Our two-year Comcast agreement will expire next week, so I called them to see what they could do for me. Two years ago, the agent I got was able to increase the speed of our Internet connection (in both directions) without changing the monthly bill, which was a surprisingly good result.

This year, I went in with a different objective: stop giving any money to Fox News. That meant switching to the “Choice” package, which includes all the local channels, a few shopping channels, and not much else. The call to the agent was straightforward. He did try to sell me on Comcast’s “NOW TV” streaming package for $20/month – it’s got a lot of channels I used to watch (and no Fox News), but nothing that I watch actively these days, so I passed on it. The whole call took about 25 minutes, and I was happy until I got the confirmation note, which said that they were going to cancel the CableCard in my TiVo which I did NOT want to happen.

I called back and got a different agent. I explained the problem; he checked my account and said “oh, they forgot to add the video code”. Two minutes later, he asked me to turn on the TiVo and check a few channels. The local channels were there; the channels I’d discontinued weren’t. And the Internet and phone continued to work as expected. I think I’m set for another year.

Today was, of course, Independence Day; there’s been a bike parade through the neighborhood for about 15 years (except 2020), and it’s fun to see the kids (and adults) out for a ride.

It’s been a busy week (and a bit), but mostly filled with mundane occurrences, so when bedtime approaches and I’m faced with the choice of writing a blog entry or going to bed, I’ve chosen the latter.

Probably the most interesting thing that happened this week was being given “permission to operate” our solar system by PG&E; it’s been operational (and sending power to them) since late May, but now we’ll start getting credit for the power we send instead of donating it.

It’s been very hot this weekend, so we’ve been giving the new heat pump (air conditioning) its first real test, and I’ve been happy with how it’s working. Our family room gets quite a bit warmer than the location of the thermostat, so I have to set the thermostat to an absurdly low temperature to keep the family room comfortable, but that’s why we put in solar. And the heat pump doesn’t use a lot of power in cooling mode – as best as I can tell from the info I can get from the system, it tops out at no more than 1500 watts (usually a lot less). In comparison, our whole house fan draws 1100 watts at full speed (fortunately, it draws less than 350 watts at the speeds we usually need).

And there’s good news on the toilet front – the “fix” I wrote about on June 11 didn’t actually fix anything, so I called Korky and they sent me a larger flapper (their model 3060, which seems to be doing the job (i. e., not leaking)). I hope writing this doesn’t jinx it….

There was a Shir Hadash event far up in the hills overlooking Los Gatos on Thursday night; the view was wonderful (and so was the food, wine, and company). My term as Ritual Committee Chair ended yesterday; I’m glad I did it, but I don’t plan to repeat the experience.

On the other hand, I’m repeating my role as President of the Silicon Valley Storytellers; I was the founding President ten years ago. It should be fun!

Like I said, a busy week, but not one which makes for compelling blog posts.