language you don’t understand. My host told me to just stay on the line and eventually the call would be answered by a human being who might even speak English – and it happened!

Their first question was where to send the doctor. It was not easy to communicate the street name (Rue du l’Échiquier) – my pronunciation was so bad that it made it hard for the agent to understand the name when I spelled it using NATO phonetics! But eventually, information was exchanged and they said the doctor would arrive between 8-10pm.

And he did, and he spoke English well enough to understand me (it didn’t help that my voice is almost gone). He gave me a serious painkiller and several prescriptions to take for the next few days.

Which I had to have filled, which meant a trip to the 24-hour pharmacy at Place de la République. I was feeling much better and thought about walking the 15 minutes; then I came to my senses and we went there by Uber.

We had to wait in line for a few minutes; then one of the three pharmacists on duty called us over and started working on our prescriptions. If we’d been at a CVS at home, we’d’ve been told to go away for half-an-hour and then get into the pickup line and see if they got the insurance right; here, I never had to leave the counter, I had the prescriptions in 10 minutes, and the total cash price (without insurance) was about EUR 23, including an 8 Euro fee for night service. There are days I wonder about the American health care system.

We came back to the apartment by Metro and I was able to help finish packing (much better than earlier in the day!).