Saturday – July 11, 2020:
Well, the reason for my absence the past few days is mainly because we were without internet service.
Just the other day we had a flash thunderstorm that developed right over our heads and it spit out one singular lightning bolt that hit our high voltage high-line in the middle of the yard. Our electric single-phase service that spans down through the middle of our yard and it took an absolute direct hit, which blown the 15 amp high voltage fuse within the cutout right above the transformer.
When it initially happened, the wife and I were in the middle of eating dinner and there was now warning whatsoever. It freaked the liven shit out of us to put it mildly!
So, I jumped to my feet, headed outdoors to look for whatever damage the lighting might’ve caused. It was extremely loud when it happened. I didn’t notice anything obvious right off the bat other than the cutout was hanging with a blown fuse out the bottom of it. That prompted me to fire up the generator, jump into the truck afterwards, drive down the road a bit to acquire cellphone service, and call the power company to inform them what just occurred.
We were on generator for about five hours until the power company line crew showed up. Didn’t take them long at all to get us back on utility power once they showed up, however our internet service never did make it back after the main electrical was turned back on.
So, once again, I jumped back into the pickup truck, drove down the road to acquire cellphone service and called Spectrum this time. Once I finally reached them and told them what happened, they suggested that I go to their office with the old cable modem and swap it out with a new one the following morning, which I did first thing when they opened.
After I got back home, I installed the new modem and still had no service. Darn, once again, I had to drive back down the road to call them on my cellphone and explain the latest situation. They told me they would have to send out a cable tech, which they scheduled for Saturday at noon, which was the soonest they'd get to us supposedly. Meanwhile, I took that new modem out to our electrical utility service pole and connected it to the cable service drop. Still, it was a no go. It wouldn’t boot up to the on-line status.
Once the tech showed up this afternoon, I explained to him what I did to verify the cable line between the service pole and the house, which I told him that there must be an open that is most likely in between the street pole and/or within the service span to the service drop from the road. Well, the tech told me that he was only responsible to fix or validate just the service drop, and if he didn’t have a signal there, he’d have to call their cable line crew to come out and try to fix it.
Boy oh boy, what a racket!
Sure enough, he had no single at the service drop, just like I told him he wouldn’t have. So, he had to call in another service ticket in for the cable line crew, which I originally told them that we took a direct hit of a bolt of lighting on our service lines. He was a decent guy though. Nice enough to make the service ticket a high priority because I told him that both my wife and I use the internet cable service for business/work. We were without it for nearly three days up to that point.
In the meantime, while I was waiting on the cable line crew to show up, I mowed the lawn, replenished another 250lbs. of corn into the deer feeder, pulled the SD cards out of the trail cameras and downloaded them onto my computer.
The cable line crew showed up around five and did find the problem quickly, which was out by the street. We have a cable amplifier box located just off our last service pole nearest to the street. It was blown up basically, all burnt up on the inside by the lighting. The cable guy replaced it with a new one in a matter of minutes. Now we're finally able to connect to the world wide web once again as of an hour ago.
Looks like I missed out on a fair amount since my absence. I'll try to catch up on all the going ons tonight.
Anyhow,,,
more early morning daylight pictures of THUNDER from just the other day. He had company with him. So, I compiled another series of TC video clips and pictures of his time at the feeder that is approximately 12 minutes long even though he spent nearly another half an hour feeding. It was his second visit that morning. He was at the feeder much earlier, approximately 5 ½ hours earlier with three other bucks.
Hope you guys enjoy it!
The deer have been pounding down a lot of corn lately just over the past few weeks, which I suppose that’s a good thing.
Our very first fawn showed up at the feeder of the new year. It’s not the first fawn that I’ve seen this year though. As a matter a fact, I have a couple of pictures of a mother doe with a pair of twins cruising through our front yard from last week. It's nice to see fresh new baby faces showing up again. I kinda expect to see more of them make their way towards the feeder relatively soon now that they're getting big/old enough.
Hope everyone is doing well during these absolutely insane times?
Take it easy out there!